The problems-solving Paulson package
By The Mogambo Guru
I was startled when US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testified before
Congress that the Federal Reserve should be given carte blanche and blank
checks to bail out mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to do
whatever they want with the money, and no matter what it costs.
The amazing part of this surprising argument is that they say that a bailout
from the implosion of these two huge monstrosities being bankrupt can be
prevented just by giving the Fed that much power to use as a threat! Hahahaha!
The analogy was that nobody is going to mess with you if you carry a bazooka.
And "unlimited
discretionary money" is a hell of a bazooka!
No sooner had those words passed his lips than I knew that I was onto a
goldmine here! With a girlish giggle of glee, I leapt to my feet and was in the
car, engine racing, tires squealing, speeding on my way to the office since I
had (as is customary for me) left early for the day.
But I knew that my stupid boss would still be slaving away in her stupid little
office doing her little pathetic job in the middle of the afternoon like this,
as she thinks that performing like a little worker bee for our ungrateful,
cheapskate company is the path to success.
And she has been thinking that same foolishness ever since she came to work
here a few years ago as an entry-level peon, working for a guy who worked for a
guy who worked for a guy who worked for me. And now she is my boss! And she
never lets me forget it and is always rubbing my nose in it.
But now I have a perfect solution to all our problems, thanks to no less a
personage than the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America!
You can imagine my excitement because you can't get more official than that
when you are looking for policy justification!
So I burst into her office and said, "I have the perfect solution! I call it
the Paulson Package! Maybe I'll refer to it by its acronym PP! Give me PP!"
So she asks, as she is calmly dialing the security department, "What in the
hell are you talking about? Why are you dressed in a thong swimsuit and a red
bow-tie in the middle of the afternoon? And why are you wearing it in my
office?"
I secretly sneered at her glaring lack of fashion, and I knew that there was no
way that I could explain the subtleties of Exquisite Mogambo Fashion Sense
(EMFS) to her, so I did not even try. Instead, I pressed the case for PP. "The
Paulson Package solves all of our problems! It merely requires you to give me
permission to use either unlimited company funds to spend at my total secret
discretion, or give me immunity to use a bazooka or baseball bat to whack our
enemies, such as any customer that tries to stop buying from us, or bankers
that threaten to raise the interest rate on the money we borrow, or use as a
weapon against any of our internal enemies, like the people who file Official
Grievances against me, always complaining about how I am rude, nasty,
argumentative, lecherous, distrustful and creepy, and who are all a bunch of
liars and backstabbers!"
I could see that she was not being receptive to this terrific new plan, and
probably still carries a grudge about those times when she was a lowly
subordinate, and I would tear up her stupid little grievance forms right in
front of her stupid little face, and then laugh at her.
Whatever the reason, I am sensing with alarm that my chance for a
long-anticipated Mogambo Reign Of Terror (MROT) is slipping away, out of my
grasp, perhaps gone forever, after being so close!
Fortunately, I had a backup plan, which I got from a televised report on The
Cafferty File on CNN, wherein we learn that the House of Representatives in
Washington, DC "has just passed President Bush's bill to redefine the treatment
of detainees, and the Senate is expected to do the same thing. Buried deep
inside this legislation is a provision which will pardon President Bush and all
the members of his Administration of any possible crimes connected with the
torture and mistreatment of detainees going all the way back to September 11,
2001."
He sums up the real question as, "Should Congress pass a bill giving
retroactive immunity to President Bush for possible war crimes?"
You probably see where I am going with this! And you are right; and this
absolution of sins works at home, too! In fact, you can now shut down a whole
platoon of snotty Social Workers investigating your pathetic attempts to comply
with court orders to be a caring, loving father and husband after all these
years of alienation and hostility, achieving remarkable legal invincibility by
merely giving yourself, in writing, total forgiveness and immunity from
prosecution, which somehow also creates binding international law that all
nations must recognize and obey!
And the best news is that I am also working on a deal that will get me directly
into heaven by absolving myself of all the sins I have ever committed, even in
utero, in case I sinned by accidentally touching my wee-wee while still
in the womb (which probably happens a lot more than you think, and is the
"hidden error" in most other "plans of complete divine forgiveness"), and
complete immunity for any sins committed even before the time of conception, if
it comes to that!
It's iron-clad legal boilerplate! It's brilliant! It's our government in
action! And now it is ours to use as we will! Hahaha!
Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group,
serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo
Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those
who desperately deserve it.
(Republished with permission from
The Daily Reckoning. Copyright 2008, The Daily Reckoning.)
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