The Phoenix Agenda Trilogy
A Wall Street Themed Trilogy on the Future of the World Economy, Capitalism, and Human Survival
Spy craft [LS1] and high finance collide in The Phoenix Trilogy, an edge-of-your seat action thriller in the mold of Tom Clancy and Dan Brown. When a secret society sets out to destroy the global economy, a reluctant professor, a Soviet sleeper agent and a young CIA operative must team up to track down its members and contain the terrible fallout. Written by a master storyteller and noted economist, this prescient adventure lays bare the dangers of our interconnected world, and suggests a cooperative path forward that may save us all.
The completed trilogy, which builds on the newly revised and updated novel The Phoenix Year (Wattle Press, 2014), is updated to reflect the world today. It traces the story from June, 2020 through the end of 2021, including the Trump Presidency and the economic fall-out of the global shutdown and continued effects of the virus on the US and world economies.
A Story Ripe For the Post-pandemic World
The Phoenix Agenda Trilogy lives in the moment, the post-shutdown era where the specter of hunger, unemployment, illness and soaring healthcare costs is more frightening than the stuff of fiction. It’s the economic apocalypse triggered by Covid-19 that scares us now, not zombies. We’re haunted by climate change and inequity, not ghosts. The global pandemic has clearly and powerfully demonstrated that we live in an interconnected world where a disaster in one region ripples across the globe, and exposed the dangers in building economies driven by the goal of maximizing profits for shareholders.
Against this backdrop, The Ancient and Honorable Society of the Phoenix sets out to re-engineer the global economy by, first, crashing world financial markets just as they reach new highs on the euphoria of ending the pandemic through a series of seemingly unrelated events triggering massive sell-offs in equity markets …
Spy craft [LS1] and high finance collide in The Phoenix Trilogy, an edge-of-your seat action thriller in the mold of Tom Clancy and Dan Brown. When a secret society sets out to destroy the global economy, a reluctant professor, a Soviet sleeper agent and a young CIA operative must team up to track down its members and contain the terrible fallout. Written by a master storyteller and noted economist, this prescient adventure lays bare the dangers of our interconnected world, and suggests a cooperative path forward that may save us all.
The completed trilogy, which builds on the newly revised and updated novel The Phoenix Year (Wattle Press, 2014), is updated to reflect the world today. It traces the story from June, 2020 through the end of 2021, including the Trump Presidency and the economic fall-out of the global shutdown and continued effects of the virus on the US and world economies.
A Story Ripe For the Post-pandemic World
The Phoenix Agenda Trilogy lives in the moment, the post-shutdown era where the specter of hunger, unemployment, illness and soaring healthcare costs is more frightening than the stuff of fiction. It’s the economic apocalypse triggered by Covid-19 that scares us now, not zombies. We’re haunted by climate change and inequity, not ghosts. The global pandemic has clearly and powerfully demonstrated that we live in an interconnected world where a disaster in one region ripples across the globe, and exposed the dangers in building economies driven by the goal of maximizing profits for shareholders.
Against this backdrop, The Ancient and Honorable Society of the Phoenix sets out to re-engineer the global economy by, first, crashing world financial markets just as they reach new highs on the euphoria of ending the pandemic through a series of seemingly unrelated events triggering massive sell-offs in equity markets …
Book 1: The Ancient and Honorable Society of the Phoenix starts in Thailand where an American intelligence agent discovers a link between non-typical white pearls, trafficked women sold into sex bondage and wives and children of senior business executives. With governments around the world observing increased stock market volatility and errors in economic statistics on which business and government decisions are made, the intelligence community traces it to a private club for investors benefiting richly from insider information. When Kim Donovan, a CIA operative, confirms the link to the missing daughter of a Dallas tech executive, intercepted as she was being transferred between high end Thai brothels, her boss has positive confirmation that there is a deep state plot to subvert the world’s financial markets. What is not clear is the goal—short-term gains by Wall Street players or something more. Late in October 2020, with the economies still reeling from shutdowns, the dimensions of the plot are revealed. The Society engineers a series of shocking events and sends a “sell all” signal. Programmed trading systems over-compensate and stock markets collapse. Investors rush to so-called safe havens like gold. The Society sells massive stocks of secretly acquired gold and buy controlling interests in some of the world’s largest and most important companies.
Book2: The Phoenix Storm follows immediately after the market collapse. The hope for a recovery after nearly a year of economic shutdown from the pandemic and the success of new vaccines is destroyed by the damage caused by the engineered market collapse, trans-Pacific dock strike, the debt moratorium, and a cascading bankruptcies in the commercial real estate market, companies fall back on old plans and lay off workers and shutter plants trying to meet profit goals. The result is a storm that engulfs the world economy as governments are paralyzed by indecision and with interest rates at or near zero, Central Banks are out of options for restarting economic growth. The new President, Kirsten Anderson, is left with the mess to restart the world economy. At the same time the members of the Society, on the death of their leader, Heinrich von Kleise, a Swiss billionaire and philanthropist at the end of Volume 1, are fighting with Von Kleise’s heirs, an American economist, Michael Ross and Russian-American bureaucrat, Natalya Avramowitz, Von Kleise’s granddaughter, for control of the assets of the Trust. Multiple assassination attempts on the Ross’s and other members of the group, so at the end of the second Volume, the Ross’s have the mandate from remaining members of the Society to develop a plan for the global recovery and a new form of cooperative capitalism. Book 2 introduces the second major theme of the story, how to reform Islamic fundamentalism by making it more like other religions. To this end, the CIA engages a covert asset to help a Muslim preacher with a wide following on the Internet and cable to craft a message of conciliation between the branches of Islam. When a long hidden, American nuclear delivery system, falls into the hands of terrorists, with a small nuclear explosion in a hidden valley in Afghanistan killing leaders of many terrorist groups in a single blow, televised worldwide, their asset is able to convince the Iman to preach a message of hope rather than more terror[1].
A New Capitalism Emerges from the Disaster, Book 3: Phoenix Rising
Book 3: Phoenix Rising starts at the end of The Phoenix Storm. The Ross’s have gained, at least for now, full control of the Trust assets while the ownership positions in hundreds of financial vehicles are slowly consolidated into a single global non-profit Trust, they face off against a new enemy, The One Hundred Club, a private club of the owners of a hundred of the largest public and private companies, many of these companies are the targets about to be taken over and their managements and Boards changed. As the Club learns more of the plans, they develop a plan to stop the transfer by killing the Ross’s on the hope that the remaining owners of the Phoenix Trust will be less willing for radical changes. At the same time, Michael is left to try to imagine exactly the kind of future form of capitalism that Von Kleise had imagined. With the world economy close to depression level unemployment, he realizes that he has to act and develop a new form of corporate organization and competition that can restart the world economy before the social contract between citizens, governments, and the business community falls apart leaving only anarchy.
In the final phase of the story, with firm control in the hands of the Phoenix Trust, a new form of cooperative capitalism pitting Global Corporate Councils of interlocked companies against National Governments emerges from the rubble of the disaster. This sets the stage the battle for ideas and power that has motivated the advance of the human race from poverty to abundance. After nearly four hundred year evolution of capitalism from its early days of owner-managers during the industrial revolution to today’s public ownership, managerial form of capitalism with its short-term focus and limited vision as to how to change the world for the better is forced to change by the overnight change in ownership from shareholders to a global trust. A cooperative model of corporate organization and regulation is developed and implemented in an effort to harness the power of the private sector companies to work for the common good of all people, not just the shareholders, not just the managers, but the community of nations and peoples. How long this new form of cooperative capitalism will work remains to be seen.
A New Capitalism Emerges from the Disaster, Book 3: Phoenix Rising
Book 3: Phoenix Rising starts at the end of The Phoenix Storm. The Ross’s have gained, at least for now, full control of the Trust assets while the ownership positions in hundreds of financial vehicles are slowly consolidated into a single global non-profit Trust, they face off against a new enemy, The One Hundred Club, a private club of the owners of a hundred of the largest public and private companies, many of these companies are the targets about to be taken over and their managements and Boards changed. As the Club learns more of the plans, they develop a plan to stop the transfer by killing the Ross’s on the hope that the remaining owners of the Phoenix Trust will be less willing for radical changes. At the same time, Michael is left to try to imagine exactly the kind of future form of capitalism that Von Kleise had imagined. With the world economy close to depression level unemployment, he realizes that he has to act and develop a new form of corporate organization and competition that can restart the world economy before the social contract between citizens, governments, and the business community falls apart leaving only anarchy.
In the final phase of the story, with firm control in the hands of the Phoenix Trust, a new form of cooperative capitalism pitting Global Corporate Councils of interlocked companies against National Governments emerges from the rubble of the disaster. This sets the stage the battle for ideas and power that has motivated the advance of the human race from poverty to abundance. After nearly four hundred year evolution of capitalism from its early days of owner-managers during the industrial revolution to today’s public ownership, managerial form of capitalism with its short-term focus and limited vision as to how to change the world for the better is forced to change by the overnight change in ownership from shareholders to a global trust. A cooperative model of corporate organization and regulation is developed and implemented in an effort to harness the power of the private sector companies to work for the common good of all people, not just the shareholders, not just the managers, but the community of nations and peoples. How long this new form of cooperative capitalism will work remains to be seen.
Some reviews of the 2014 book -- The Phoenix Year, now completely revised and updated through 2020 and the end of the pandemic and the Trump Presidency...
Building on earlier work – The Phoenix Year, Wattle Press, 2014 – the completed trilogy is updated and revised to cover the Trump Presidency and the pandemic economy. Written by a well known economist, the earlier version of the story, set in 2016, not 2020, was well received, but poorly represented. The goal was always to finish the story.
A few of the independent reviews of the first book …..
The ‘Phoenix year’ is a gripping macro-economic thriller that poignantly narrates an incredible tale of espionage, global conspiracy and puppet masters, set against a backdrop of an impending global crisis. What makes this book unique and highly enjoyable to the reader is the clarity with which the author captures the transmission mechanism between financial economics and the inevitable impact of these events on the lives of the protagonist and key characters in the story. The story is set in a global stage – from real estate empires in New York, to secret societies in Switzerland to the seedy underbelly of the sex trade in Asia. My imagination stoked, curiosity piqued, economic senses heightened – I could hardly put down this book.
David Blond is a modern day Frederick Forsyth and a master storyteller with great insight into the workings of International organization and economies around the globe. Anyone who has been actively involved in the financial markets over the last decade could vouch for the fact, the book is prescient in predicting major global events from the hyper valuation of gold to debt-fueled crash in housing market in the US – this book puts sex and panache into the economics that you would have learnt at university. There are chapters in the book, especially where the story evolves within the failed state of post-USSR Russia where the narrative is so detailed and character sketches so realistic, the reader is tempted to speculate if this is really ‘fiction’ or secret revelations of an insider.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it for anyone craving a good book to take on holiday, looking for a gripping weekend read or most importantly anyone considering a career as an economist – if this doesn’t inspire you to be an economist I don’t know what will!
Another wrote:
The Phoenix Year is an alluring mix of spy novel and international conspiracy thriller. The colourful characters are cleverly portrayed -- the brilliant Michael Ross (who works for The President); the beautiful Russian “spy” Natalya; the CIA Agent – Kim (one of my favorites); Heinrich Von Kleise and the property mogul (and his family) who are brought to their knees by the economic underpinnings of the book.
I enjoyed the climbing sequence in the Swiss Alps and the fact that the book is set in many different countries. I found the economics and the general history (included in the book) fascinating. All, in all, I was left wanting more and couldn't put this page turner down. I would not hesitate in recommending The Phoenix Year to readers who enjoy action-packed, international, conspiracy thrillers!
Fans of John Le Carre, Dan Brown and James Bond may find this book appealing!
A few of the independent reviews of the first book …..
The ‘Phoenix year’ is a gripping macro-economic thriller that poignantly narrates an incredible tale of espionage, global conspiracy and puppet masters, set against a backdrop of an impending global crisis. What makes this book unique and highly enjoyable to the reader is the clarity with which the author captures the transmission mechanism between financial economics and the inevitable impact of these events on the lives of the protagonist and key characters in the story. The story is set in a global stage – from real estate empires in New York, to secret societies in Switzerland to the seedy underbelly of the sex trade in Asia. My imagination stoked, curiosity piqued, economic senses heightened – I could hardly put down this book.
David Blond is a modern day Frederick Forsyth and a master storyteller with great insight into the workings of International organization and economies around the globe. Anyone who has been actively involved in the financial markets over the last decade could vouch for the fact, the book is prescient in predicting major global events from the hyper valuation of gold to debt-fueled crash in housing market in the US – this book puts sex and panache into the economics that you would have learnt at university. There are chapters in the book, especially where the story evolves within the failed state of post-USSR Russia where the narrative is so detailed and character sketches so realistic, the reader is tempted to speculate if this is really ‘fiction’ or secret revelations of an insider.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it for anyone craving a good book to take on holiday, looking for a gripping weekend read or most importantly anyone considering a career as an economist – if this doesn’t inspire you to be an economist I don’t know what will!
Another wrote:
The Phoenix Year is an alluring mix of spy novel and international conspiracy thriller. The colourful characters are cleverly portrayed -- the brilliant Michael Ross (who works for The President); the beautiful Russian “spy” Natalya; the CIA Agent – Kim (one of my favorites); Heinrich Von Kleise and the property mogul (and his family) who are brought to their knees by the economic underpinnings of the book.
I enjoyed the climbing sequence in the Swiss Alps and the fact that the book is set in many different countries. I found the economics and the general history (included in the book) fascinating. All, in all, I was left wanting more and couldn't put this page turner down. I would not hesitate in recommending The Phoenix Year to readers who enjoy action-packed, international, conspiracy thrillers!
Fans of John Le Carre, Dan Brown and James Bond may find this book appealing!
The Future of Capitalism is the main point of this story -- can modern, financially driven capitalism meet the challenges of climate change and mass migrations...
A Story for the Post-Pandemic World
- Covering the events of the moment and the possible future as we recover from the pandemic and the Trump Presidency:
- Two versions of Donald Trump, the first as the self-promoting New York real estate owner and developer, and secondly as the unlikely, narcissistic, and dangerous President of the United States.
- A plausible scenario for both gaming the stock market to a point where existing automatic stabilization mechanisms could be overwhelmed leading to a 1929 market collapse and worldwide depression.
- A story steeped in the issues related to what is wrong with capitalism and why it must adapt to the new reality of having to serve not just the shareholders, but to also to their workers and communities.
- An economic scenario that could well come true as well as a easy to understand storyline that is as real as what has already happened in economies rich and poor alike. The story covers the period from the 2008 financial crisis through the economic shutdown and staggered reopening through the election and on to a new President.
- A civil war in Russia after the current regime is forced or voluntarily leaves between the more liberal elements in Moscow and the more conservative old guard who take control of St. Petersburg with the remaining regions of the current Russia state breaking away and seeking control of their own resources and wealth.
- Major Cinematic Sequences are critical to the story and important to make the reader understand the stakes and dangers faced both by the characters and also the world in which we all live:
- Book 1: Ancient and Honorable Order of the Phoenix
- Natalya saves the top secret papers that Michael carries killing two men sent to retrieve the documents their first night together after leaving Annecy and the Conference;
- Kim, Lilly and Ben’s escape from Eden, a high end sexual spa;
- Natalya and Michael’s escape from death on the Billy Goat Trail when her mother tries to kill her to stop her becoming Von Kleise’s heir;
- Natalya’s dangerous climb to rescue Michael up the Blumlisalpen Rothorn to rescue Michael and solve the mystery of the Phoenix conspiracy;
- Kim and Ben Masters climb to the top of the same peak to save his wife and daughter in the midst of a late October snowstorm.
- Book 1: Ancient and Honorable Order of the Phoenix
- Book 2: The Phoenix Storm
- Two assassination attempts on Natalya and Michael on their arrival in Washington to attend the Inauguration of Kirsten Anderson;
- Beginning of the Russian Civil War with the assault on Moscow at the Ring Road.
- Assassination attempt on the Larsen’s plane when it loses one engine over the South Atlantic, barely makes it to Brazil.
- Assassination attempt in Davos, Switzerland on Michael and Natalya, foiled by Kim’s careful attention to detail
- Killing of one of the members of the Society to stop his voting to continue the plan and support the Ross’s control of the trust
- Kahlia’s dangerous plan to find out the truth about Ali Hassan, a rich Qatari banker with ties in his past to the Afghan War and a possible secret financier of terrorist groups, backfires and she finds herself a prisoner in a Yemen, escapes, and is able to use her contact with Sultan Abbas to calm the Arab street after the discovery of the secret American nuclear weapon.
- Natalya and Kahlia’s trip to St. Petersburg to save her father locked in the Fortress of Peter and Paul after trying to stop the Russian Civil War. When the leader of the northern alliance fighting realizes the war is lost as the southern army from Moscow approaches the outskirts of St. Petersburg, he initiates a countdown on a Soviet era suitcase nuclear weapon, then commits suicide, leaving Natalya to recall her training at Koslov, the secret school she had gone to as a teenager before being slipped into the United States, to disarm the bomb before it destroys St. Petersburg.
- Natalya, Kahlia and her father’s escape from St. Petersburg while there is still fighting going on between the Russian 6th and 20th Armies, and dangerous flight ahead of a snow storm into Zurich from Tallinn in Latvia to reach the meeting in Arosa where the future of the Phoenix Trust and Natalya and Michael’s control is being decided
- Final attempt to stop Natalya getting her father to the meeting so he can vote his shares is avoided by Kim’s planning, they use Snow Cats to reach the hotel through a blinding snowstorm after Michelle stops the lifts early to thwart Pyotr reaching the meeting in time. A final gunfight between Michelle and Natalya to settle, once and for all, after many assassination attempts, who will remain alive.
- Book 3: Phoenix Rising
- Beth is recaptured in Singapore when she tries to visit, against Kim’s orders, the brothel where she had been held. She is shipped to a Morocco to join twelve over women, sold by the brothel owner to pay off his debts to the Hong Kong tongs, as the first inmates in a secret harem deep in the hidden valleys in the High Atlas mountains.
- Kahlia learns where Beth is being held on a working visit with her client to a man who is trying to sell his properties, she helps Kim and Natalya develop a plan for freeing Beth and the others so that all the girls and women kidnapped as part of the plot are freed.
- Escape from the harem and dangerous climb to freedom for Beth and the others with Kim, Kahlia and Natalya opposed by more than 30 armed men loyal to the hereditary ruler of the village.
- While Kim, Kahlia and Natalya are in Morocco to save Beth and the others, Michael and Alexandra, Natalya’s friend and another Russian woman, are kidnapped while at the Washington Correspondents Dinner by the Roche Brothers in an attempt to disrupt the planned transfer of ownership and as revenge for Michael’s take-over of their right wing television network the result of their selling shares during the October panic. Michael and Alexandra are taken to a guarded estate on West Caicos as a storm approaches in the form of a hurricane.
- Natalya and Kim leave Kahlia to return to help Sultan Abbas, the Iman who she is advising as part of her public relations business to prepare for his Kaaba speech the next week.
- Natalya and Kim learn that Michael and Alexandra are missing and track down Michael’s location to a hidden retreat owned by the One Hundred Club on West Caicos. Flying there, their aircraft loses an engine to low oil pressure, leaving them stranded in the islands as a tropical depression turns into a major Atlantic storm. Natalya must find a way to free Michael from the West Caicos estate, and make the trip of over 1200 nautical miles in a stormy ocean in order to reach their lawyers in time to set in motion the take-over of corporate boards and managements by Friday, less than six days.
- They charter Hanna’s ship and once freeing her husband, they sail the 1200 miles in the five days to reach lower Manhattan, but now must face a new threat as the One Hundred Club has hired two men to try to stop the Ross’s from making it into the lawyer’s offices at 23 Wall Street and stopping the take-over or delaying the legal strategy.
- After the CIA intercepts one of the assassins hired before he can act, it is left to Natalya to stop the second in the lobby of the law firm.
- Waiting for them in the lawyers offices is Helmut Gaffner, one of the members of the Society who sees the Plan to alter the way business has operated as a danger to his company and to the firms of the other members of the Society and takes it into his own hands to kill the Ross’s by blowing himself up. Before the bomb can go off, Kim, Natalya and Michael manage to blow open a window and throw it out. Gaffner follows the bomb jumping to his death.
- Kahlia and Sultan Abbas are in Mecca before his speech before nearly a million in the Masjid al-Haram, the mosque built to enclose the Kaaba. Abbas with his message of pan-Islamic unity and peace is the target of multiple groups dedicated to stopping his message. As the Iman prays, he looks up and says he sees death, Kahlia asks if it’s their death, and he offers that he can’t tell. She tears up his prepared speech and asks him to simply speak from the heart as if he is merely the messenger of Allah. While he is speaking, Kahlia noticed a red dot on his body, throws herself against him, taking the shot, as a bomb explodes below the balcony where he has been speaking.
- The Morris Plan for Renewing Capitalism
- Michael and Peter Morris, Simon Rogers Professor of Economics at Harvard, and the Senior Partner in The Analytical Management Company, craft a plan for the renewal of modern capitalism by reorganizing companies into clusters and clusters into competing groups of similar companies. Incentives for senior managers are shared across clusters and management is shared between worker representatives and managers. With the control of Boards lodged in a global trust dedicated to solving the pressing problems of world, profits, while important to company stability, are less important than growth and cooperation. . Global business is reorganized into Corporate Councils and regional clusters working towards goals of great importance to the long term social, environmental and economic stability of the world economy. .
- In the post-script to the novel the clash between the private sector Corporate Councils and the national governments devolves at times into open warfare, but eventually a new form of world government emerges as scientific progress pushes out the frontiers to a point where the human race can finally find a way to both live on the earth and also seek out new horizons in the stars.
Strong characters and a fast read but current as of next year's economic outlook...
Why this story is compelling in novel form and could also be turned easily into a compelling three season television series…
Economic Apocalypse can be an apt description of the post-pandemic economy. The earliest version of this story of economic disaster was written long before our current period of malaise and mass unemployment. On the 50th Anniversary of Milton Friedman’s essay on capitalism where shareholders value outweighed workers or community importance for private companies, capitalism is under siege for its willingness to let others pay social, environmental, and economic costs for its failures. But a good story needs a good set of characters and a series of events that keep the reader or viewer wondering what comes next. So what makes this a good story?
Economic Apocalypse can be an apt description of the post-pandemic economy. The earliest version of this story of economic disaster was written long before our current period of malaise and mass unemployment. On the 50th Anniversary of Milton Friedman’s essay on capitalism where shareholders value outweighed workers or community importance for private companies, capitalism is under siege for its willingness to let others pay social, environmental, and economic costs for its failures. But a good story needs a good set of characters and a series of events that keep the reader or viewer wondering what comes next. So what makes this a good story?
- Timeliness – the events of the last nine months and the four long years of the Trump Presidency with its careening economic and political policies are included in the narrative and story, but in the first version of the Phoenix Year published in 2014 and in earlier versions not in print, another version of Donald Trump was part of the narrative as a flamboyant, self-promoting, real estate developer from New York who insisted on putting his name and ego on every property he owned. In the story he is set up, convicted of a murder of his wife and daughter who are trafficked to brothels in Asia for safe keeping and his real estate empire is leveraged to the hilt by his lawyer so that when the crisis of confidence comes in 2020, it contributes to the economic collapse of the commercial real estate market.
- Critical male characters help explain the economic and political dynamics of the pandemic & post-pandemic era:
- Michael Ross –ex-Harvard Professor, reluctant, grown-up in the room, economic advisor to President King (Trump), asked by ex-President Teddy Anderson to accept the President’s offer of the job mid-way through King’s term for the good of the country and the world. Now, at the end of King’s Presidency, Ross meets and falls in love with a Russian government operative of questionable background at a meeting in France, spends a week with her against the wishes of the US government, renews friendship with his old friend, Heinrich von Kleise, a Swiss billionaire and philanthropist, and fails to see that Natalya is frightened of the greater consequence for her of returning to Russia in the midst of a government change-over. During their visit to Von Kleise’s Kandersteg home, Michael meets with two old friends, Walter and Katherine Holtz, liberal activists committed to solving problems of global poverty through radical means. After the Holtz’s leave, Von Kleise questions his old friend about why he has agreed to work for someone as dangerous as President King. He reminds Ross too that at one time he was as radical in his thinking about what needed to be done to solve global problems as Walter or Katherine are now. He reminds Ross of Ross’s one time belief that the only sure path to a better future was to change the economic paradigm that makes free markets and competition at the heart of business organization and replace it with a cooperative model of organization more suited to solving problems of poverty and climate change. Despite the lofty themes of the post-pandemic future of rich and poor alike, dealing with failing financial markets, faulty economic policies of governments, and the problems of managerial capitalism in today’s interconnected world, the novel explores the human relationship evolving between Michael and Natalya. It is the emotional heart of the story. He let her go back to Russia, realizing too late, after she passed through the gate at the airport at the end of their week together in Switzerland, that their affairs was something more and not easily forgotten. When she returns to him, sent back by her father to save her life and give her the future she was meant to have, Ross’s emotional insecurity about who she really is or if she even wants to be with him, makes their relationship more a partnership than a love affair. Natalya risks everything to rescue him from Von Kleise’s mountain top house, and even after they marry and begin the journey to try to clean up the mess made by Von Kleise and the others, Michael is uncertain that Natalya loves him as he loves her, passionately and completely. Over the next two novels, their relationship changes from one of partners to something more permanent, if not passion, at least love and trust.
- Heinrich von Kleise – Swiss multi-billionaire, industrialist, philanthropist, and founder of the Society of the Phoenix, intent on renewing capitalism by weakening the links between stock value and corporate decisions and create an alternative economic paradigm that depends upon corporate cooperation to insure strong growth and stability for workers and communities. He, and his closest friends, form a secret society to manipulate investor psychology in order to drive share values down to depression era levels while driving up the price of gold and other precious metal derivatives. He enlists three talented women with questionable pasts to serve his needs, sexual and professional, to develop a plan to set up a series of events for a single late October weekend to panic share markets and drive down through coordinated selling and programmed trading stock values while driving up the price of gold to new highs. As part of this plan children and wives of business executives and government officials are kidnapped and held as trafficked victims in Asian brothels exchanged for insider information fed to selected investors, while at the same time risk reduction software used by most institutional investors to limit losses is gamed to go haywire as negative signals are laid one on top of another. While the goal of changing capitalism by removing the pure profit motive and replacing it with one more attuned to private company social responsibilities for the environment, workers, and communities, they use immoral means to attain their goals. When he dies at the end of Book 1, his heirs, Michael Ross and the granddaughter he has only met once before, Natalya Avramowitz, are forced to fight for control of the fortune against some of the other members of the Society, without a plan for how to make that shining city on a hill a reality. With the world economy in free fall from the double blow of pandemic and financial disaster, Von Kleise’s plan for a new world order rising out of the embers of the old looks far from certain.
- Teddy Anderson – Ex-President of the United States, husband of the newly elected President, Kirsten Anderson, committed internationalist, understands that without a miracle, the collapsing US and world economies will lead to potentially billions of deaths and an economic apocalypse. Two years earlier he’d convinced Michael Ross, a Harvard economist who had written a book questioning the idea of globalization and the damage it had done to many American companies because it was not balanced and fair, to accept the offer from the Republican President King to help make his international trade and economic policy successful. When he discovers the secret truth about Phoenix after the election and Michael and his new wife, Natalya’s involvement, he convinces his wife to invite them to the Inauguration setting off the chain of events of Book 2 and 3 in the series as he tries to get Michael to finish the plan so as to restart hiring and investing, to save the global economy from the downward spiral it is on as a result of the market collapse and the private sector response to that disaster.
- Pyotr Avramowitz –A survivor, known as “The Professor” by his ex-students who now fill the Russian government at the highest levels, and a secret member of the Society of the Phoenix, he is critical to the success of the plan. Russia under President Pyorsky (Putin) is weak and suffering under a virus not under control and the long term effects of the sanctions levied on the country as a result of his adventurism – election interference and annexation of territory. With the price of petroleum at new lows, the Professor suggests that the gold be secretly sold in return for consumer goods and industrial inputs for military and civilian manufacturing companies. When Natalya comes back from her week with Michael, the Pyorsky has left secretly, turning over the government to his Vice President, an arch conservative, the Security service confirm their suspicion as an American agent, and when she finds the link between the missing gold and the supply of high end consumer products to elites, he is forced to act to get her out of Russia and safe. Once the markets crash, the second part of his plan begins with the mass movement of people in Moscow and the Duma declaring the transfer of government to the conservatives on Pyorsky’s leaving illegal. This starts a civil war fought along the 700 kilometer road linking Moscow to St. Petersburg. With the war between the Moscow garrison and the St. Petersburg garrison becoming hot, conditions in Moscow and St. Petersburg are dire, the other members of the Russian Federation split with the central government at war with itself, Pyotr travels to St. Petersburg to try to stop the Civil War only to end up a prisoner. When it becomes clear to Natalya that without her father’s votes and physical presence at the meeting to confirm their leadership of the Trust, she is forced to travel to war torn and besieged St. Petersburg in the middle of the Civil War to free Pyotr and take him to the meeting at the top of the mountain in Arosa to stop the dissolution of the Phoenix Trust.
- Johnathan and Joshua Roche – Their father left them a small, Midwestern, agri-chemical company that they built into a major player in the energy and chemical industries, but their political views shifted to the right as they watched the Federal government take control of more area of the public sphere. To counter this they found a number of right of center institutes and they buy control, from a British publishing company of a cable news company, World Network News, WNN, and orient its coverage to their own libertarian and Republican beliefs. President King believes that WNN is his public relations arm even as the Roche Brothers are not certain they like or want him in charge, but they do like the control of a large following of right of center older Americans. WNN is publically listed and the Roche share is just over 50% before the market collapse. In the turmoil, their ownership share drops below full control. At the start of the third book they realize that they have lost control of WNN and the new owners have decided to use WNN for a different purpose, one more closely aligned to the left of center point of view. The Roche’s push the One Hundred Club to act and by the end of the third novel they are implicated in attempted murder and kidnapping.
- Strong female major characters are complex human beings and are at the heart of the story for they, unlike the men, combine intelligence with skills. It is the women who take the greatest risks with their lives.
- Natalya Avramowitz—Born in New York to an unwed mother and Russian diplomat, raised in Soviet Russia, trained as a sleeper agent in a special school for well connected children of government officials, Koslov, in the waning days of the Soviet Union, sent to the United States by her father to live with his emigre Jewish brothers family, teenage years in Washington, D.C., Harvard College and MBA, Goldman executive, and now Russian government advisor on economics and trade, meets Michael Ross, ex-Harvard Professor, reluctant economic advisor at the end of the Trump (King) Presidency, at a meeting to discuss a secret plot, code named Phoenix, to disrupt financial and equity markets in Annecy, France in early summer. Not knowing who she really is, who her family is, finds himself drawn to Natalya almost by an invisible force. Natalya’s own thinking is conflicted—kompromat or love. She decides to find out the truth about their relationship, impulsively asks him to spend the next week with her in Switzerland traveling through the Alps. After she saves his life their first night together, meets her father’s old friend, Heinrich von Kleise and a woman who seems to recoil from her on just hearing her name, Katherine Holtz, Von Kleise’s daughter, she finds out the truth that Katherine Holtz is the mother she never knew. On her return to a Russia, suspicions about her true allegiances – to Russia of her birth or America of her later years – are confirmed when she disobeys orders and follows the trail of bread crumbs discovering the secret sale of Russian gold reserves to a Western consortium of buyers in return for consumer and capital goods to fill shops and keep factories working. Placed in prison and sent to a re-education camp, Natalya for the first time in her life is scared and nearly broken by the Russian system. After her father manages to free her from the camp, and she is sent to America to stay with the Michael Ross, the American economist who she barely knows, her father explains some of the hidden secrets of her birth including that she was born in New York to a woman he met while working at the UN who she later confirms is Katherine Holtz, Von Kleise’s daughter and thus she is his Granddaughter. Suddenly she understands more about her life. As all the missing pieces of the Phoenix plot come into better view, she recognizes that Michael is in grave danger as the date of the attack approaches. When he goes missing on a trip to Switzerland to meet with Von Kleise on the 50th anniversary of his graduation from an elite private school, she is forced to act and climb the mountain where she believes he is being held to stop him from advising President King how to counter the damage by selling the American stocks of gold and buying into the falling market. Natalya’s story is one of progress from uncaring, coldly analytical human, trained to kill if need be, fearful of attachment to any one person, uncertain of who she is, or even what country she should be loyal to, into a complete woman willing to bring a new life into a world with a man who she finally understands she loves. Natalya’s is the greater story arc of the novels as she saves Michael’s life multiple times all the while trying to understand if this is for love or just duty. She becomes the moral force for uncovering the truth and for rectifying the wrongs done by the Society, by the man she learns is really her grandfather only at the end of the first novel. By the end of the third novel, she understands that what she saw as obligation to Michael, something that began as a coldly plotted attempt at kompromat, was something more, attraction, need, obligation to finding the truth about the Phoenix plot, might also be love. Ross was more than just her friend, lover, partner, but also the other half of her soul. Natalya is the survivor, protector, and the beating heart of all three novels.
- Kim Donovan – Born during the last days of the Fall of Saigon of a Vietnamese mother and an American diplomat father, left behind when the last copter evacuated Americans from the embers of Saigon, finds her way to Thailand with her French-Vietnamese mother. There, after her mother’s death, she is left to fend on the streets of Bangkok, becoming an inmate in a Thai brothel until one day she learns that her father is now living in Bangkok as CIA Station Chief. Reunited with her father as a world-wise 15 year old, and after an Ivy League education, Kim follows her father’s and grandfather’s footsteps into the CIA. Tasked to understand why there are so many missing women rumored to be in Asian brothels and link them to the kidnapped trophy wives and relatives of American, European and Asian business executives, as well as high government officials, Kim follows the trail of breadcrumbs until she reaches a high end sexual brothel outside of Bangkok, Eden, run by her the man who once owned her services in his own brothel twenty years before. Working in Eden she meets Lilly Masters, the wife of a framed for murder New York real estate investor and promoter, Ben Masters, whose properties are now at risk of financial collapse. When the Agency frees Masters secretly from prison, he finds his way to Asia to find his wife and clear his name. When Ben Masters finds Lilly in Eden, Kim is forced to act, helping Ben and Lilly to escape from Eden. Later, in Geneva, where Ben is recovering from the gunshot wound, Lilly goes missing, kidnapped by Von Kleise to avoid her sudden appearance upsetting the Society’s carefully worked out plans for late October and along with her daughter Beth, held by the guards on the high plateau just below Von Kleise’s mountain top retreat, Kim and Ben trace her disappearance to Kandersteg and Von Kleise. Along with Ben Masters, she climbs the Bluemlisalpenhorn in the middle of a late October snowstorm to find Lilly and the truth about the Phoenix plot. Kim in the following books works for Michael and Natalya thwarting the numerous attempts to kill them to gain control of the Phoenix Trust, but she must also serve her government master in Langley.
- Kahlia Hamadi –Brought to America as a child, raised in poverty in New Mexico, helped by an American couple to have a normal near middle class life until her Moroccan family intervenes breaking the link and sending her life reeling as she struggles to get an education without support. When that fails, she goes to New York to pursue a life as an actress, but finds there is more call for her other talents. A chance meeting with an FBI agent and her command of Arabic offers a marriage of convenience as Kahlia and the FBI build a professional relationship and she recruits other smart, Arabic speaking girls working to pay for their East Coast educations, into the service of the Bureau. When that blows up on her, she disappears only to reemerge working with Kim and the Agency to start a public relations and advertising company based in North Africa as a cover for gathering intelligence by focusing on selling to women in the region. Kahlia becomes critically important when she is hired to help an Iman, Sultan Abbas, build his following and his message of hope and peace and the renewal of faith to the people of the region. Kahlia’s arc in the story starts in the second novel when her dual life of running a successful business and also serving her masters in Langley takes on a greater importance once it becomes clear that the best hope of reducing the threat of terrorism lies in this strange, almost mystical Islamic internet and cable television preacher and that Kahlia is the key to helping him find his message.
- Other characters add to the story:
- Lilly and Beth Masters kidnapped from their New York life as fodder of the tabloids about their affairs and relationship to their brash, Real Estate developer husband, Ben Masters, their story arc if complex running from high end Asian brothels to imprisonment, prior to the collapse of the market, at the top of a Swiss mountain peak. By the second and third novels, their story changes from one of victims to humans trying to rebuild, better, their lives. Lilly Masters realizes that the life she and Ben led in New York as they clawed their way to the top of the New York society pecking order and as fodder for tabloids with their escapades and affairs, was totally fake. She believes the degrading time in an Asian brothel was punishment for her past hubris and works to rebuild her life; her daughter, Beth struggles to recover. When Beth disobeys Kim’s orders and foolishly gets herself caught back up in another sex trafficking web, it is left to Kahlia, Kim and Natalya to find her and free her, allowing her to rebuild her damaged life better by helping other victims of sex trafficking to recover and rebuild their lives.
- Ben Masters, major real estate developer from New York, successful at promoting brand, ego driven, he places his name on everything from buildings to golf courses, is framed for the murder of his wife and daughter as part of the Society plan to over leverage his real estate empire. Freed by the Agency to try to disrupt the plan, he goes to Thailand to try to find his wife and daughter. Once skilled at mountain climbing from his youth, he and Kim climb to the top of the mountain to find his wife, he kills Von Kleise in a rage before Natalya, to save Michael, kills him.
- Kirsten Anderson, the first female President of the United States, former Senator, cabinet officer, and the wife of an ex-President, Teddy Anderson. She has the unenviable task of showing that she is in charge and that it is not her husband who is pulling the strings. Forced by the collapsing economy she inherits on winning the 2020 election, to agree with Teddy that only by allowing the Ross’s, Michael and Natalya, to finish the plan that the Society started. Only if they can gain full control rapidly and force companies to hire and invest can the world economy recover, Kirsten becomes a reluctant partner overlooking the potential illegality of allowing thus massive business combinations and collusion.
- President King, a rival to Ben Masters in the New York real estate development market, he runs for President to try to rebuild his damaged brand identity after multiple business failures and bankruptcies. Never expected to win and lacking insights or the capacity to deal with the problems faced by the President, retreats into watching television news and leaving the running of the country to others. His failure and lack of attention to detail comes to a head when the pandemic strikes in February. Unable to come to grips with the fact that his robust economy he inherited from his predecessor has come to an end, he does everything in his power to ignore the danger to himself, his government, and the economy from the virus. An epic failure, the wrong man for the job, the Society of the Phoenix uses his hubris and ignorance to advantage so that the damage to the US economy and the world damage is made worse by his being in power.
- Michelle Rochard, one of the three young women that served as Heinrich von Kleise’s mistresses and also key players in developing the plot to collapse the market, a French social scientist who developed the programs to measure the impact of social events on share prices, chooses to fight against Von Kleise’s dying wish to pass the control to his Granddaughter Natalya and his friend, Michael Ross. Escaping after Von Kleise’s death at the hands of Ben Masters, she convinces one of the members of the Society to finance an attempt to stop the Ross’s by assassination and sabotage thus breaking up the compact and distributing the shares thus destroying the Plan for the recovery and the rebuilding of capitalism using a new model.
- Hanna Kata Deutsch was the youngest solo sailor to circumnavigate the world fifteen years before, now in her late twenties, broke, and living on her sailboat waiting out a storm in Turks and Caicos, she’s asked by Natalya and Kim to get them to New York in less than 5 days as a late October hurricane travels up the East coast of the United States. She helps with the rescue of Michael from Casa de Republica on West Caicos and with Kim, Natalya, Michael and one other young woman, Natalya’s look-alike friend, Alexandra Petrova, they sail in the teeth of the storm to reach lower Manhattan in time for Michael and Natalya to start the process of transferring ownership of global companies.
- Katherine and Walter Holtz old friends from Michael’s Geneva days, they remain active in the movement for justice for the poor countries of the world by founding a Fund to even out commodity prices and fund development projects in the poorest countries. After the debt crisis of 2008, they develop a plan for uniting the largest debtor countries in a compact to force changes in terms and huge write-offs by banks and governments of the sovereign and private debt accumulated. Unwittingly, they time their ultimatum for the same weekend of the Society’s plan helping to send markets into terminal collapse. When Natalya shows up at her father’s house with their old friend, Michael, Katherine realizes that Von Kleise knows the truth, that Natalya is her daughter by Pyotr Avramowitz that she abandoned as an infant, and she fears he will change his will to make Natalya his sole heir. She even sends her associate, Carolos Montoya, to Washington to try to kill Natalya who fights him off on the Billy Goat trail along the rocky shores of the Potomac River just below the Great Falls of the Potomac.
By an author who knows how the global economy works and why it needs help. |
About the Author
Dr. David L Blond is a practicing economist with an international following. For the past fifty years since getting his Ph.D. from NYU he has been at the forefront of macro and microeconomic model development and forecasting for the world economy. After receiving his Doctorate in 1973, he worked for almost two years for Business International (the model for The One Hundred Club) a private consulting company that provided advice to the largest multinationals in the United States, Europe and Asia on a confidential basis. He next went to work for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva where he was involved in global economic policy and also model development. Leaving UNCTAD, he sent the next seven years at the Pentagon as the Senior, and for much of the time, only economist in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Initiatives that were started during that period continue today in the form of detailed models for measuring DoD’s contribution to the US economy. . For his work at the Pentagon he was awarded the Department’s second highest civilian award. On leaving the Pentagon midway through the Reagan administration, he had a distinguished career at a number of private economic consulting firms before starting his own company, QuERI-International to maintain and develop the QuERI Integrated World Model, one of the most complete models of the world economy from any source – public or private. Over his long career he has known many of the giants from the early days of economic forecasting and modeling including Otto Eckstein, Larry Klein, Wassily Leontief, and Alan Greenspan. The economic story that is woven into the Trilogy is based on facts and forecasts from one of the world’s best respected modelers and forecasters. While Dr. Blond finds economic analysis useful and interesting, he also has been writing fiction from when he first learned to type in the 6th grade. All forecasts are stories, told with numbers and graphs. Like fiction, we can’t really know the future, but we can make assumptions about how people, governments, and even entire civilizations will react to events. The Phoenix Trilogy was written for a greater purpose – offering one potential path through the minefield of problems the world now faces from recovery from the virus to stopping the wholesale destruction caused by global temperature change. |