An almanac is a wager that today rhymes with yesterday. The ledger you open here was begun in the autumn of MDCII, when a small clerk in Amsterdam first set down the price of pepper next to the price of bread, and noticed, to his quiet astonishment, that the two were governed by a single weather.
What follows is the entry for the present day. The verso, by long custom of this house, presents the historical antecedent — the day of 1929, of 1973, of 2008, whichever the editor judges most resonant. The recto presents the live entry. Read them together; the argument is in the rhyme.
— “Money has memory, and the memory of money is longer than any of its merchants.”
FRONTISPIECE
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
Tabula · Rerum
Table of Contents
II.The Leading Price of Day CXIXp. iii
III.A Note from the Bankp. v
IV.Cabinet of Curiositiesp. vii
V.Colophon & Hand of the Editorp. ix
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— local hour
Today, of the Year MMXXVI
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
An Antecedent
From the Annals of MCMXXIX
On the twenty-fourth of October, MCMXXIX, the New York Stock Exchange opened to a sky the colour of pewter. Within nine minutes, twelve million eight hundred ninety-four thousand six hundred and fifty shares were offered for sale; thirteen of the runners on the floor fainted before noon. The tape ran four hours and eight minutes behind by the close of the bell — a delay measured, in those days, in the smell of overheated brass.
What is striking, at the remove of a century, is not the panic but the stillness that preceded it. The week before, the average daily volume of the exchange had drifted within a band so narrow that the morning chartists, looking for omens, found only the usual brown weather of an autumn market.
— Plate I. The Dow Jones Industrial closing prices, October MCMXXIX. The annotated point marks 24 Oct., the morning the bell rang upon a falling market.
The figures of October MCMXXIX, set in old style with their proper commas, retain the quiet weight of an account ledger. 1 They look like sums; they look like names; they look, in the right light, like a calendar of weather. It is the duty of the archivist to read them as such.
COMMERCE
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
The Leading Price
Entry for this day, MMXXVI
The index opened mild. By the ringing of the noon bell, sterling had crept four basis points toward the dollar; oil, in its long unhurried way, had drifted into the green. The day's principal motion belonged not to equities but to a quiet readjustment of the yield on the ten-year, of the kind that elders of the trade recognise as the floor settling beneath a house.
Instrument
Close
Δ
Dow Jones Industrial
38,124.07
+0.42
FTSE 100
7,612.84
+0.18
Nikkei 225
31,442.18
−0.31
Bund 10y, %
2.418
+0.04
Gold, $/oz.
2,034.16
+0.22
Brent, $/bbl.
82.74
−0.51
GBP &solidus; USD
1.2684
+0.04
EUR &solidus; USD
1.0712
+0.06
The figure of note 2 is the German bund — not for its movement, which is unremarkable, but for its shape. Across the curve, durations of three to ten years tightened in their relative ordering, recalling the prelude to MCMLXXIII. 3 Whether the rhyme will be heard by the central bank is a question no almanac may answer; the editor sets down the figure and lets the reader hold it against the long memory of the page.
“The market does not repeat, but it rhymes; and the archivist, hearing the rhyme, is content to copy it down.”
In the September of MMVIII, the Federal Reserve, in concert with the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, conducted a series of swap-line operations whose mechanics were obscure and whose consequences were not. The papers of the day reported the swaps in passive voice; the chairman of the board, in a tone the archivist remembers as tactfully alarmed, called them “extraordinary measures.”
— Plate II. The Bank of England, photographed under fog. From a press photograph dated September MMVIII.
POLICY
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
A Note from the Bank
The day's principal communiqué
The European Central Bank, in a communiqué of three pages and one hundred forty-four words of consequence, signalled this morning that its programme of asset accumulation will continue at its present pace until the conclusion of the third quarter. The vote of the governing council was unanimous; the press conference was conducted, by long custom of the institution, in a measured and unhurried German.
The relevant figure is set below.1
Rate
Present
Prior
Main refinancing
4.50%
4.50%
Marginal lending
4.75%
4.75%
Deposit facility
4.00%
4.00%
Programme size, €bn
4,890
4,886
The communiqué's most-quoted sentence runs as follows:
“The Council remains attentive to the asymmetry of the present moment, and stands prepared to maintain its present orientation for as long as the asymmetry endures.”
What the council means by asymmetry is left, in the manner of central banks, partly to the reader. 2 The archivist suggests that the word be set against the council's communiqué of fifteen years past, and the rhyme allowed to speak for itself.
29 April, MMXXVI
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
A Cabinet of Curiosities
Vitrine of small archival oddities
The cabinet is a tradition of the volume reaching back, in the editor's records, to the autumn of MDCCCXC, when the founding archivist began the practice of setting aside one full leaf each issue for objects too small to merit an essay and too peculiar to be discarded. The reader is invited to linger.
i. A clipping of MCMXXIII.
ii. An early ticker-tape machine.
iii. Pressed gingko, Wall Street.
iv. Portrait medallion.
v. The cabinet, itself.
vi. Letter, MCMXLI.
vii. A worn florin.
viii. Chartist's hand-drawn page.
ix. The first ledger, MDCII.
MISCELLANY
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
Marginalia of the Day
A selection of small notations entered in the editor's hand at the close of the day. They are not arguments, only observations — the kind of notes a careful reader keeps in the back of a long book.
The Japanese yen, against the dollar, has crossed one hundred and fifty-four for the third session in succession. The Bank of Japan, by long custom, declines to comment.
The London Metal Exchange, in the matter of nickel, today reported a quiet day — the kind of quiet that, in MMXXII, preceded an interruption.
A rumour, reaching the editor by the four o'clock post, that the German chancellor will speak Friday next on the subject of European fiscal cohesion. The editor declines to confirm.
Wheat futures, in Chicago, settled at five hundred ninety-two and one quarter. The almanac, kept in old style, has noted such a figure on this calendar day in MCMVII, MCMLI, and MMVI.
A dispatch from Singapore reports that container freight, on the Asia–Europe lane, has firmed by four percent. The shipping line is one the editor's grandfather knew.
“A man who reads a single page of an almanac has read a single day; a man who reads its margins has read its century.”
29 April, MMXXVI
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
Colophon
This volume is set in Cormorant Garamond and EB Garamond for the body and tables, with IM Fell English Small Capitals for archival voice and Old Standard for the day's running ticker. The numerals are old-style throughout. The paper is foxed Manila stock under tungsten light. The leather is brown morocco, dressed with neatsfoot oil.
The volume is kept by the editor in continuous succession since MDCII. It accepts no advertisements, no announcements, no syndication. The reader who has reached this page has read the day; the reader who has not, has not.
MISCELLANY
MMXXVI · DAY CXIX
Hand of the Editor
Edited this day by an Archivist of the Volume.
Set in Amsterdam, in the manner of MDCII.
The reader's attention is the editor's compensation.
An Archivist · MMXXVI
Finis
Here ends the entry for Day CXIX of MMXXVI. The volume is closed; the reader sets it down.