"Food bonds," I say when we have dispensed with both "Thank you for coming" and "I do hope your recent travails have not greatly affected you." I had not thought of my shark as a travail, so we do a little comedy about that, and then I get to the point, which is food bonds. "They’re the new CDOs. That’s where the batshit money is going right now." Deliberately casual to the point of crass, because this affords my new client the opportunity to rise above me on a moral level. It’s important that Nikolaos Megalos should feel morally superior, because he’s basically at school here and no one who wears a hat like that has been the junior partner in a master–student relationship for quite some time. But if I let my language get away from me a little and have to apologise, then the Patriarch can go home feeling that he has brought sanctity for a brief while into the life of a sinner, and that at the same time he has gleaned valuable knowledge and indeed concrete investment advice from this perilous conversation. These twin convictions will make him happy.