by Evert Cilliers
“Larry, I can never get an easy explanation from Tim Geithner. He's always looking down, like he's talking to his dick. Explain to me how his bidding thing works to buy toxic assets.”
“Mr President, we now call them legacy assets. Words matter.”
“Words be damned, Larry. This is me talking to YOU, not to some dopes in Congress or in Turkey.”
“I hear you, Mr President.”
“I need me some straight guy talk, Larry, not the slick stuff we put out for public consumption. Tell me how this bidding thing works.”
1. ANY WOMAN NAMED HILLARY
“Like this, Mr President. The chosen hedge funds bid for the legacy assets with money we lend them, and then they hold the assets for a profit that could make an AIG bonus look like chump change. If they lose on the deal, we make up the difference.”
“So the hedge funds win whatever happens — and we're screwed whatever happens?”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“How would you put it?”
“We protect them against any loss so they can bet in comfort.”
“We make it a sure bet for them.”
“As sure as betting that you won't find any woman getting reamed by Bill Clinton answering to the name Hillary.”
“Watch it, Larry. You're here as an economist, not a court jester. I've got Joe Biden for that. So who loses?”
“The taxpayer, Mr President.”
“Oh, them. Those poor assholes. I've always felt an inadvertent compassion for our taxpayers, Larry, stirring deep inside me like the pangs of indigestion you get when you have to give up your daily arugula for campaign food. Pity the poor voter. The pathos of it all, Larry, the pathos. How shall I express the sheer poetry of their pathos? Let me try and put it in the only thing we humans have in the end — words. I'll say it plain and true. The American voter is more ignorant than a flea sucking AIDS blood off a monkey's butt and wondering why it's all of a sudden very dead.”
“Very crisply put, Mr President. Your insight into the American voter is very insightful.”
2. SEND RUSH LIMBAUGH TO MARS
“But Larry, when the taxpayers lose, won't they blame me?”
“The taxpayers might take a modest haircut they're too ignorant to feel.”
“How big a modest haircut?”
“Maybe a trillion if we get a little unlucky.”
“Paint me green and call me a lawn. That's a major pile of loot. You could send Rush Limbaugh to Mars for less.”
“Everyone has to make sacrifices to keep our free market working like a beautiful machine, Mr President.”
3. A HOOP STUCK IN BERNANKE'S ASS
“Larry, what I need to know is — how am I going to pay for my beautiful agenda?”
“The Fed can print more money, Sir. Bernanke does it all the time.”
“That damn Bernanke. He couldn't make a slamdunk if the hoop was stuck in his ass. I hate how he throws trillions around without even having to ask me. Who's the goddam President, him or me? I ran around the country like an asshole for two years singing my hope song and promising to build a more perfect union, so how come he's got a bigger budget than me? He's urinating greenbacks like a drunk who's been loading up on moonshine for three weeks straight. He's spraying the Benjamins like some white Georgia trash who just cracked the lottery. He's splooging trillions like a teenage hillbilly in a Vegas cathouse pumping out spermatozoa by the bucket. How much so far, Larry?”
“Thirteen trillion, Mr President.”
“Holy Harvard, Larry. If we print more money, don't we go into deficit mode for eternity?”
“We can grow ourselves out of a deficit, Sir. And we can inflate ourselves out of debt.”
“That's economics, isn't it, Larry?”
“Yes, Mr President. As your top economist, I'm here to help you see how it all works like a beautiful free-market machine.”
“But this money we spend to make up losses for the buyers of toxic assets …”
“Legacy assets.”
“Legacy be damned, Larry. You won't catch me buying my own spin.”
“I hear you, Mr President.”
“I don't have to talk to you like I have to talk to a bunch of voters who want to lick my fucking charisma like doe-eyed Bambis who never heard a black man speak proper English before. Sometimes I get so sick and tired of being so verbal, you know, Larry? So eloquent. And watching fifty thousand cheering dopes suck it up like baby birds gulping down the predigested vomit from big mama bird's throat without whose feed they'd starve in their everyday lives of watching Grey's Anatomy on TV and yearning for Doctor McDreamy and never able to diddle whom they crave to diddle and desiring some dress Michele got in Chicago from some dressmaker whose high point in life was doing Lindsay Lohan's hair for a Vanity Fair photoshoot and who dreams of a bedroom all in pink and never gives a thought to building a more perfect union. What kind of lives do people have that they need to be inspired by me, Larry? Why is there so much pathos in this world?”
“There's no pathos on Wall Street, Mr President.”
“Not even now?”
“No, Sir. A little frustration, a little fear, but they know they'll get their bonuses come what may. There's nothing like a bonus to stand between a man and his pathos.”
4. TONS OF SLURPY STUFF
“This money we give the hedge funds, doesn't that mean we're giving them more leverage?”
“That's one way of putting it, Sir.”
“Isn't leverage the very thing that made Wall Street crap tons of slurpy shit all over itself in the first place?”
“It was one factor, Sir.”
“Why are we joining their leverage game? Aren't we encouraging Wall Street in their shitty ways that fucked us all in the ass, including my beautiful fucking agenda that could make me a transformative president like Reagan, except I could end up a bigger asshole than Carter if I let Wall Street butt-fuck me like they've anally probed everyone else?”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“How would you put it?”
“There was so much money coming in from China, Wall Street made some bad decisions because they had too much money to play with because of the wily Chinese tricking us innocent Americans.”
5. HOW MANY VIRGINS DOES A TERRORIST GET?
“But didn't Wall Street LOVE the money from the Chinese, like the terrorists love getting seventy virgins?”
“Seventy-two virgins, Mr President.”
“Whatever. So why did Wall Street screw up, Larry?”
“The housing prices came down, Mr President, which wasn't Wall Street's fault, so all the mortgage-backed derivatives lost value, which wasn't Wall Street's fault, because a lot of people bought homes they couldn't afford, which wasn't Wall Street's fault at all, because the government encouraged the giving of mortgages to poor people, which was no way Wall Street's fault in the least.”
“But Larry, didn't Wall Street keep selling off the mortgages as securities so they'd be freed up to write more mortgages, and create more securities off them, and make more money — the more mortgages the merrier?”
“That's one way of putting it, Mr President.”
“Isn't that why they gave mortgages to anyone who could prove they had an asshole with a modicum of working crap in it?”
“That's one way of putting it, Mr President.”
“So they didn't really give a damn what those mortgages were like, did they?”
6. A HOOP GROWING OUT OF KRUGMAN'S CROTCH
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“Well, I would.”
“Maybe you've been reading too much Krugman, Sir.”
“That damn Krugman. He couldn't make a slamdunk if the hoop grew out of his crotch. What's with him, Larry? How many people read his economic views? What does he know about trying to build a more perfect union? Loyal opposition my ass. He's like Rush Limbaugh with a brain. He could do us damage.”
“Don't worry about him, Mr President. He's got a beard.”
“What's that got to do with anything, Larry? Women have beards down there, too. Some are bushier than a woolly mammoth's ass.”
“Never trust an economist with a beard, Sir.”
“Why not?”
“Krugman's trying to hide that he's got no chin, Sir.”
“Hmm. That goddam Bernanke's got a beard, too.”
“Precisely my point, Sir.”
“But listen. Wall Street didn't give a hoot what the mortgages were like, because they always sold the mortgage-backed securities to the next guy, like passing a hot potato — until nobody wanted those securities anymore, so they got stuck with half the crap they created, like a man who shat in his own pants.”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“Like a dog eating its own puke.”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“Like a blind momma who changes a soiled diaper, but instead of a clean diaper, by mistake she puts the shitty diaper back on the baby.”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“Like a guy making rotten sausages, and not realizing he's making them out of his own intestines.”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“How would you put it?”
“Securitization was a brilliant new way of creating debt to oil the wheels of capitalism and make it run like a beautiful free-market machine.”
7. WALL STREET ASSES TO JAIL
“But Larry, the whole damn thing blew up and many of the mortgages were fraudulent, so wasn't that a bit of a swindle? Like a Fonz scheme?”
“Ponzi scheme, Sir.”
“Whatever. There's this company called Fitch that I read about, Larry. Their analysts investigated a sample of the mortgage loan files, and they say there was the appearance of fraud or misrepresentation in almost every file. In other words, it's all been a big scam.”
“Mr President, we have to be careful what we say about this. Many fine firms would be unnecessarily maligned if we indulge in loose talk.”
“Listen Larry, Wall Street has been doing a Bernie Madoff on everyone. And now they're scamming us into bailing them out. Shouldn't Congress launch a big enquiry into what happened? Shouldn't we prosecute people instead of giving them money? Isn't Wall Street just one big Nigerian scam? Shouldn't the asses of thousands of Wall Street people go straight to jail?”
“Mr President, why do you so often use the word ass, and its derivatives, assholes and asses?”
“You wouldn't understand, Larry. It's a black thing.”
“But you're supposed to be not black enough.”
“Listen, did I marry one of those light-skinned beauties who pass for black in Hollywood? No. My bitch is as black as coal. Michele proves I'm as black as the black ass of a black cat inside a black garbage can in the Lower Ninth at midnight under a black, moonless sky.”
“But your mother was white, Sir.”
“And she picked for her husband a guy who was blacker than licorice shit in a black adder's ass.”
“I hear you, Mr President.”
“So, Larry, shouldn't we haul the asses of the entire Wall Street into jail because of their derivatives fraud? We can get Eliot Spitzer on the case. He'd enjoy nailing the asses of Wall Street for derivatives fraud because of how they nailed his ass for nailing that escort chick's ass.”
8. EXCREMENTALIZED INNOVATION
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“How would you put it?”
“Derivatives were a really good idea that was somewhat oversold. We're just witnessing the birth pangs of a brilliant innovation in financialization strategizing.”
“Larry, when did Wall Street come up with this fucking brilliant derivatives securitization financialization strategizing?”
“It started in the nineties, Sir. Not that long ago. Wall Street is very inventive.”
“So the world did without derivatives from the dawn of civilization until ten years ago. And now they've sunk our whole economy in a sea of excrementalized strategizing. Shouldn't we at least ban derivatives? Didn't they turn out exactly like Warren Buffett warned, financial weapons of mass destruction? Hasn't Wall Street finally invented its own death?”
“Mr President, if we banned securitization, that would effectively cripple the best way Wall Street has ever invented to make themselves serious money. Their bonuses depend on selling derivatives.”
“But how has it helped anyone else?”
“It's made the financial industry very profitable. Trillions of derivatives.”
“But they tanked, didn't they? Plus Wall Street doesn't make anything useful you can buy, do they, Larry? They don't build houses, or cars, or fridges, or bicycles, or make basketballs or toys for my kids. That's what the Chinese do. The blasted Chinese are more useful to us than our own goddam Wall Street. Does Wall Street deserve to be more profitable than anyone else? What the hell does Wall Street do that deserves any profit at all?”
“Wall Street does financial engineering, Mr President.”
“What the hell is financial engineering, Larry? It's one skeevy scheme after another, betting on this and that, casino capitalism, inventing derivatives, and then it all blows up, and my beautiful fucking agenda is fucked in the ass to the consistency of chocolate mousse by the banks who're too chicken to admit they're insolvent, they're not men, they're sissies bawling for bailouts, and how can I be a transformative president like Reagan and build a more perfect union if I don't get any fucking money to transform fucking anything because we have to give all the money to fucking Wall Street to transform itself into a financializing excrementalization of a crapolatization that fucks the entire world in every asshole on the planet up to and including all future assholes as-yet-unborn to every asshole already-born?”
“Mr President, your pain is felt. That was very vividly put.”
“Larry, nobody knows that my grasp of vernacular Anglo-Saxon rivals Henry Miller for its vivid earthiness. Being a Harvard man, you'll be happy to know I perfected this union of intellectual heft and colloquial pith at Harvard.”
“I find your rhetoric very transformative, Mr President.”
9. EVERYBODY SUCKS ME
“Listen, Larry, if this goes on, I won't be able to transform this pen into a signature on this fucking bill here that undoes something George Bush did. I spend half my time undoing his fucking shit and the other half listening to you and Geithner telling me we've got to help Wall Street but give the finger to Detroit and everyone else. Is this why I spent two long years singing my hope song in all fifty states without seeing my family? Trillions going to Wall Street and soon I won't be able to transform a single egg into a fucking omelet.”
“You sound like you've been reading too much Stiglitz, Mr President.”
“He did win a Nobel Prize, Larry.”
“So did Krugman.”
“But you didn't.”
“I'm not a European socialist, Sir. I don't follow the Swedish model. You've got to suck Swedish dick hard like Krugman and Stiglitz did if you want to get a Nobel.”
“And you refuse to suck Swedish dick.”
“The only dick I suck is yours, Mr President.”
“I know, everybody sucks my dick. They did it all over Europe. I had to bang Gordon Brown over the head to get him off my dick. Even that little frog squirt Sarkozy sucked my dick. He only comes up to my dick anyway, so it's easy for him. Everyone sucks my dick except Krugman and Stiglitz.”
“Stiglitz has got a beard, too.”
“He does, Larry?”
“Yes, Mr President.”
“Paint me yellow and call me a banana. These fucking Nobel economists with their fucking beards. There's a fucking plague of them and their fucking beards. Why does anyone take them seriously? With their fucking beards, they look like they're wearing their hairy assholes on their faces.”
“Their faces look like vaginas, Sir.”
“They don't trust their own nekkid faces, how can anybody else trust them? By the way, what's this I hear about you making $5m last year working one day a week for a hedge fund, and getting $135,000 a pop for one visit to Goldman Sachs? How do you justify that?”
“I was offered these gigs, Mr President. Perfectly legitimate for a college professor to want to make some money in the private sector.”
10. GOLDMAN GODDAM SACHS
“But don't you think we in Washington are too tight with Wall Street, Larry? Tim keeps appointing people who worked for Goldman Sachs. Sometimes I feel like we're working for the Washington-Wall Street cartel, run by Goldman goddam Sachs.”
“Goldman Sachs is a very good company. Highly respected, Mr President. No beards there.”
“But when Hank Paulson, an ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, was with Tim Geithner last year, and they let Lehman Brothers go under, they were at a meeting deciding all this with goddam Lloyd Blankstein right there, the current CEO of Goldman Sachs. Two Goldman Sachs guys deciding the fate of the world's financial system.”
“Smart people, Sir.”
“So they decided to let Lehman Brothers go down the toilet, because Lehman Brothers was a major competitor of Goldman Sachs, who could pick up Lehman's business once Lehman went under. Sweet deal for Goldman Sachs.”
“Like I said, smart people, Mr President.”
“But Larry, on top of that, the two Goldman Sachs CEOs decided to give AIG billions, in order for Goldman Sachs to secretly get twelve billion from AIG. Doesn't this amount to outright fraud done by Goldman Sachs to the taxpayer?”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
11. THE QUEEN DIDN'T SUCK ME
“Listen, Larry, I feel guilty about this. I diverted media attention from the real story when I sucked up to the voters and acted all outraged about the measly $165 million in AIG bonuses — when the real story was the secret AIG handout of billions to Goldman Fraud Sachs and a German bank and a French bank, billions that we laundered through AIG.”
“Sir, Goldman Sachs is a Wall Street company whose top officials take public service seriously.”
“How do they help the public? They always seem to be helping themselves. And you, would you have gotten $135,000 last year from Goldman Fraud Sachs if they didn't think you were going to be an influential economics guy like you'd been under Bill Clinton? Either in my administration or in Hillary's administration?”
12. NOT DISPARAGING HILLARY'S BUTT
“Hillary didn't quite make it, did she, Sir?”
“No, Larry, I stuck a Chicago shiv right up Hillary's butt in those caucuses. She never knew what hit her — kept coming back for more, like one of those dolls you knock over and it keeps standing up because it's got such a big, fat, heavy ass.”
“Mr. President, have you just said something disparaging about the State Secretary's behind?”
“No, Larry, I was just getting carried away by a metaphor. One look at my wife should tell you I've got nothing against big asses. Anyway, don't you think the belief that you were going to be somebody important in Washington this year had something to do with Wall Street being extra kind to you last year?”
“Maybe it did, Mr President. They have their motives. Everybody has their motives. That's the thing about people — they all have motives.”
“So they were kind of bribing you, Larry. That was their motive.”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“They were ACTUALLY bribing you.”
“They were paying me for giving them pep talks.”
“Come on, Larry, don't play me. Have you any idea how embarrassing this is for us? Tom Daschle couldn't become my Health Secretary because he made millions lobbying for healthcare companies, and here you come and make $8 million in less than a year on Wall Street, and now we look tainted, after we worked so hard singing our hope song for two goddam long years when we hardly saw our family.”
“It's just one of those coincidences, Mr President.”
“Stop playing me, Larry. I know what happened when you were Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton.”
“Ah, my pal Slick Willie.”
13. CLINTON CAN'T PUT A ZIP ON DICK OR LIP
“How could you have worked for him, Larry? He can't put a zip on his dick or his lip, and he's still pissed he was a do-nothing president and not a transformative president like I'll be if I can find a way of controlling Wall Street before they con another trillion out of me that I'd rather spend on my beautiful goddam agenda to build a more perfect union, like educating poor black kids in the inner cities.”
“That's very commendable of you, Mr President.”
“Don't suck my willy so blatantly, Larry. Listen up. You, Larry, when you were Dick Willie's Treasury Secretary, you fought for derivatives to be deregulated. Even though Brooksley Born at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission was telling everyone there should be regulations before the crap drops out of a dog's ass that ate too much Spam.”
“Mr President, both Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin agreed with me about deregulation. They're very smart men.”
“You set things up so your buddies could get stinking rich. Then you joined them last year to get stinking rich yourself from how you set things up. Then when things blew up, you were back in Washington to set things up to keep your buddies rich, even though they've screwed things up for everybody else. Don't you think that's just a little fraudulent? Aren't you in the depths of your ass just another crappy Nigerian scammer?”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“How would you put it?”
“My admittedly lucrative experience on Wall Street has given me a deep insight into how things are done there, and into what can be done to solve things there.”
14. HOW TO MAKE MILLIONS WHILE YOUR COMPANY LOSES BILLIONS
“Paint me red and call me a tomato. You're saying it takes a crook to control a bunch of crooks. Listen, wouldn't it be better if you spent the next five years breaking rocks somewhere so you could gain an insight into the dignity of labor? Wouldn't it be better if all of Wall Street had to do that?”
“They get the dignity of labor on Wall Street, Mr President, what with their brains doing smart things day and night.”
“If Wall Street is so smart, how come they've ruined the world's financial system?”
“They themselves haven't been ruined, Sir. All the CEOs and their top people have made zillions in bonuses. It's their banks that are in trouble, not them. Not many people know how to make millions while their firms are losing billions. That takes smarts.”
“But shouldn't they suffer if they screw up? Shouldn't the bankers pay for their mistakes like we all do?”
“Everybody suffers, but not Wall Street bankers. That's the perk you get from working on Wall Street.”
15. LIFE WITHOUT WALL STREET
“But can't we do without Wall Street?”
“No, sir. We need Wall Street's money.”
“But I thought all the money came from China, Larry.”
“Yes, but they give it to Wall Street.”
“Can't they give it straight to the American people?”
“The American people wouldn't know what to do with it, Mr President.”
“But the bankers didn't know what to do with it either, Larry. They lost it. At least the American people would've bought themselves some DVD pornos.”
“We need the banks to enable the American people to do their patriotic duty by bailing out the banks, Mr President. That's free-market capitalism.”
“I thought that was socialism.”
“No, Sir, it's free-market capitalism. Capitalism is about keeping the rich rich, even if you have to use a little socialism to do it. Here's the point of it all, Mr President — somebody's got to be rich.”
15. WHY DOES THE FREE MARKET COST TRILLIONS?
“Why, Larry?”
“Somebody's got to be rich so the rest of the plebs have somebody to look up to, Mr President. We need rich people to give other people an incentive to work like dogs instead of having fun and spending time with their families. That's free-market capitalism.”
“If the market is so free, how come it's costing us trillions?”
“The free market is for the rich guys at the top, Mr President. Everybody else pays. So the rich can stay rich.”
“Like you, Larry, making $8 million on Wall Street from the situation you created in Washington. Nice work if you can get it.”
“Precisely, Mr President. Somebody's got to be rich, so it might as well be me and you. When you leave office, Sir, I can arrange a really good job for you with a hedge fund. You'll talk to a few big investors every now and then. Mostly Arab princes. That's all. It'll be like singing your hope song, Sir, but in a more financialized strategized key. Over the course of a year you'll make maybe twenty million for three weeks' work max.”
“Holy Harvard, Larry. Is this for real?”
“Sure, Mr President. That's how free-market capitalism works.”
“As real as a big ass on a fine woman is real?”
“As your top economist, I wouldn't put it like that, Mr President.”
“How would you put it?”
“I'd merely state that I'm telling you the God-honest truth, Mr. President.”
“Paint me pink and call me a vagina. Larry, I've got to tell you something. I was getting into a bit of a brainfart here. I was going to fire your ass, and Geithner's ass, and all the asses from Goldman Fraud Sachs that you bastards have saddled me with. I was going to get a hard-nosed nuts-and-bolts car guy from Detroit to help me sort out this Wall Street flimflam. But now that you've explained to me how free-market capitalism works, I'm having second thoughts.”
16. STUCK ON A PLANET WITHOUT WOMEN
“As an old hand in Washington, Mr President, it's my pleasure to explain to you how the big players in the Washington-Wall Street cartel play the deep game of free-market capitalism.”
“I'm beginning to see how the beauty of the free-market machine works, Larry. I feel like a man who was stuck for two long years on a planet without women, forlornly singing his hope song, and then bang! like a slamdunk, he's catapulted into another dimension where there are all these hot chicks with big asses who look like Michele.”
“I hear you, Mr President. There's nothing more inspiring than a free-market epiphany.”
“Thank you for setting me straight. I feel like I've now grown up to finally become something I wasn't before — a real politician. Goodnight, Larry, it was great listening to you. Let me say it plain and true. I was blind, and now I see the free-market light shining bright before me in an overwhelming incandescent glow like a thousand suns blazing from a wide open sky, like a forest fire dancing from afar in an enchanting ballet of leaping flames, like a million volcanoes erupting from the verdant depths of an undulating seabed in a garden of shimmering starfish, like a nuclear bomb exploding from where a terrorist was hiding it behind the crap in his ass.”
“Goodnight, Sir. As your top economist, I would put it exactly like that.”