Monday, September 22, 2008
Back in the PRA
In New York unexpectedly. The last time I was in the States it was a capitalist country, but now that Comrades Bush and Paulson have seized the commanding heights of the economy it has formally been renamed the People's Republic of America. Thanks to Gapper, I see that Paulson in particular seems to have pulled off one of the good old commie tricks. As the head of Goldman Sucks he presided over the issue of toxic paper, an activity he now condemns as 'terrible, inexcusable'. Ex-KGB Putin would be impressed. Soon we'll be seeing photos of Lehman staff outings with Comrade Fuld airbrushed out and Greenspan, of course, will become an unperson. Meanwhile, the news seems to be full of the closing down of some old rounders stadium. As Nige observed, this game is not cricket. Perhaps now the Americans have joined the cause of International Socialism, they can ditch rounders and 'football' and take up games that are actually watched by people in other countries. But I must go - there is a display of mass office worker gymnastics followed by joyous executions of thought criminals in Central Park. All foreigners are being driven out of their hotels to sing proletarian songs and applaud the Glorious Revolution.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Brilliant!
ReplyDeleteMy man in Babylon-on-Thames tells me that wearing your cowboy boots in bed is vital tradecraft, or you risk exposure as a counter-revolutionary agent. You have taken your cowboy boots, haven't you?
ReplyDeleteI have, Mark, the black suedes - very handy for crushing the faces of bourgeois running dogs and the top hats of Wall Street enemies of the people.
ReplyDeleteRestore confidence to financial markets? I would say the confidence men there are doing quite nicely. They just ran up a trillion dollar tab at the bar and have somehow managed to convince the other patrons to pay it off for them on the premise that their business is just too vital to lose. Hucksters, flim-flam men, bunko artists, grifters and pyramid schemers everywhere stand in awe...
ReplyDeleteI'm stunned that you failed to take the opportunity to blame this economic realignment on Sarah Palin. After all, it wasn't the best and the brightest of the Ivy League-educated social elite that ran these institutions into the ground was it? They couldn't have devised the financial instruments that brought about this destruction, could they? They weren't the ones writing and enforcing the regulations, auditing the financial statements, and underwriting the risks, were they? Surely, this is all the fault of a few ignorant hicks who insisted on clinging to their guns and religion, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteAll us peons are taking heart that the next-best and the next-brightest of the Ivy League-educated social elite will save us from the errors of the best and the brightest. We're all terribly busy preparing for the arrival of our Glorious Leader, and looking forward to quick implementation of his Plan for Universal Voluntary Citizen Service. Deciding which mandatory voluntary service corps to join is difficult, and we might not have the brain-power to make the decision, but the social elite will no doubt direct us to the right one. As we wait for further top-down direction, we're sorting through the pretty brochures for his Green Job Corps, YouthBuild Program Corps, AmeriCorps VISTA, Experience Corps, Senior Corps Classroom Corps, Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps, Homeland Security Corps, Peace Corps, Global Energy Corps middle school student mandatory voluntary service corps high school student mandatory voluntary service corps, college student mandatory voluntary service corps, and the somewhat ominous civilian national security corps. If all goes according to plan, like MacArthur, our "last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps."
Whatever you are taking bring me some back, ive got 6 months of cold wet winter to put up with, a few slugs of what you are taking should reduce the gas bill i think
ReplyDeleteActually, Bryan, the administration (which tried to get Congress to address much of the financial problem some five years ago), is currently acting in quite the American tradition: Government Bailouts: A U.S. Tradition Dation to Hamilton.
ReplyDelete