Debt Threat Trumps Veep’s Peeps

Say It No Mo’, Joe

Washington (Satire Bureau) February 18, 2010 – The office of American vice president has never been particularly fulfilling for its holder – but being second fiddle to a telegenic teleprompter Stradivarius has all but rendered the position obsolete.

There have been other vapid veeps of course – Dan Quayle, Walter Mondale, and Al Gore spring immediately to mind. As for lifting the Beltway benchwarmer’s role in the public’s consciousness, those yawners certainly did nothing much. But the current guy lately has done nothing … period!

Joe Biden, remember him? Since palavering a plethora of early administration gaffes, it was as if he was finally shown Cheney’s bunker, and when he wasn’t looking, the door was shut and locked from the outside.

To highlight the banality of the bland Biden’s bind, Satire Bureau was slipped the following account by a sometimes reliable White House source:

Oval Office … Bzzz.

Yes, what is it?

The Vice President wants to see you Mr. President.

The who?

No sir, that was the band that played at halftime of the Super Bowl.

No, no, I mean who wants to see me.

Joe Biden.

Biden, Biden .. Hmm, Joe … (then smacking his forehead) Oh, yes, sure, send him in.

One would have expected that things could only go downhill from there.

Things did.

Perhaps sensing that that the near total stranger seated across from him was swiftly becoming the Delaware derivation of the Dodo bird, the principal potentate of Pennsylvania Avenue evidently decided remedy the man’s batboy status. Thus, Mr. Obama tossed a seemingly important task to his number two, an apt expression since the VP soon stepped in the same.

“Yeah, it appears that Biden couldn’t wait to ‘get out there’,” scoffed free market economist Lacy Fair. “He was presumably told to talk up the stimulus bill on its first anniversary. Pure cheerleading.”

Next thing you know, there’s this: White House: Pace of Recovery Act Spending To pick Up trumpets the headline from CNN.

Well, now, that certainly sounds good. Nothing so ingratiates a giver to a recipient like the promise of free moolah. Never mind that the so-called stimulus funny money didn’t even exist until the President proposed it, Congress passed it, and a whole bunch of new Treasury bill and note debt was created and flooded into the market place to see if anyone was stupid enough to buy it.

“That’s right,” affirmed Dr. Fair. “The newly minted lucre is being called ‘money’ in the sense that it has real value. But, of course, nothing of value has preceded it – no labor, no production, no better mousetrap, nothing. It is only money because some sap is willing to exchange something of tangible worth, like a car, refrigerator, or even a Big Mac, for a piece of paper. And that works for a time until there is so much of the poof paper that nobody trusts it anymore. Think Germany after World War I or Zimbabwe as recently as, well, how about right now!”

Still, the Obama administration isn’t about to reverse the last 80 years or so of outright presidential fibbing about the economy. Hence, the wily West Wing wangler dispatched the almost forgotten man to deliver the “good news” that the manna spigot is to be turned a rotation or two in the ON direction.

“Many projects are just now getting underway, and will be creating jobs throughout 2010 and beyond,” dutifully gushed the Vice President (perhaps thinking “Boy, the boss sure will be proud of me.”)

But no sooner did Mr. Biden’s grin widen than the Chief flipped him like a Poseidon.

“President Obama will sign an executive order Thursday setting up a bipartisan fiscal commission to weigh proposals aimed at reining in the soaring federal debt,” effused virtually every news source in the land. Hence, just after Joe said mo’ dough flow is a go, “O” said whoa.

“Oops,” laughed Dr. Fair. “Evidently, someone pulled Obama’s other string regarding the totally-out-of-control projected $1.6 trillion red ink for fiscal 2010.”

It sure seems that way. All of a sudden, the spending of superfluous stimulus scratch needed to be trumped by a sanctimonious slathering of surreptitious self-restraint. And, thus, if the political winds had shifted so suddenly that Mr. Biden needed to be played for the fool, so be it.

“It’s all malarkey anyway, of course.” edified free marketer Fair. “By executive order, Obama picked Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, a previous chief-of-staff under Bill Clinton to head a panel of some sort. During Simpson’s tenure in the upper chamber, debt as a percent of GDP nearly doubled and Bowles has a background in the world’s most hated profession, investment banking.

“As far as really accomplishing anything, the President might as well have picked Homer Simpson and Camilla Parker Bowles!”

Foggy Bottom Breakdown

The Scott Heard Round The World

Boston and Washington (Satire Bureau) February 5, 2010 – The realm known for its purple mountains majesty has just recorded a rare double – two political messiahs within the span of one year!

Just about 365 days ago, President Barack Obama packed the Federal Capital, from DuPont Circle to Foggy Bottom, with boisterous, blandishing, blissful believers as he was sworn in. That was then – nowadays he is being sworn at!

Evidence of the latter spewed out of the northeast a couple weeks back when the second savior, newly elected Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown, snatched a Senate seat that had seemingly been warmed by the fannies of a certain Irish family ever since the Pilgrim’s landed at nearby Plymouth Rock.

Suddenly, the mountains weren’t the only purple symbols in the land, Democrats everywhere were turning from blue to that hue as well. The red-staters, meanwhile, were simply agog.

“Agog over dethroning a demagogue … if you will,” snickered Satire Bureau Washington reporter, George Towne.

That sounds about right. Like a modern-day Hannibal, the elephant party could at times trample through most of the 50 states in any given election, as was the case in 1972 and 1988. But for almost a half century there would be hardly even a pachydermal toe print in the Bay State, at least as far as Ted Kennedy’s upper house seat was concerned.

But, just like that – woosh, gone. Most pundits reckoned that the upstart Republican Mr. Brown is one man referendum on the failings of messiah numero uno. The first Deliverer not only didn’t come through on some of his campaign promises … he whiffed on darn near all of them. “Change” has taken place alright … things are much worse than before! Why it was enough to even disturb the fifty-year slumber of those Rip Van Winkles from Pittsfield to Provincetown.

Coincidently, therefore, the Hee-Haw party finds itself gripped by yet another state besides Massachusetts .. the state of shock! There is simply no time to sort out and attempt to fix all the blunders of the Party and its ham fisted poster boy. Just pick one and go with it.

“This is a giant wake-up call,” said Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic National Committee chairman. “We have to keep our focus on job creation. Everything we have to do is related to job creation.”

There you have it then; jobs. And by that, Mr. McAuliffe presumably means the real kind … that is, the private industry variety as opposed to non-and-counter-productive government jobs, even though the latter at the Federal level has just this week reached an all-time high of over 2.5 million bureaucrats.

It sounds so simple, but is it?

“The first job destruction culprits that are often cited,” offered the Bureau’s in-house free market economist Dr. G. D. Peay, “are the various free trade agreements enacted in the mid-nineties, mainly NAFTA and GATT. And they are fingered for good reason; U.S. manufacturing jobs have declined by around 33% since 1994 – that’s a third of them in just 16 years! Longer term, only 10% of American workers make things anymore; in 1951, one out of three men who you might pass on the street had dirt under his fingernails.”

Okay then – there’s a plan for Mr. McAuliffe: scrap the free trade fiascos, enact a tariff on imported goods making them more expensive to bring in.  Then, higher-paid, blue-collared Yanks can compete with the sweatshoppers in Guadalajara and Jiangsu province.

“Well, yeah,” interjected the economist, “that may be the answer over the long haul. But in the interim, wages won’t rise immediately but retail prices on practically everything will skyrocket for consumers after China and the others raise their wholesale prices to cover the tariff. Americans will scream bloody murder at their politicians.”

Ugh, he’s right. In a nation where the citizenry depends on “Always low prices,” just to make ends meet, we’d see that smiley face turn all too quickly into to a snarl. There’s just got to be another alternative.

If only there was a way to put more spendable dough back into the pockets of the populace so that folks could make do during the transition. Hmm, come to think of it, most workers toil for Uncle Sam and the various local taxing authorities for almost half a year before they get to keep, and spend, what they earn. To fill the Federal coffers, in addition to income taxes, the saps get nicked for every gallon of gas and every phone call just to name a few that hit almost everyone. The reach is so wide, however, that there’s even an extraction on the sale of outboard motors, plus fishing tackle boxes, bows, quivers, and arrows.

But in order to make a meaningful impact on the average Joe’s bottom line, a monster tax cut would be necessary; that means that billions in revenue would never make it to the grasp of the pernicious Potomac pecuniary profligates. Bridges to nowhere might have to be scrapped, wars curtailed, and bloated bureaucracies cut.

Bureaucracies cut? You mean like a huge chunk of that 2.5 million number heretofore referenced? And military reductions? Like perhaps a sizeable lump representing that portion of the 146,000 Lockheed-Martin employees who work on Defense contracts, which is likely two-thirds thereof? It also applies to Boeing, GE, General Dynamics, Dell Computer, MIT, Cal Tech, and hundreds of others that suckle at the Federal teat. What about all the state, county, and municipal apparatchiks who act as conduits for Federal kickbacks to their locales? How about tax accountants, tax lawyers, and Turbo Tax programmers?

The list boggles the mind. By some accounts, 35-40% of those who receive a paycheck in the land of spacious skies depend on having all or much of it lifted from their neighbors billfolds by way of a tax.

“Yup, that’s a huge part of the fix we are in,” sighed Dr. Peay. “Congress and the Fed have been so irresponsible for so long that the U.S. is trapped inside a gigantic Catch-22. The only way to create private manufacturing jobs is to ditch NAFTA and GATT and implement tariffs. But that means higher prices that consumers can’t stomach because their income is too moth-eaten by way of taxation. But if you cut taxes meaningfully you might have to throw millions of government and contractor paycheck addicts into the an unemployment pool wherein over 20% of the workforce is already drowning.”

There’s simply no way out. Even if taxes were cut and the above-mentioned payroll welfare recipients were permitted to stay on the Federal dole, the moolah to cover them would have to be poofed into existence by the Fed. That sleight of hand would fatten the already unrepayable Federal debt to even more preposterous levels, thus trashing the dollar further and eventually awakening the foreign sleeping giants to whom we owe the lucre.

Still, as bad as it all seems, perhaps the Massachusetts massacre is a sign of hope. Crowed Linda McMahon, Republican Connecticut Senate Candidate, “Scott Brown is only the beginning!”

Well, that’s encouraging. Does she mean that the party of Taft, Ike, and the Gipper might genuinely do something about the six months of above-referenced involuntary servitude demanded of the nation’s working stiffs?

“You mean something drastic like permitting them to actually keep more of what they earn through their blood, sweat, time, and labor?” asked a spokeswoman for the Republicans.

Yes, yes!

After a brief pause. “You must be joking!” she sniffed.

Panel Shoots Blanks At Blankfein

Goldman Sachs Only Doin’ What Comes Naturally

New York (Satire Bureau) January 18, 2009 – What’s a poor $5 million-bonused broker to do?

Such was essentially the response of Goldman Sach’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein to a close-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone Commission last week.

“That’s basically it,” smirked free market economist Lacy Fair, “except I might substitute ‘pony’ for ‘horse,’ since the whole affair was one big dog and pony show … no offense meant to the dog.”

Comprised of 10 “private citizens,” the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission summoned the heads of the biggest banks to a town that ought to know a thing or two about greed, graft, and gimcrackery; namely Washington D.C. The head of the committee is Phil Angelides, a former Treasurer of the rapidly-becoming-a-third-world-entity known as California. Mr. Angelides was appointed to the panel post by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi … enough said.

While his fellow Gekko’s also came in for some “tough” grilling, it was clear that Mr. Blankfein drew the most attention, especially from the Golden State grandstander.

“Yeah, Angelides tried to break Lloyd down,” observed Mr. Fair, “perhaps getting him to begin sobbing as he confessed that the bankers, and especially Goldman, had wrecked the country. Didn’t happen. But what would you have expected? Blankfein versus a tenderfoot like Phil was akin to George Foreman in the ring with Dr. Ruth.”

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Mr. Blankfein held his ground – Goldman Sachs didn’t sach and pillage; it merely took what the system gave. That was his rejoinder after Mr. Angelides tried to get the wily banker to admit that his firm had committed a cardinal sin. That is, with its own moolah, Goldman shorted (made a bet that an investment would decline in value) the very same mortgage related securities that it was pitching to its sap clients.

At first it appeared that the California callithumper had skillfully extracted such a stunning mea culpa from the Wall Street leviathan of the lucre. That’s because Mr. Blankfein used the term “improper” in one of  his replies and the mawkish, mediocre, mainstream media, ravenous as they were for a juicy story, took it – and reported it – as a stark admission of guilt.

Alas, the cagey capitalist was merely opining that “if” a broker had sold what he knew for sure was putrefying mackerel, such a duplicitous action would have been “improper.” But, even though a Goldman salesman may have suspected that the bundled mortgage securities that the firm was peddling would be reeking soon, it wasn’t his job to dissuade a determined and eager buyer. After all, the rating agencies had blessed the deals and every other firm on the Street was finding them as easy to sell as a harlot on a troop ship.

Indeed, one can only imagine what a conversation between a customer and a broker might have been like in the Pollyanna-ish mindset of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.

Phone rings at desk of Avron “Av” R. Rice

Goldman Sachs. Rice speaking.

Yo, Av. Claude here from the Oklahoma State Teachers Retirement Fund.

Yeah, Claude. What can I do ya for?

Need more yield, man. My counterparts in New Mexico and Colorado are loading up on those Collateralized Debt Obligation thingies backed by mortgages? Plus, there’s a guy from Merrill on line two and one from Morgan on three wanting to talk to me .. but you’re my main man, Av, so I called you first.

Oh, you mean the, er, “securities” that are rated Triple-A by Standard & Poor’s and are accompanied by meticulously worded prospectuses authored by the top law firms on Wall Street warning in bold letters about risk, thus protecting my butt from a successful lawsuit down the road – not to mention the house-in-the-Hampton’s-sized-commission and future bonus paid to me for moving the “product” off our books and onto yours? You mean those CDO’s?

Yup.

(Pause) Hmmm. On second thought, maybe you shouldn’t own these things, Claude. They are backed by debt to suckers who have no business owning three bedroom bungalows on cul-de-sacs in Stockton, Miami, and Vegas. And even though my sales manager just strolled by and slammed his cane down on my desk because my “volume” is down this month … I really can’t in good conscience stick you with a ticking time bomb.

“Yeah, like that was really going to happen!!!” howled Mr. Fair

In any case, everyone is jumping all over Mr. Blankfein and his industry regardless of the circumstances. But when one closely examines the facts, could it be that  the bankers are merely a cadre of all too convenient bogeymen? Sure, those same pecuniary parasites are greedy alright, there’s no disputing that. But, are they arch villains or simply patsies for the real culprits?

“The latter,” averred Mr. Fair. “If you leave a juicy steak plate on a footstool, and the dog eats it when you leave the room to answer the phone, is the dog now a criminal? Or, are you to blame for stupidly presenting an opportunity that is just too much for Fido to resist?”

He has a point. It wasn’t Goldman, after all, who came up with the ludicrous American Dream Down Payment Act in 2003. We reported on that poppycock here at the Bureau last Spring when we wrote: “It was George W. Bush and Congress that came together to pass a bill that would place not only a chicken in every pot but a chump on every lot. But, by then, the die was already cast. Alan Greenspan was slashing interest rates with a passion that made Freddie Kruger look like a milksop. Soon, just about everyone, it seemed, was living under a roof that was now governed by a Deed of Trust rather than a rental agreement. They were homeowners! Or so they thought. Never mind that many made no down payment. In fact, a good number took on a note that was actually adding principal to the mortgage amount … even before the moving van had departed the driveway!”

Moreover, it’s easy to see that the Wall Street crowd would have come in for some serious Washington tongue-lashing if they had in any way impeded the “American Dream” process. To be sure, so-called “homeowners” would have never made it past the welcome mat had not the bankers bought, packaged, and pedaled the vast quantities mortgage paper that the demented  D.C. do-gooders demanded.

“Exactly,” asserted the free marketer. “Let me see if I can sum this up for you with a rhyme.

“The bankers got the spiffy new car with fine leathers … but it’s Congress, the Fed, and the Pres who deserve the tar and the feathers!”

Terror In The Thighs

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

Washington and Philadelphia (Satire Bureau) January 8, 2010 – Brace yourselves, America, an imminent and even more ominous Code Orange may be coming.

The nation was already jittery over the non-stop media and government ruckus concerning that colorful term – only this time it is the Florida-grown variety of the “O” word that has folks the most concerned.

“Yes, we labored day and night in order to link the two,” declared military spokeswoman, Commander Anita Ruse. “There is no doubt in our minds that Code Orange dovetails perfectly with the citrus produce of the same name as it is pictured on a pair of Fruit of the Loom briefs.”

Yes, sure, now we see it .. the Nigerian/alQaeda/Yemenese underpants terrorist! The same dude who detonated a nearby duo of also-round-shaped anatomical reproductive units contained within that same said cotton testicular packaging product.

It all makes sense now.

But why has the military taken a role in this critical assignment as opposed the more logical choice; that is, Homeland Security, where surely one of its 225,000 bureaucrats could handle the workload?

“Well, it’s simple once you think about it,” explained Cmdr. Ruse. “Because it involves that certain brand of scrotum snuggers whose logo features oranges, it is obviously a Naval matter.”

Of course.

Now that that has been settled, it’s on to what to do about the increased threat to the nation’s security. Naturally, one option is to bomb the living pulp out of the country-almost-nobody-had-heard-of-before-this-incident. You know, the nation-state that evidently spawned the now falsetto-voiced terrorist.

We refer of course to Yemen, so-named in Arabic for the typical response to the question, “Is this a good place from which to launch fire-cracker terrorist attacks on other populations?” To which, the answer is, “Yeah, man”, a rejoinder that at some point long ago was morphed to the official name just mentioned.

Indeed, invasive action may come any day although skeptics question whether the ball ballistics brouhaha is worth yet another U.S. conflagration. After all, the private parts pariah actually boarded his flight to the U.S. in Amsterdam and was bound for, of all places, Detroit. That economically bombed-out destination is not exactly the jugular vein of American policy decision-making. But, in any case, what really rattles the current administration is the ease with which the jerryrigged, gonadal gangster eluded all the billions spent heretofore on airport metal-detectors, x-rays, wands, shoe trays, and other privacy invading probes.

There are even hoots and hollers for the head of Homeland Security. “She blew it!” raved an aide to Senator Joe Lieberman. “Neopolitan needs to step down,” the mouthpiece continued, evidently confusing Janet Napolitano,  the terrorism top dog, with the Senator’s favorite ice cream.

But speaking of dogs, the “top” kind or otherwise, the last thing the embattled Ms. Napolean, er, Napolitano and/or President Obama needed amidst the fruitless, Fruit-of the-Loom-fruitcake folderol was this headline from the NBC affiliate, WCAU, in Philadelphia: Philly TSA Dogs Fail Airport Training – Dogs couldn’t distinguish scents of explosive materials.

If that sounds bad, it is. “The dogs, which are typically used to detect drugs, bombs and other potential security threats, failed their recertification training,” the piece revealed further.

Upon hearing this news, one Democratic senator was unable to suppress a howl. “First it was that Nigerian’s boxer shorts and now it’s airport boxers!” barked California Senator Barbara Boxer, apparently not realizing that in the former instance the bloomers were actually briefs, and in the latter case, the curs were in fact German Shepherds.

Be that as it may, WCAU further reported that, “The affected dogs have been undergoing an intensive rehab training program since the failure …” Say what? Well, doggie rehab is just too tantalizing; the ever-intrepid Bureau felt compelled to dig a little deeper.

Fortunately, an unexpected assist to its efforts occurred when a parallel story on mutts recently hit the web: “Dogs as Smart as 2-year-old Kids,” disclosed livescience.com a few months back. It seems that a university in Canada had performed, among other things, a “Language Development Test,” on certain canines. Hence, the academics were able to determine that indeed peekapoos and terrible twos are roughly equal, smarts-wise; they both have a vocabulary of about 250 words.

Naturally, therefore, the Bureau enlisted the college’s services to see if its wonks could add perspective to the breach that has left the Quaker city quaking in its boots.

“We see the problem,” proclaimed Germaine Shepard, an associate researcher. “The dogs aren’t incompetent, they’re bored.”

She’s probably right. Incidences where one of the hounds actually discovered the scent of gun powder, nitroglycerin, or even fire crackers have been virtually nonexistent over the last eight years or so. Still, terrorism is terrorism and somebody, even if it is a critter, has to be held accountable. In this case, it’s man’s best friend. According to the TV station, “…several TSA security dogs serving at Philadelphia International Airport have been removed from active service due to issues with their training …”

Goodness, we can see the headline now: “Pink-tongued Pooch Panters Pitched Pink Slips.” How traumatic!

But wait! Perhaps there is a reprieve for the olefactorially challenged canines in the offing. As luck would have it, many bigger dogs are known to be notorious “crotch sniffers.” Because of the now heightened trauma over “Groin Explosive Nervousness In Terrorist Airport Locations”, or “GENITAL” in military/Homeland Security parlance, the timing couldn’t be more perfect!

“That’s right!” growled a spokesman for Ms. Neopolitan …Napoleon … whatever. “Here’s the new drill when you head to your gate: Empty pockets. Remove Shoes. Proceed through metal detector. Say Hellooooo to Rin Tin Tin.”

MounteBank, N.A.

“The Friendly Bank”

Member – FDIC

December 9, 2009

Dear Shareholders:

A lot has happened since I last wrote to you – most of it has been bad but some of it is okay news.

For one thing, your company’s share price has risen from single digits to about $14 since the stock market began its rally last Spring. I know, I know, that’s still not much solace for those of you who bought at the peak of $50 back in 2007. But, hey, being down only 70% is still better than taking a hit of 80% … in purely mathematical terms, that is. So even though you are still pretty close to being, you know, wiped out, at least you have taken a small step back from the abyss into which you were peering  a year ago.

Accordingly, many of you have e-mailed me asking if I think your company’s share price will ever get back to those lofty 2007 numbers. Sure, it’s theoretically possible – I guess – but to be honest with you, we in management are kind of stunned that it made it back to the teens.

After all, like most banks nowadays, we are loathe to lend (has a catchy ring, yes?) money to just about anyone. Sure, if you have a couple of producing oil wells as collateral you might get approved. But I don’t think King Saud will be cruising into one of our branches anytime soon.

Be that as it may, I would be remiss if I did not tell you that your company is catching some heat from the Federal Deposit Insurance Co. (FDIC) over our aforementioned reluctance to extend loans to just about any borrower, but especially to so-called “small businesses.”

You may have seen comments by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair in the press such as, ”Not many large institutions are doing a very good job of lending” and “I’m very worried (that) the larger institutions don’t seem like they’re stepping up to the plate providing credit. Because if they don’t do that, we’re all in the soup.”

Well, there it was. You may not have caught it, because even though you own stock in a bank, I wouldn’t expect you to know much in the way of insider, financial jargon. Nevertheless, what the Chairman expressed was the dreaded “DAMN” accusation (Double Agency Metaphor Nomenclature). That’s right; one sentence with two figures of speech contained therein: first the sports trope, “stepping up to the plate” … followed by a food similitude, “in the soup.”

I can assure you that we in management take the FDIC’s DAMN’s very seriously. Again, I don’t presume that you neophytes can comprehend the power that a centralized outfit like FDIC has over a financial institution. Sure, your company postures itself as a private sector business, seeing how we have shareholders and our shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange and whatnot. But, how many other private entities require the theoretical protection of a Federal agency for their very existence? I mean, can you picture a Federal Dry Cleaners Insurance Corporation? Or, a Federal Beauty Parlor Insurance Corporation? Or, perhaps a close cousin, FTDIC (for florists)?

Naturally, such a supposed safeguard comes with a price; the FDIC can flatten your company like a cockroach if it so chooses. Already this year, over 120 banks have been shuttered and the agency is more than $8 billion in the red as I write this missive. Even worse, it is reported that the roll of problem banks has been hiked from 416 to 552 … just in the last quarter!

Yes, I know what you are asking yourselves after reading that last stat: “Is the Friendly Bank one of the dirty 46 dozen?” The answer is “I don’t know,” but 552 banks is a huge number and I DAMN well can verify that hacking off Sheila Bair right now is not a very good idea!

So, that’s the quandary, or I don’t know, “soup,” if you will, wherein your company finds itself presently. We can either lend to folks who likely won’t be able to repay us, and consequently become insolvent the slow and sure old-fashioned way  – or reject them for the deadbeats that they are and thus have Sheila suddenly swoop down on us like a crazed condor. Believe me, we in management are earning every penny of the six-figure bonuses we intend to award ourselves this year as we agonize and waffle over this catch-22.

Perhaps our best hope is that the agency will simply become distracted. Indeed, it was some relief to see that even in the midst its padlock-affixing frenzy, the FDIC has found time to pander to the citizenry about other, more mundane matters. I am referring to a report entitled the FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households.

That latter category is intriguing to say the least. We have all heard of undernourished, underpriced, and even undersexed. But, underbanked? According to the report, this conglomeration includes “households who had a checking or savings account but relied on alternatives like money orders, check-cashing services, payday loans, or pawn shops.”

The study sadly goes on to say that the underbanked are forced to pay excessive fees for such “alternatives.” That’s too bad, I suppose, but I just want to assure you, our shareholders, that your company, while sympathetic, is not going to seek this type of customer because, frankly, they are unprofitable. They simply don’t leave enough money laying around in their accounts from which we can extract our own extortionate ATM, overdraft, teller, and debit card transaction fees, etc.

However, it may, in the end, be a moot point. No doubt your chairman, Wright Downs, put it best when he averred that he isn’t so much concerned about the underbanked … as he is about our bank going under!

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Sincerely,

Jerry Rigg, CEO

Back To Future For Consumers

Vanity For Vanities

New York (Satire Bureau) November 11, 2009 – Maybe we should just give up and join the parade.

This online digital rag has taken the position that things are still rotten in Obama-land, economically speaking. But it seems more and more that we have been short-sighted. After all, we have had the temerity to look at, you know, the facts. Such pesky realities have evidently obscured our vision of those “green shoots” of recovery that are supposedly peeking through the nation’s fiscal topsoil.

Thus, even though housing foreclosures continue to multiply, commercial real estate is merely waiting for the other shoe to drop, unemployment has reached around 20% (if measured realistically), and FDIC bank corpses now outnumber the pecuniary body bags required at the peak of the 1990’s S&L debacle – somehow we just don’t seem to get it.

Of course, one would expect rosy, optimistic cheerleading from the politicians. That’s because the initial goal in that venue is to get elected to an office in the criminal enterprise known as government – and the next objective is to stay there for as long as possible in order to rake in the tribute from the serfs. Hence, telling the truth is about as useful to a pol as Nair is to an armadillo.

But now we are seeing that others in the private sector are breaking out the pom poms as well.

“I believe the recovery is real, but it is gradual,” conjectured United Parcel Service’s CEO Scott Davis this week.

And this: “Calling it an ‘all-in wager’ on the U.S. economy, Warren Buffett is spending $34 billion to own a railroad that hauls stuff across the country.”

But, ignoring the hype for the moment, let’s take a look at what a rebound would entail for mega-shippers like UPS and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

First, be reminded that the US economy has for a long time been far more concerned with buying things than making them. That’s why most analysts reckon that the nation’s GDP is around 75% consumer-driven. Thus, even though UPS delivers some strictly business packages, such as machinery replacement parts and the like, it also delivers a bounty of iPods, $300 putters, self-twirling spaghetti forks and other life-sustaining rudiments to a narcissistic nation.

Ditto for Mr. Buffett’s new Lionel-like toy. Yes, there is coal and corn on those long freight trains (the ones that impede one’s progress to the mall when one’s SUV is halted temporarily at a railroad crossing!) but that’s just part of the haulage. One-third of the line’s revenue comes from what the company labels “consumer products transportation.” Put more succinctly, that means moving Asian imports eastward from Long Beach, Seattle, and other left coast ports so that the must-haves can eventually wind up on shelves at Toys-R-Us, Eddie Bauer, Saks, and Crate & Barrel.

Hence, the Omaha oracle’s big bet on the land of the free looks more like an expectation that America will retrogress to its place as not the home of the brave … but of the knaves. Same with the brown trucks hauler. For either of those shippers, a recovery in a 75% consumer-oriented economy means back to the days of illogically accelerating home prices so that “equity” can be extracted and spent … plus ever higher credit card splurging.

“Yeah, the ‘consumer’ has actually started to save again,” explained free market observer Lacy Fair. “He or she is getting his or her fiscal house in order after the non-stop shopping extravaganza earlier in the decade. Buffett and others are in effect saying, ‘Oh, no. We can’t have folks living within their means!’”

Indeed, it was the same Berkshire-Hathaway chairman who at one time is reported to have caustically opined that “There’s a sucker in every poker game. After 30 minutes in the game, if you haven’t figured out who it is … you’re it!”

Well, if his new railroad acquisition pays off big time because of a return to robust Asia-to-Peoria freightage, the saps at the table will be revealed all right – it’s the rest of us!

“That’s about it,” affirmed Mr. Fair. “The old saw, ‘you better be careful what you wish for’ is appropriate in any discussion of a ‘recovery.’ What we really need is even more savings, and thus capital formation, less debt, much less government, and a return the good sense of folks living prudently.”

But that won’t come easy. Like consumers, too many companies also got a dose of irrationally exuberant thinking. Many guessed that the false growth, fueled by Federal Reserve meddling, would last forever.

In that regard, perhaps even more telling than the aforementioned examples regarding UPS and Berkshire is the following news. It exposes a “party on” mindset by signaling that at least one corporate executive is loathe to put away the togas just yet.

“Lowe’s Inc, the second-largest U.S. home improvement chain, posted a 30 percent drop in quarterly profit as consumers put off big renovations while the U.S. housing market remained sluggish,” reports Reuters.

One might have expected that. After all, a new granite counter top or stainless fridge is a bit hard to justify for a laid-off Scottsdale or Las Vegas shelter dweller who is a couple hundred grand underwater versus what he paid for his current abode.

But it was the official corporate explanation of the retailer’s woes that stood out: “Probably not surprising,” a company press release divulged, “we continue to see the most pronounced sales weakness in larger-ticket, discretionary projects as consumers retrench and focus on necessities. In fact, based on consumer  research, we estimate our mix of discretionary sales, defined as non-essential purchases by consumers, declined from 45 percent in 2006 to approximately one-third of our sales at the end of 2008, as consumers became increasingly more cautious.”

To be sure, back in the glory years of 2004-2007, Lowe’s was erecting 150 or so new stores a year.  Consequently, it isn’t easy nowadays to cover the overhead associated with such giddy expansion, especially when sales of – what was it called? – discretionary purchases are dropping like a spatula to the bottom of a non-essential $2,200 D’Vontz Single-Basin Copper Undermount Kitchen Sink.

But what is truly unnerving is the fact that the nation’s 18^th largest retailer actually bemoans the fact that its customers aren’t further indenturing themselves into debt Hell any longer by purchasing larger-ticket and non-essential stuff with money that they don’t have. What’s wrong with you people!!? You need to upgrade that guest bathroom NOW with a $2,300 Magick Woods Toffee/Rose Helena Bath Vanity; how dare you just buy necessities!!?

So there you have it; this is the fix in which we find ourselves. A recovery can’t occur unless the consumer continues to ruin himself with debt and a recovery can’t be sustained if the consumer ruins himself with debt. Geeesh.

Meanwhile, back in Omaha, Satire Bureau reached a spokeswoman for Mr. Buffett’s conglomerate and related the view stated above. “ I sure hope you’re wrong,” responded the mouthpiece, insisting on anonymity.

Then reflecting on the home improvement angle to the story, she rued, “We sure as heck can’t return a $34 billion railroad like you can a weed eater at Lowe’s.”

Hirer Turns Firer

But The Recession is over …

Milwaukee (Satire Bureau) October 22, 2009 – As ironies go, this one was just too enticing to pass up.

But before we unveil the indubitably, idiosyncratic, incongruity, perhaps a bit of stage setting is in order.

To be sure, the stage itself appears to be but a banal, bounteous, blathering burlesque in its own right. That to which we refer to is epitomized by this recent reprehensible, reportorial, riffle from the Wall Street Journal: “Economists Say Recession Is Over – The survey includes 51 economists, 41 of whom say the recession is over and the recovery has begun.”

“Ah-oooga, ah-oooga, Dive! Dive!” mimicked Satire Bureau free market economist, Dr. G.D. Peay. “The nation better start heading for deep water quick if those boot lickers are pitching a rosy view of things.”

Hyperbole aside, the numbers are clearly on the laissez-faireist’s side. That’s because the same above-referenced, iconic Wall Street publication conducted a similar study a short two years ago. The wisdom then from the same batch of dismal science wonks? A whopping 62% professed that America would have NO recession at all!

So there you have it – it’s indeed more than a little cockamamie that the seers who are supposed to have the best handle on the pecuniary affairs of the nation are so ham-fisted at their jobs. But an even bigger irony is that mainstream disseminators of such information, like the Journal (not to mention the vast swaths of the populace who read and swallow the hokum) continue to turn to the same myopic monetary maladroits for guidance.

“Yeah, it’s like the ironies of seeing a fire station burn down or a police precinct robbed in broad daylight. Neither of those would exactly inspire confidence in the blaze fighters nor the cops assigned to those venues. Yet we seek out the same incompetents whose forecasting prompted us to invest and act unwisely, thus torching or burglarizing our bank accounts.”

As bad as his observations sound, what he is describing may actually be the best case scenario. After all, it is one thing if the pathetic pecuniary prognosticators are simply blithering dolts – but it’s another thing altogether if they actually saw the dark clouds … and predicted sunshine anyway. In point of fact, the ominous signposts back in the fall of 2007 were certainly comprehensible enough. Other less-showcased voices, including Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente and, yes, even the Bureau, saw them and rang the alarm bells early – and loud.

“Exactly,” confirmed Dr. Peay. “And while I don’t know precisely the particular backgrounds of all of the anointed gurus that were surveyed, I do know that most of the go-to economists who get airtime or ink with the major news trucklers are paid in one way or another by either the banking, brokerage, real estate, or retail industries. Then there are others that get hired directly by government or indirectly for the same ends by some Washington think-tank, lobbying group, university, or Political Action Committee. Accordingly, these toadies become cheerleaders for whatever political party is holding sway in the country.”

But enough of that. We promised an even dicier irony and here it is. Oddly (ironically?) it is closely related to the hustle documented above.

“Manpower, Inc. Quarterly Loss Widens As Labor Markets Stay Weak” spills a headline from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week. “The Milwaukee-based global employment services company cited continued economic sluggishness … for a loss of $50.4 million … compared with a loss of $43.2 million …in the third quarter of 2008. Revenue fell 26% …” the related story revealed.

Then this amplification: “Expense control,” according to the company’s chief financial officer, Mike Van Handel, prevented the numbers from being worse.

“Humpf, he makes it sound like reusing paper clips and writing on both sides of a post-it notes is what he meant by that oily explanation,” smirked Dr. Peay. “when the big bang of cost savings comes from the ax, as it always does; staff was whacked by 20%, or get this, about 7,000 full-time positions!”

In reality, even though the employment behemoth touts itself as a company that “offers employers a range of services for the entire employment and business cycle,” most people think of it as a very short-term temp agency. That is, it’s a hookup where a dude can get quick minimum wage work for a day or so.

“Yup, I did it every so often when I was in college,” recalled Dr. Peay. “One time I got sent to a frozen orange juice warehouse to lift and rearrange fifty pound containers for eight hours. It was minus ten in there! Penguins would have rejected that gig.”

So, let’s see if we have this right. The worker placement outfit that is often the only option left for those individuals who have no other employment options announces that it is eliminating 20% of its own ranks. It’s sad for those affected – but if that isn’t ironic, we don’t know what is.

Well then, in light of the Manpower conundrum, how can “the recession is over and the recovery has begun” be believable … when the reality is that the very hirer of last resort is itself actually adding to unemployment? Isn’t that, er, somewhat of an irony, too?

“No, it’s not an irony as far as the so-called economists go,” huffed Dr. Peay. “Try pure baloney. We are trying to warn folks not to trust the sycophants because they and their sponsors want to reignite the consumer debt frenzy, discourage savings, reinflate the housing bubble, and trick people into buying into a false rally in stocks at the top.”

Meanwhile, back in Manpower’s hometown, where another rendered meat product – namely bratwurst – is a dietary staple, an analyst for a regional brokerage firm sees the “glass as being half full,” in spite of the drownsizing.

“Hey, look at the bright side,” cajoled Barry M. Deep of the Milwaukee branch of Slash & Burnham Securities. “They just created 7,000 new customers for their minimum wage temp offices!”

Chump Change We Can Believe In

Scraps For Saps

Washington (Satire Bureau) October 16, 2009 – America is as dumb as a post  – thank goodness!

Most civilized nations measure their progress and quality of life based on the educational proficiency of their respective citizenries. Such basic skills as math and language are paramount. Put simply, smart is better than stupid; it always has been that way, until lately.

Now from the land of the free and the home of the knaves we see evidence that a populace comprised of Forest Gump’s is coming in mighty handy for the ruling parties. It’s downright amazing what the dolts will swallow.

Like this from the AP: “President Barack Obama called on Congress Wednesday to approve $250 payments to more than 50 million seniors to make up for no increase in Social Security next year.”

Whoopie!

“Are there that many elderly idiots in the land?” asked free market economist Lacy Fair. “Can people not do the basic arithmetic? Come on, that 250 bucks works out to 68 cents a day. That won’t even buy you one Taco Bell Bean Burrito.”

That’s indisputable, but where then is the laughter, ridicule, and scorn from throughout the country? Are folks guffawing from Portland OR to Portland ME?  Near as one can tell … no. The prospective recipients of the crumbs seem to be grateful to have the dough slipped into their left pocket … even though it is a mere slice of what has just been pick-pocketed from their right one.

“That’s right,” confirmed Dr. Fair. “Social Security has announced that there will be no cost of living increase next year for those in the nation’s retirement Ponzi scheme because there is, according to the agency, no inflation. But, that’s only because the CPI is rigged to screw the recipients by using hedonic hocus-pocus and by excluding such optional items like FOOD and GAS!”

So, while the stuff that seniors need to survive is continuing to accelerate in price, the number crunchers in D.C. are conveniently ignoring that burden. But, since more and more oldsters are becoming eligible on the receiving end of the Ponzi disbursements, the benefit of shortchanging them via CPI meddling also has political consequences. Thus, the 68-cent-not-quite-a-bean-burrito band-aid is being trotted out to placate the mathematically deficient Gumps.

And indeed, it’s not a bad strategy as con games go. The odds appear to favor the Obama team swindlers; they ought to be able to pull the ruse off – especially after the following news piece appeared on the same day: “Discouraging – Math scores on the nation’s report card show fourth-graders making no progress since 2007. Only 34% of eighth-graders are deemed proficient at math … “

Perfect. That statistic suggests, by extension, that two-thirds of the country’s cognitive light bulbs aren’t shining from sea to shining sea. After all, most of the nation’s adults got processed earlier through the public school/dumbing-down system as well. And since they’re the same patsies who bought into “Change We Can Believe In” mantra (without questioning the grammatical defect contained therein), it’s easy to see how they continue to be tempting marks for the same old subterfuges, bait and switches, and outright frauds that got them into the ditch on the first place.

“What amazes me,” the free marketer went on, “is that people continue to bend over backwards for the new President, even though they continually find that they are actually bending over forwards – what with the Social Security switchereoo just mentioned, plus broken promises on the wars, so-called transparency of government, bailouts to Wall Street, nationalized health care, and the like – not to mention Hillary in the cabinet and Biden as VP.”

Goodness. If he’s right, then maybe the problem goes deeper than the inability to grasp essential reading, writing, and arithmetic. Could it be that we are such chumps because we no longer have a clue as to how a Constitutional Republic is supposed to work? Do we now believe that foxes in the hen house is the natural order of things? Has basic Civics 101 gone the way of phone booths, cassette tapes, and Polaroid cameras?

The answer appears to be yes. According to a study reported by station KWTV in Oklahoma City, only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States. The respondents were asked that question along with nine others taken from the Civics quiz given to candidates for U.S. citizenship. Ninety-two percent of the foreigners pass on their first try compared to, gasp, only three percent of the American-born Twitter, video game, and Facebook oriented teens.

“Yeah, we factored in that data before we came out with the $250 thing,” admitted an Obama administration insider on the condition of anonymity. “The nation’s high school kids are sort of a barometer for how far we think we can go. If they had known about George Washington, we might have raised the amount to $265. Andrew Jackson would have been, say, $275. If they had known who Millard Fillmore was, we wouldn’t have risked the gimmick at all.”

In any case, whatever the criteria employed to befool the masses, the prospect for further hoodwinking is virtually assured.

“Sure, that’s correct,” amplified the Obama staffer. “We figured that, if the seniors will have a senior moment and not grasp the preposterous triviality of the $250 payout pretense, then we can literally get away with anything.”

Such as?

“Well, sending 75,000 more of the children and grandchildren of those same seniors to get sniped at in Kabul and Fallujah seems like a layup at this point,” she gushed.

Not Enough Lifeboats

The Audacity Of Stupidity

Washington (Satire Bureau) October 8, 2009 – What’s a President to do?

Like his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama seems to have totally abandoned any semblance of sensibility when it comes to the American economy. There’s been TARP, TALF, Cash For Clunkers, infrastructure spending, and more. The tab for the “drinks are on me” solution to what ails the tavern of state has climbed to nearly $12 trillion through August of this year. That’s up almost $2 trillion from the drunken binge that that had already left the U.S. economy sprawled in the gutter last year.

“Whoa, I remember when the ‘mere’ $500 billion annual deficit from ’06 to ’07 was considered to be unconscionable and unsustainable,” suspired Satire Bureau economics editor, Dr G. D. Peay. “Now that very recent sum is beginning to look like chump change.”

And it’s only getting worse. If Mr. Obama’s health care plan gets passed, the annual bill for that keg party could be as high as $150 billion per year all by itself.

“It’s sort of like that Whack-a-Mole game where one attempts to clobber the critters’ noggins as they present themselves through various holes,” analogized Dr. Peay. “Just when the Obama folks think they’ve thumped one problem, several more pop up.”

He’s got that right. Just this week we read this from CNN, “Amid nervousness about states’ economies and a growing unemployment rate, the Obama administration is considering a series of measures aimed at putting many Americans back to work before the 2010 midterm elections.”

“Arghh, now it’s those darn states!” groused administration spokeswoman Helen A. Hand-Basquette. “To tell you the truth, places like North Dakota and Mississippi have been pretty low on our priority list – somewhere above global warming … but way below bringin’ the Olympics to Chicago.”

Nevertheless, a bevy of ideas is being tossed about – all of them, of course, involve burying the nation even deeper into debt Hades. Included are enhancing tax credit flexibility for small businesses (whatever that means), extending unemployment and health benefits and providing states with temporary “loan packages to help governors get through the worst of the recession.”

Naturally, one might hope that Satire Bureau would not be alone in pointing out the utter folly of such farraginous, fatuous, fiscally fomented fool’s errands. Surely an ever-vigilant outfit like CNN would see right through the farce and alert its readers accordingly.

Wrong-O. “(But) problems remain,” the mega-mainstream media misinform-er went on. “The biggest is the price tag. Treasury is attempting to find a way to pay for the plans, but there isn’t much money to be found.”

“There isn’t much money to be found!” shrieked Dr. Peay. “Since when has that detail ever stopped them. There is ALWAYS money to be found!”

Of course, he’s right. Perhaps the CNN reporters were texting during college courses on central banking in Econ 101. If so, the scribes missed out on the sessions where it was explained how a central bank poofs digital green stuff into existence any time it wants.

“What happens is this,” the economist reminded. “There is no national piggy bank from which to draw the funds to pay for small business tax credits, the extending of unemployment benefits, and/or loan packages to the states. And taxes aren’t a source for the handouts either – that withheld extraction is spent within nanoseconds after it is lifted from your paycheck.

“Consequently, ALL of the funding for those programs – just like for TARP, Clunkers and the rest – will have to be borrowed. If the usual lending saps, primarily foreigners, don’t tote the notes, then the Federal Reserve will crank up the perfidious, pecuniary poof machine in order to sop up what’s left.”

And that is just what is happening – in spades. It’s even more foreboding than this digital rag (along with USA Today and the federal General Accounting Office) had reported previously. That’s because the almost $12 trillion hopelessly un-repayable debt number heretofore mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg. The hidden mass of frozen H²O encompasses all the future promises made by the beltway charlatans, mainly for Social Security and Medicare. Indeed, Satire Bureau, and the others, thought the grand total was about $75 trillion, certainly enough at that level to rip through the hull of U.S.S. America like a razor blade through bubble wrap.

But, we were low – by $43 trillion!!!!

Sprott Asset Management, a respected Toronto-based funds manager has put a sharper pencil to the calculation. As if our earlier estimate wasn’t catastrophic enough, the more likely size of the glacier ahead is – gasp – over $118 trillion! link

And Mr. Obama  and the harlots on the Hill are constantly adding more to it!

“Well, when you really think about it,” rationalized Dr. Peay, “I suppose it doesn’t really matter anymore. I mean, $118 trillion works out to about $1.5 million for every family of four in the land, not including what they owe directly on their own mortgages, credit cards, car loans, and the rest. It’s a figure that is so far beyond the capacity of perhaps 99% of the population that it is a joke. Now, some may think that relating the total debt to actual people is just a tactic used by economic fuddy-duddies in order to scare them; after all, everyday folks like you and I won’t have to really come up with the shortfall, will we?

“The answer is, ‘Oh yes we will!’ Or for sure our children and grandchildren will. That debt is not just an imaginary number – there is someone out there who is dead serious about being repaid. It might be Yang Jiechi in Bejing, or Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Assaf in Saudi Arabia, or Joe and Jane, the retirees in Tulsa, or Dr. Butts, a urologist seeking his Medicare reimbursement, or it may be other pensioners, mutual fund holders, banks, insurance companies or thousands of others who are holding a chit from Uncle Sam. Just try telling any one of those debtors that the old boy was just kidding when he went on the hook to them.”

And so that is the fix in which we find ourselves as Americans. Likely, a national emergency shall be declared at some point, after which the populace will be asked to make “sacrifices.”

“Yeah, that’s when the current Oval Office occupant’s book will be in it’s second or third printing,” predicted Dr. Peay, “except by then the title will have been slightly altered to reflect the reality of those ‘sacrifices’ as they apply to most of us.

“Brace yourselves for the Audacity of Grope!”

MounteBank, N.A.

“The Friendly Bank”

Member – FDIC

September 24, 2009

Dear Shareholders:

I am responding to the many e-mails that have flooded my inbox regarding the depletion of the FDIC’s insurance fund and whether or not MounteBank’s depositors should be concerned about that sorry state of affairs.

First of all, let me reassure all of you shareholders that the Friendly Bank is not insolvent – yet. Thus, your company’s depositors need not worry about having to rely on the agency – yet.

Second, let’s review the numbers. The FDIC has shuttered 94 banks so far this year and its fund is down to around $10 billion, a third of what it was at the beginning of the year. Your company has about $15 billion in deposits so theoretically we could wipe out what’s left all by ourselves!

In a way, I guess, an argument could be made that we ought to go ahead and beat other banks to the punch so that we can be first in line for said crumbs. I checked with our Chief Financial Officer, Paula Fastwon, and she told me that going under would be relatively easy. All we would have to do is revalue (mark down to actual value) a chunk of our remaining real estate loans and voila! – bring on the padlocks.

But enough of that nonsense. As long as I am your company’s CEO, I can assure you that there is no way that the above scenario is going to occur. In other words, there is no way that we are going to tell the truth about those loans.

Be that as it may, however, allow me to return to the subject of the FDIC’s woefully inadequate cash position. The agency, as you may recall, attempted to shore up its reserves about a year ago by raising premiums on us so-called “healthy banks.” Just to refresh your memory, the Feds’ spiel regarding that funding method was that your company must pay for the insurance out of its earnings, thereby reassuring depositors that they wouldn’t be nicked.

If you buy that explanation, then I suppose you think our customers also don’t in the end (an apt metaphor, by the way) ante up for our payroll, light bill, and phone bill, as well as lollipops and dog biscuits at our drive-in windows. Point is, we cover all our expenses by socking it to our customers, just as all businesses must. Thus, when the FDIC raised the cost of deposit coverage, your company passed that extraction on with the speed at which those cylinders zip through a branch pneumatic tube.

There is even talk about imposing another such premium – but the truth is that those fees are peanuts when it come to the grand scope of the agency’s problems. Consequently, FDIC’s ultimate backstop is being discussed more and more; namely, borrowing from the Treasury.

Such an eventuality sounds plausible, even rational, but let me explain to you how preposterous it is from the perspective of your company. After all, we know a few things about lending money. Let’s say that a customer strolls into one of our branches looking for a loan. After reviewing his finances, we discover that he is about as creditworthy as an addicted casino junkie. So, we just say no. He responds that he has an uncle, named Sam, who will guarantee the loan. Turns out that Sam is even more of a deadbeat than the applicant!

Naturally, then, we would still decline the request. But this is where the analogy stops being applicable. You see, the uncle that lends to the FDIC is more like a loan shark; that is, he actually has access to funds for repayment … figuratively speaking, he can and does bust the kneecaps of his clients – you and me – in order to get it.

The reason that the comparison should end there is this: You would think  that your company, and most banks like us, would have scruples enough to never, ever resort to such a tawdry scheme in the conduct our own lending affairs.

You would be wrong.

That’s because an alternative to “borrowing from the Treasury” is being bantered about up in the nation’s capital. Instead, of going cup in hand to Uncle Tim, the latest contrivance would have the FDIC borrow from – are you sitting down? – “healthy” banks.

Now, not to mislead you, our shareholders, into thinking that your company is, you know, healthy (don’t forget, we bent over and took a $800 million TARP handout) … but let’s say that the agency sought us out for such a loan. Would we fork over the dough?

As quick as … well, remember those pneumatic tubes? I mean, come on, it beats the alternative – considering how we have raised our lending standards so high these days that the Sultan of Brunei would have to pledge a few extra derricks in order to get an installment loan for a Ford Escort.

Don’t get me wrong; we know that the FDIC is a lousy risk – but to use a banking term, we take comfort that there is a “secondary source of repayment;” that is, we like the kneecaps technique.

Nevertheless, it’s unlikely that the agency will approach your company; the mega-banks are where the big bucks are located seeing how they got the lion’s share of the TARP and other federal largess. Funny isn’t it, those institutions got billions in bailouts for which they, like us, are presumably on the hook to the Treasury. But get this – potentially, they may be begged to loan some of those amounts to the FDIC, probably at a rate which is higher than what they could get by simply buying Treasury bills – and the principal and interest on those loans would be completely covered via the loan sharking operation.

Boy, isn’t this banking business great!

Sincerely,

Jerry Rigg, CEO