NEW YORK — Champagne corks rang off the vaulted ceiling of the Reputation Exchange on Thursday as the Delightful Index closed up three hundred points — points of what, no one asks, as asking is bearish — capping the most effervescent quarter since the Abolition of Money made everyone rich in the only currency left: being liked.
The day's fireworks came courtesy of financier Bertram Vance, who successfully cornered the market on wit by placing every amusing dinner guest in Manhattan under exclusive contract. Rival houses scrambled to cover their positions in charm, sending the price of a well-timed compliment to heights not seen since the Whitney divorce. Margin calls were settled, as is custom, in favors, applause, and one very public apology performed in the lobby to a standing ovation, which the apologizer immediately banked.
The Federal Charm Reserve moved swiftly to steady the market, raising the polite-attention rate a quarter point. "Our fundamentals are sound," Chairwoman Evelyn Ashworth-Vane assured reporters, dazzlingly. "American charisma remains the envy of the civilized world, and envy, I remind you, is also up."
Not everyone toasted. At a luncheon downtown, a Mr. C. Howell of Gramercy Park inquired, aloud, what precisely backs the Delightful Index. The room fell silent. By dessert his club memberships had been called in; by evening his name was trading as a cautionary limerick; by Friday he was reachable only through his attorney, who asked that we describe him as "a former acquaintance." The Exchange has classified the incident as insider gloom.
Still, the omens glitter. A shoeshine boy outside the Exchange offered this reporter a tip — "compliments on hats are undervalued, mister" — and historians will note such moments precede either a golden age or a correction. The floor is untroubled. As one trader put it, raising his glass to the ticker: "The market can stay charming longer than you can stay solvent, and nobody's been solvent since '27. That, friend, is the genius of it."
