This morning on the way to work I heard NPR discussing "Zombie Banks," thus simultaneously sounding the death knell for financial institutions and for any latent cool associated with those mythic monsters. Let's face it, if NPR is coining phrases using them, zombies have lost all street cred.
The financial system, though. I mean, wow. Who knew? Where did all these dead banks come from? And so quickly? I mean, like, out of the blue.
Okay, yes, I'll take my tongue out of my cheek. Anyone with a pulse has known most of the big banks were dead for a long time now, despite the life support system of the first bailout. Use the Dow Jones as your heart rate monitor. In the last couple of months, if your beats per minute dropped by half, you'd be the living dead also. Well, probably not living. Just dead.
Let's keep going with the analogy, though, because it's so much fun. Instead of shooting the banks in the head, the government has been giving them some sort of anti-zombie drug called "unlimited, unrestricted cash" and given the zombie bank leaders free brains to boot. Now, what would you expect a good zombie to do? Come back to life and give away some of their zombie-medicine to people who are in danger of becoming zombies themselves? Hell no, they took all the medicine and are coming back for more brains.
But wait, there's more: Nosfer-autos. They suck the blood from the planet, resist all attempts to kill them (efficiency standards, safety legislation, opec), and still manage to screw you. From the mythical land of Detroit, where shoddy and irresponsible products are only equal to protectionist mentality and predatory business practice, come the soul-sucking conveyances of the un-dead. Instead of dragging them out into the sun to burn the evil away, we're supposed to give them another $39 Billion worth of sunscreen?
No way. Just... no. Get ready for the head shots and the wooden stakes, people, or they're going to drag us along down with them.
Better yet, let some people with practical experience take over. How about George Romero for Commerce Secretary? Since my bud Judd bailed (see My Guilt Complex for more on that), The President is looking for someone. Romero knows how to deal with Zombies and he's used to working with small budgets. I'm sure Ralph "Van Helsing" Nader can take care of the Nosfer-autos. Let him take a crack at it. Remember the Corvair? He staked that baby pretty well. Really, can anyone make it worse at this point?
Or maybe, just maybe, we should all stop making funny little jokes (especially NPR) and the people who are responsible should man up and fix this shit. If the bankers who caused the problem can't be sent to jail (where you and I would be sent if we performed as badly as they have) then they should be forced to fix their own mess. Congress and Commerce and Treasury should shoulder the mantle of responsibility and dig in to do the dirty work. It's not going to be pretty, but it beats having your brain eaten.
"From the mythical land of Detroit, where shoddy and irresponsible products are only equal to protectionist mentality and predatory business practice, come the soul-sucking conveyances of the un-dead. Instead of dragging them out into the sun to burn the evil away, we're supposed to give them another $39 Billion worth of sunscreen?"
ReplyDeleteFor once, I believe you and I semi-agree on something of a political or economic nature.