Advice for Hard Times

We expect that our readers represent various social and economic classes, and we have therefore endeavored to provide information and advice to all of these as befits their situation in these uncertain times. For example, if you are of the blue-blood banker set, we suggest you not rent billboard space along major thoroughfares advertising your name, likeness, and a means of contact. And don’t take your golden-bridled Arabian stallion on a quick after-dinner trot through the downtown streets among the stinking masses. In fact, don’t leave your estate even if your dwindling supply of caviar and crème fraiche compels you.

If you happen to be almost anybody else, we suggest you plunge yourself into a life of crime. All that there is will soon be for the taking, and believe us, you will need your chunk of it. Muggings are the easiest way to go, but we cannot stress enough that you employ a little bit of common sense. As a rule, tourists gazing skyward present ideal victims. So do old ladies carrying purses as well as wheelchair-bound persons, but if you happen to come upon the Holy Grail of mugging victims -- a skyward-gazing wheelchair-bound old lady carrying a purse -- you must stop to think: is this too good to be true?

Well, that’s when you should probably sharpen your focus and pay some heed to the observable facts. Is the intended victim traveling in a wheelchair with steel tread links instead of wheels? Is there an Uzi mounted on the armrest? Is there a tag on the apparatus that says ‘Manufactured by Northrop Grumman for the Homicidally Disabled?’

Make sure you ask yourself these and other relevant questions before snatching any valuables. If any are answered in the affirmative, we suggest you run like hell and not look back.

We bring this up because a New York man seems to have been a little unprepared. While allegedly trying to have away with the purse of one of these Holy Grail types, he neglected to notice that she carried a .357 magnum on her frail, gimpy person. He also failed to recognize her as the 59-year old granddaughter of notorious Harlem gang lord Ellsworth ‘Bumpy’ Johnson. Needless to say, she almost shot the live stuffing out of the man.

So check out your target's face before you pounce. Does she bear a family resemblance to Bugsy Siegel? Lucky Luciano? George Kelly? Al Capone? If you've studied up on your prohibition-era gangster faces, and she looks like she might have a murderous pedigree, you probably ought to find another purse to snatch.

Circling the Wagoner

Under terms of the government’s bailout of the auto industry, General Motors and Chrysler were asked to submit their restructuring plans to administration officials for approval. Based on these plans, the Obama administration would determine if the companies are viable as ‘going concerns’ before offering additional government funds. GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner submitted his company’s plans on Friday.

The following is a transcript we obtained of a conversation between Wagoner and President Obama:

Obama: So let’s take a look at this plan.

Wagoner: I like your haircut.

Obama: The plan. I need to see the plan.

Wagoner: Here’s the plan.

Obama: Dude, this is just a napkin. And it has a piece of chicken on it.

Wagoner: I’ll need the chicken back.

Obama: Stop humping my leg.

The Quests for Truth and Blood

We are getting bored of reporting on the impending economic disaster and the imminent disintegration of the society of Man.

But the issue still remains, and so for a moment, we’ll concern ourselves with explaining the real reasons behind the massive economic meltdown that will doom you and your children and your children’s children to poverty, a broken-down society, and perhaps mild cannibalism.

[If you don’t have a head for detail, skip down a few paragraphs to The Quest for Blood.]

The Quest for Truth

So who is to blame? You’ve heard a lot about people buying houses that they couldn’t afford and predatory mortgage lenders who offered loan terms that were impossible to meet. But that’s not the cause of the problem. There will always be bad loans and people who can’t pay their bills, but they should never lead to the ruin of our economy and create the apocalyptic conditions for cannibalism down the road.

Rewind back to the days of the Great Depression. In 1933, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act, which regulated the way banks did business -- essentially separating investment banks (which took great risks with their capital for higher rates of return) and regular deposit banking. This was to ensure that banks did not use the money in regular people’s bank accounts for crazy speculation in, say, the derivatives markets or in the stock market or in high-yield securitized loan portfolios -- all of which could lead to the demise of our species. We hate to bore you with the details, but essentially, the law was designed to prevent the creation of a Citigroup or an AIG, and for 66 years, it prevented the creation of a giant market of the very same toxic assets that will perhaps be damning us all to living underground and, out of necessity, acquiring a taste for human flesh. In other words, this was a good law.

But in 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed by a bill called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act -- named after the three assholes who introduced it: Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), and Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-Virginia) – and it was passed so overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress that it did not even need the signature of then-president Bill Clinton (D-Penisville), though it received that too. This allowed Traveler’s Group -- an insurance company -- to merge with Citicorp -- a bank -- in order to create what they called a ‘financial supermarket.’ We can only assume all the legislators were entertained by hookers and fed mountains of cocaine while they were assured this bill would not lead to cannibalism and the demise of the human race.

Also, around the same time in the late 1990s, credit default swaps came into being. They were conceived as a way to insure lenders, especially banks, against loan losses. In 2000, Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit default swaps from regulation. The act was introduced by Sen. Phil “Anybody see a pattern here?” Gramm (R-Texas), and cheerled by Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, who argued that the market would regulate itself because he read as much in the writings of Ayn Rand.

What followed can only be described as a financial orgy as banks took more risks in financial markets, falsely comforted by the fact that they could also buy credit default swaps as insurance. AIG was making large profits by selling credit default swaps well beyond their ability to insure the loans that they covered. Between the years 1999 and 2007 sub-prime loans increased from 5% of all new mortgages to 48%. Holy effing crap! There were a whole lot of other reasons for this, but the main reason is that financial institutions started borrowing more and more money to buy these things, until some of them were borrowing $32 (or more) for every $1 they actually had –- just so they could buy these ridiculous loans. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were two of these. And all the major banks were borrowing at least 25 to 1 to finance the same crap – with the money that regular, hardworking people keep in the bank or in their 401(k)s.

There was another regulation passed during the Great Depression called The Uptick Rule. This was a rule instituted by the SEC to prevent market players from manipulating the value of stocks while selling those same stocks short. It led to the destruction of capital at banks and other financial institutions in 1937, and so the SEC decided to put an end to it. Then, in 2007, the SEC decided capital destruction was cool again, and eliminated the rule. Market manipulators have been destroying bank stocks ever since and bringing the financial system to its knees.

Then came the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the black hole we call AIG. Wachovia and Washington Mutual then contributed with the two biggest bank failures in American history. (Technically, Wachovia didn’t fail because it was bought by Wells Fargo, but the point remains.)


The Quest for Blood

If you’ve read the above paragraphs, congratulations. You are one bored human being.

If you haven’t, let us recap a bit:
It seems that the government had decided sometime in the last 10 years or so that it wanted to bring on another Great Depression, and so repealed every law that had been instituted to prevent exactly that. We admit that 60 or 70 years is a long time and that people forget what exactly the purpose of such laws may have been. So could we suggest maybe a Post-It note be placed on these laws from now on, so that maybe the people in the future will know that they’re really, really important? Or maybe we can put a stamp on certain laws that says, ‘THIS LAW WAS PUT IN PLACE TO PREVENT THE DEMISE OF OUR SPECIES OR POSSIBLE CANNIBALISM. DON’T EFFING REPEAL IT.’

So let us list the people responsible: Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas), Alan Greenspan, and just about every top executive at AIG, Citigroup, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, every Treasury Secretary from Robert Rubin to Henry Paulson, SEC chairman Christopher Cox, and throw in current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, too, who insisted in 2007 and 2008 that the sub-prime crisis would not present much of a problem for the economy.

These people should all be disemboweled and hung by their necks in the middle of every city square in the United States. Their innards should be exposed to the disastrous rays of the sun until they’re baked and cured beyond any semblance of human form and flesh.

You might think that seems a bit harsh. Certainly, they broke no laws. And after all, Alan Greenspan already looks like a rotting corpse, and if the ancient, foul, beaten Earth could walk and talk, it would look and sound like Phil Gramm.

But it is not exaggerating to say that millions of lives have been destroyed -- millions of people have lost their jobs, and millions more have lost their savings in the stock market as a result of what these people have done. That is not even to mention the effect this crisis will have in poor countries, where political instability and famine are sure to be the near-term results. And we cannot yet say that the worst is over. This boulder has been rolling down from the very heights of the highest mountain, and we have no idea where the bottom is, or if the economy and our society can even survive the destruction on the way down. There is no crazed murderer or serial killer languishing in any prison in this country, nor any terrorist hiding in the hills of Afghanistan, who has done damage that even compares to what these people have done.

So we need to pass new laws -– laws that designate these people as Enemies whose existence presents a systemic risk to our economy, to our civilization, and to the human species as a whole. Then, when cannibalism becomes the order of the day, we will be able to look back and at least know that someone was held responsible for our misery.

Are Chimpanzees Evolving Beyond Us?

It has been no secret that humanity is slipping from atop the evolutionary totem pole. If you watch the ever-plummeting stock market or if you’ve sat through a miserable few minutes of Dancing with the Stars, you’ll know that we as a species are no longer all that impressive. It’s nothing to be ashamed of –- we’ve had a good run of it -– but the whole thing just isn’t working out anymore. The only question, really, is which species will be taking our place to become the new lords of the Earth. We here at the Puke still firmly believe that a race of jaded, semi-reptilian aliens has been staking out our little planet for a suitable vacation home, but in the last few weeks a new candidate has emerged to fill the power vacuum. And that candidate is, of course, our own close cousin the Chimpanzee.

We’ve all heard about Travis the Chimp, who, just after bellowing the cry of bloody revolution on behalf of Monkeykind, was coldly shot down by a human police officer. But what most don’t realize is that Travis, though expert in the art of violence, was merely a member of the B-team and not in the vanguard of the coming Chimpish Intifada.

Familiarize yourselves with Santino, a macho alpha male who lords over a harem of six female chimps, all of them imprisoned in a Swedish zoo since birth. Santino prefers love poetry to idle gossip, Cuban cigars (if properly rolled) to ripe bananas, and a white hat to a dark tan, but he also prefers armed struggle to being gawked at by a bunch of slobbering Swedes. Santino begins his day by gathering rocks and planning attacks against human visitors to the zoo, finally unloading his stockpile on any Swede he deems an enemy. The victim’s only crime may be walking too close to Santino’s troop of concubines, or just simply possessing a stupid smile that rubs Santino the wrong way. (Incidentally, Santino was cruelly castrated for this behavior, and has become yet another martyr for the Monkey Cause.) But the point is that Santino knew there would be trouble, and he prepared for it.

Experts say this kind of behavior is evidence of planning among the lower primates, and that chimps in the wild have been known not only to stockpile ammunition and fashion weapons from stones, but also to fortify positions and plan sophisticated group attacks.

What the experts don’t talk about is how far along these simians are in their plans, and what sort of infrastructure they’ve built up. Do they bail out banks when necessary, or do they let the free market solve its own problems? Are they Keynesians or Supply-siders? Do they have a health care plan? Dammit, you stupid experts and so-called journalists, we have to know these things. Well, we did have to know these things when we still had a civilization that was still worth the cheap plastic it’s made of. So, carry on stockpiling ammunition and fortifying your homes, but do it quickly –- the Chimpanistas are coming to foreclose on our dominion.

When foreclosure threatens your cave

We at the Puke have been well on top of capitalism's death spiral. We've advised you all to fortify your homes, purchase heavy arms and stockpile munitions and non-perishable foodstuffs for the inevitable mobs that will be running amok throughout the land as civilization crumbles under the weight of sub-prime loans and endless billion-dollar ponzi schemes. You don't have to prepare all at once. Little strokes, as they say. For example, every time the unemployment rate rises half a percentage point, buy a shotgun, dig another ten feet of trench, unwind another length of barbed wire or pile another truckful of sandbags around the perimeter. By the time the barbarians arrive, you'll have a veritable fortress. If you haven't been able to build a sufficient stronghold, you may want to read The Road for clues on how to get along as a traveling survivor in the aftermath of the coming calamity.

So, you might be thinking, what if I live in a cave? Well, caves happen to be ideal living quarters for post-civilizational homo sapiens. They're easy to defend, require little or no fortification, they're warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and the roving bands of mutants will have serious trouble sniffing you out with their newly evolved sense of smell, fine-tuned for the hunt.

Good, you say to yourself, I'll stay in my cave. But have you thought about the cost of maintaining your cave in the interim period when most of us are seriously conflicted over whether we should even bother paying our bills? After all, only dried meat, canned beans, and bullets will have value in the future. I would say don't pay your bills if you can avoid the authorities in the coming months, but this is harder done than I imagine.

Take Curt Sleeper and his family. Eerily appropriate, you might say, that a group of Sleepers dwell in a cave. But they are foolishly giving up their cave to avoid foreclosure, worrying about such meaningless things as 'home equity.' Ask the mutants what they think of your home equity. They'll just flap their gills with laughter and then strangle you with their bungee-like tongues. The only thing Curt should be worrying about is the thickness of his walls (which, in this case, at 50 ft, is ample), but he instead decided to put the cave up on eBay. The Sleeper Family had seemed perfectly positioned for disaster, and then Curt goes and makes a boneheaded move like this just before the jaunt of civilization comes to an abrupt end.

Well, don't follow in Curt Sleeper's folly. You keep your cave and shoot anybody who even comes close to the entrance, foreclosure be damned. Just don't give up that cave.

The TARP

Couldnt they have come up with something a little more catchy than the TARP? "We aim to help the American people by making sure that you don't spill any paint on the floor."

We all know by now that TARP stands for Troubled Asset Relief Program. What you may not know are some other organizations out there instrumental to our success as a nation:

The Financial Assistance Relocation Team is a government agency focusing on lowering overall gas prices for commuters moving from one state to another.

The TransAtlantic International Team is a privately owned company ensuring the safe delivery of Swedish women to the United States.

The Department Of Underwriting Collateral Housing Engagements, a governmental agency focused on the removal of residential greenhouse gases through clean liquid energy.

Finally, the International Ministry of Genetic Assistance Yearly is a secret organization started by Tom Cruise, Liza Minnelli's/Star Jones' husbands, focused on the yearly maintenance of genetic secrets that everyone knows anyway.

Thain's Unthrifty Throne

John Thain resigned in shame from Bank of America. It turns out that he sold Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis a lemon in the form of investment bank Merrill Lynch. And not just any lemon. A black hole lemon that sucks out all the moisture from anyone who tastes its juice, and leaves pillars of salt in its wake. Merrill Lynch lost $15B just a couple of months after Lewis paid $50B for it.

Now, Bank of America is basically insolvent and the economy may be going to holy hell because of all this, but that’s not the real story. Thain also distributed $4 billion in bonuses before the end of the quarter, despite the mammoth losses, but that’s not the real story either. There’s also the fact that he spent $1.2 million renovating his office, but even that’s not the whole story. The real story here is the fact that he spent $35k on a commode. That’s right. Thirty-five thousand dollars on a toilet. A crapper. A cold porcelain shit catcher.

I can’t confess to having ever purchased a toilet, so I’m really not sure if that’s a reasonable sum or not, but I think I’d probably go without one before I’d spend $35k on a dumper. What could possibly make it worth so much? Was it diamond-studded or gold-rimmed? Who cares? Why would these things matter if all you do is deposit a rancid turd into a little swirl of water? It’s not like you’re gonna show your friends. You can’t exactly impress a girl at a party with the fact that you routinely wipe your nasty underside over a bowl designed by Cartier.

The toilet is a place of privacy, of refuge. Some people read magazines or books to occupy their minds. Others just meditate, snatching a few precious moments of alone time. The only thing that would make it better for me would be some other form of entertainment it could provide during my, um, exertions. Not a TV. Maybe a time machine. Not the kind where you get trapped in the distant future trying to save a race of children from underground mutants –- just the kind where you can calmly view the events of humanity or of your own life, future or past, without interfering, all the while dropping a deuce into a little pot. That would be worth it. I’d fork out 35,000 smackers for that. To hell with the shareholders and the financial system and the flailing economy.

Abandon Hope

I believe I need to apologize. We’ve been a little too optimistic about the state of things lately and maybe projected too rosy an image onto the idle goo of your frontal lobes. We used that vile word ‘hope’ at least once, and suggested there was some kind of solution to the implacable and imminent wave of ruin that will soon engulf us all. I had a sinking feeling this was the case, but now I’m pretty certain.

This morning, I walked into a convenience store -– a bodega, if you like -– and there was a 20-something year old, neatly dressed white guy standing behind the counter. Not Pakistani, Arab, or Korean. White. I thought little of it, at first. After all, he could have been helping them cheat on their taxes or something. But when I walked up to the counter, he spoke: Can I help you, sir? This is a phrase that should never be heard in a convenience store. If you ever hear it, be very suspicious. I thought this was maybe some kind of secret government research program, so I went on and asked for the reputedly harmful product I am occasionally wont to purchase. When I asked him how much, he responded with the correct price. The correct price! Not the usual practice of adding 50 cents or a dollar to the price when a customer is stupid enough to ask how much something costs. If this was government research, it was a sloppy operation.

Could he have been a real employee? Is this a job he needed? Considering our erstwhile financial system has been revealed to be constructed entirely of burnt balsam wood and cleverly placed ribbons, I figured, as I feared, that this was altogether possible. This poor white guy had probably lost his executive position at a Federal Reserve Bank or was forced to relinquish ownership of the San Diego Padres. When he went to the unemployment office made especially for his people, the old boys at Skull & Bones said something like, ‘We’re really up against it this year, chum -- all we’ve got is this convenience gig. We’ll let you know when an ambassadorship comes up. Cheers.’

So it is that bad, after all. I apologize for any optimism I may have displayed in the past.

Yes, World, You Need the USA

World, we've noticed: you just don't like the USA very much. Because we like to bully and invade other countries? Because if we don't get our way, well, we'll still get our way? Look, if we want to elect a halfwit as President, we'll do so -- twice. If we want to deny global warming even as we're planning beach holidays in Antarctica, we will. If we want to imprison people without cause, strip them naked and take pictures as we point to their naughty bits and laugh, we'll do that too. So it's not unexpected that everyone from Indonesians to the Dutch might hate our guts and maybe feel a gratifying sense of schadenfreude with regard to the monumental collapse of our economy -- like German ministers making statements that we were reckless in our banking and that our influence in the world is at an ebb, or the Chinese hinting that they don't want to lend us any more cash.

Well, guess what? You still need us, Germany. [As a side note, Germany, you really shouldn't be pointing fingers here. We remember a certain guy whose name rhymes with 'fitler.'] You still need us, France, China, Russia, Brazil, the rest of you.

Why? Well, your economies just won't work without us. And for one simple reason: we have the largest number of stupid people with a lot of money in the world. Other countries have stupid people, but our stupid people have money. Lots of it. And they buy your stupid crap. In order for the world economy to work on the scale that you all expect, we have to buy things like flying alarm clocks, inflatable toast, bars of soap with 'butt face' printed on them, DVD rewinders, umbrella shoes, and tons of other crap we train our stupid people to buy. Our stupid people are the engine of the world economy.

So, in 9 days when we inaugurate Barack Obama, you'd better start hating us less. Because we've got more George Bushes in this country, and we just might be stupid enough to elect one of them next time. Now, get back to work, World, and hurry -- we need another shipment of these can openers.

Mass Hypnosis

There is a whole field of study most people call economics. Now, economics has a lot of various specializations and cross-disciplinary subjects that come under this field, too, but basically, economics is a vast, complex area of study in which some of the smartest people on the planet crunch numbers, form theories, check back with the data to confirm those theories, test methods of control, investigate causes and effects of certain conditions and events, etc, etc, etc -- all to make sure we don't get seriously screwed. Now if you check the news, you'll see that the whole endeavor just isn't working very well. All these smart people have obviously been smoking crack over the last 10 years or so. I know a few of these crack smokers, and I asked one of them, 'So... ummmm... What the eff?' He told me the banks have no money. 'Well, that's easy,' I said. 'Just give 'em some.' (You'll recall Mr. Government did that a few months ago.) 'No,' he replied, 'the problem is that they have never had enough money. What they need is confidence. Confidence that they have enough money, even though they don't and never will.' Being an expert in self-delusion, my mind really started working. I said, 'Oh. How about a big Tony Robbins seminar? Or Scientology can help, can't it? After all, it helped Tom Cruise learn to read. This economy thing is small potatoes. How about one of those hypnotists who can improve your self esteem and maybe help you remember where you put your 8th grade diploma? Or we'll get one of those funny hypnotists who gets a good looking girl out of a crowd and makes her think it's 90 degrees on stage and she really ought to remove her sweater.' The economic expert / crack smoker had very little to say after that. He must have been impressed with my logic.

So being the deep thinker that I am, I decided this principle can be applied almost universally, not just to banking. If you know a guy who lost his job, just tell him he's a swell guy and maybe tell him that he looks trim and youthful. He may wake up the next morning gainfully employed. This morning I gave a kind word to the homeless guy who grabs bundles of free newspapers and tries to sell them to passersby while also pretending to direct traffic. I told him he performs a valuable service. He smiled and waved his hand enthusiastically to let a bunch of cars go by -- cars that, admittedly, he had stopped for no reason. Still, I have a feeling something good's gonna come from that guy now.

So let's all do the same. Give each other confidence. Compliment your fellow human being. And extend it beyond mere labor and economics. Tell him/her that s/he's special, important, interesting, good, kind, talented. Just lie.

Couldn't live in the poor house

Some German guy named Adolf Merckle killed himself by jumping in front of a train. Merckle was once worth $12.8B. After 2008, he was worth only a paltry $9.2B. Can't blame him really. Imagine living with that kind of shame? I guess even the angelic, transcendental voice of David Hasselhoff couldn't save this miserable Teuton.

Call Me a Bank: Now Pay Me

I've applied to become a bank holding company.

In order to become eligible for billions of dollars in TARP funds, all one has to do is start calling oneself a bank. A 'bank holding company,' to be more specific. American Express received bank holding status today, and so they're getting $3.39B in cash from Emperor Hank Paulson, and they can start borrowing from the Federal Reserve at 0% interest. This follows investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, consumer credit company Discover Financial, commercial credit company CIT Group, and probably many more to come. So ask to be called a bank, and get paid.

GMAC, the financing arm of General Motors, on the other hand, had some problems with the application process, I guess. They were denied bank holding status by the Fed because they're not adequately capitalized. What a friggin' joke. Were Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs adequately capitalized when they received TARP funds? Really? Citigroup?

Maybe Washington just likes telling the automakers to go fuck themselves while they ride Wall Street's ever more flaccid hog. That ought to help my case. GM and Chrysler had to jump through hoops for 6 weeks to get the paltry amount of funds now available to them, and we had to hear about how unions have ruined the country and what terrible people autoworkers must be if they're trying to kill the Big 3. Barely a mention of the Southern Republican lawmakers on the payroll of Toyota, Volkswagen and BMW. When I send in my application to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for bank holding status, I'll be sure to mention that I am not an automaker and I do not employ any blue-collar workers. Or if I happen to employ any, I will fire them immediately or cut their pay to match the cost of living of some backwater town in Kentucky.

In any case, I believe I am well capitalized -- relatively speaking – and from now on I would like to be called a bank. It reminds me of one of those motivational/self-perception techniques where you look in the mirror and repeat to yourself that you're beautiful and, if you keep repeating 'I AM BEAUTIFUL, I AM BEAUTIFUL, I AM BEAUTIFUL,' you'll actually start believing it, and if you believe, others will too, and it will become true. Trust me, that doesn't fucking work. But now, by the magic of nearly a trillion dollars – what can't money do? – Mr. Fed Chairman Sir and Henry the Beneficent have made it work. The self-help gurus were right. How beautiful.