No more monkeying around
From picking stocks to making no small plans, Mr. Adam Monk is busy
I had to find Mr. Monk, our stock-picking mascot, our sage, our diminutive guru of market glory. But the actual cebus monkey was proving hard to locate for our first-quarter review of our reader contest. I was getting nervous. Had he lapsed into depression because his first-quarter returns have been slight? An historically slow starter, Mr. Monk is up only about 1.6 percent this year with his five-stock portfolio.
That beats the market, as he always does, but isn't up to his standard. About 650 readers answered his call to enter our Monkey Manager contest, and the accompanying chart shows the leaders.
But where's that monkey? Sources led me to the hidden base of a downtown building, a site passed over by all but delivery drivers and the homeless. I knocked at a door.
(Rich Hein/Sun-Times)
"Welcome," our monkey said. "Welcome to the War Room!"
So that's what you call this bunker, I said. Have you been driven here by the pesky autograph seekers, the people who want stock tips because of your amazing record? Is this the only place you could get any work done?
"Nah,'' he said. "This is the place for my special assignment. I'm working for The Man himself, Mayor Daley, and this is where we are planning Chicago's bid for the Olympics.
"Well, maybe planning's not the right word. This is where we are doctoring it up, making sure the costs are all solid until we get selected, and we can start ramming through the revisions. But even though this office is so secretive, believe me I already get plenty of Bridgeport guys coming around. They want the fence contracts, the landscaping contracts, the insurance deals.
"Sometimes they won't go away, and I have to threaten to call your Sun-Times guy, Tim Novak. That works better than mentioning Patrick Fitzgerald."
Do you think Chicago has a real shot at the 2016 Olympics? I asked.
"A shot? Yeah. But if we make the cut with the U.S. Olympic Committee, we'll probably be up against Rio de Janeiro. I'm from Brazil, and believe me, they know how to throw a party in Rio. Down there, the bribe is an accepted line-item in the budget.
"So I tell those Bridgeport contractors to wait their turn. We've got other palms to grease first. And it's my job to raise that money in a way nobody notices."
How are you going to do it?
"I'm considering two options. Either we establish a TIF district over the whole city or we call in Todd Stroger and patiently explain to him the new user fee he's going to impose on every Cook County resident. It'll be a fee for living in, traveling in, having a job in or making a pile of dough off of the county."
Sounds like this is taking a lot of time, I said. What about your investments?
"No need for worry. You know how I pick up steam as the year goes on. But I'm impressed with your readers' picks. It'll certainly be a great race to the finish for your fabulous prize."
You mean that seven-night trip for two to Gran Bahia Principe Tulum in Riviera Maya, Mexico, courtesy of Apple Vacations?
"That's it. And while it's not Rio, it'll do. But get out of here because I've got to work on my biggest headache with these Olympics."
What's that?
"It's the cost of that temporary, put-it-up, take-it-down, one-size-fits-all stadium that Daley wants to put in Washington Park. I've tried everything I can think of to make this work. Put condos in the concourses? No, they don't want it. Sell naming rights to everything? Millennium Park dried up that market. Sponsor a dunk-the-alderman concession outside every gate? Now there's a real moneymaker, but the aldermen would take it all back in workers' comp claims.
"So I'm coming to a matter that must be handled delicately. We need to import forced, unpaid labor to build this thing."
But slavery is illegal!
"There you go again. Your use of language is so unimaginative. It's all in how you sell something. If we call it temporary worker visas, everyone from Bill Gates to Luis Gutierrez will endorse it. Trust me, no one will ask any questions!"