Q 6

PLAYBOY: Who are the elves and why are they a source of derision?

Louis Rukeyser: "The elves" is a term that I invented to refer to technical market analysts. Those are the people in Wall Street who will take a squiggle on a chart, a wriggle on a graph, a little piece of witch's hair and a bit of eye of newt, put them all together in a steaming vat, and then purport to tell you where General Motors will close a week from next Thursday. There are those people who take that kind of thing very seriously and I guarantee that if you follow that index religiously and use it as the central guide to your own investing behavior, it will be right. Sometimes.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: Do you feel it's your duty to pester those staid brokers, bankers and economists who appear on your shows?

Louis Rukeyser: Yes; I try to needle the stuffy. With some people, whose reputations have exceeded their achievements, the one unforgivable thing to do is to cite their actual forecasting records. Really, there are only two categories of people in Wall Street: the ones who've been absolutely wrong about the market at times and the liars. And generally, the subject has been treated with altogether too much somberness, and that has often been a disguise for poor results. So I try to poke a little fun at those fellows. I'm there for the viewer, and if the fat cats don't like it, that's their headache.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: Do the fat cats scratch back?

Louis Rukeyser: Every time I mention the name of any political figure, we get angry mail. Some people suggest we ought to stay out of politics, and my response to them is that I will be happy to stay out of politics if the politicians will stay out of the economy.

However, I'm deeply grateful to our political leaders and economic leaders, who provide me each week with more raw material for comedy than an entire team of writers could provide. If you had to invent those fellows, it would be hard work.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: Aren't you glad you didn't have to invent Joseph Granville?

Louis Rukeyser: He is just the latest in a long line of people who claim to be able to call short-term stock-market movements. By now, it should be evident that the market has stubbornly and repeatedly refused to honor his forecasts. Of course, his personality is refreshingly flamboyant in an industry thought to be rather drab. Without the merchants of doom and gloom, I would certainly have a lot fewer people of whom to make fun. But I find them diverting in the same way I find a horror movie diverting. That's a great way for a person with no particular expertise to make a living. And when people hear that kind of prediction, they think they're getting the inside story. I, on the other hand, do think that we'll muddle through.

I'm not by nature a sadistic person, but I would like to make a cruel suggestion: Ignore Joseph Granville.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: People are obsessed with financial matters--in the same way they are obsessed by sex. Do you see any relation between the two?

Louis Rukeyser: Sex and money are the two chief interests of the average person. Money is sexy. We saw that for generations in the mating habits of gorgeous women who selected men who were old, fat and ugly but who had that intensely erotic quality--wealth. In recent years, as women have discovered the pleasures of collecting a few bucks for themselves, we have seen both sides of the erotic spectrum extend into the financial sphere. And, incidentally, I find that women are better at this than men. One of the biggest myths in the financial business is that it's basically a male profession and that women should dutifully take advice from the highly experienced male professionals. The reality is quite different. Those women who have taken investment seriously have tended, on average, to do better at it than the average man.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: Do you have groupies?

Louis Rukeyser: Yes; but they all seem to be over 80 and living on fixed incomes.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: What are your favorite turn-ons?

Louis Rukeyser: My wife and daughters and a capital gain. I also get secret salacious satisfactions out of good food and wines. In the early days of Wall Street Week, one of the first signs that we were attracting a substantial audience was when we passed the Julia Child show in numbers of viewers. And a television columnist, on the theory that everyone's a backbiter in this business, telephoned me and asked me what I thought about that achievement. And I said that I hadn't met Julia Child but admired her tremendously and if she were half as interested in money as I was in food, we would get along fine.