WASHINGTON – Greek officials were left to anguish over what might have been today after failing to finalize a promising agreement that would have canceled one third of the country’s obligations under a proposed 750 billion-euro rescue package for the failed socialist state.

The United States had been increasingly vocal with concerns about its $54 billion exposure to the loan. That’s when a young staffer with the Federal Reserve had what she later described as an “Aha! Moment” during an IMF meeting in Washington.

“Suddenly I remembered I had a CliffsNotes copy of Plato’s ‘Republic’ in my Hermès white crocodile handbag,” she recalled. “I had just bought the Plato thingy for one of my boyfriends who is cramming for his finals. Anyhow, I was thinking Plato was Greek and we’re a Republic, so maybe WE owe THEM something!”

“Hermès sounds Greek, too,” she added. “Is it?”

Officials huddled together after the interruption, and consensus quickly built that Greece should, in fact, be credited with contributing such building blocks of modern society as democracy, the Hippocratic Oath and columnar architecture.

“We were quickly able to go back and develop a retroactive, pro forma credit to the Greeks for inventing, for example, sophistry and Ouzo,” said Jean Paul Canard de Mallard, acting managing director of financial handouts for the IMF. “We had to adjust for inflation, of course, and so we came up with, conveniently enough, a sum that exactly totaled 250 billion Euros, which is the IMF’s commitment in the bailout.”

Is John Stamos really enough to negate Plato?

But the agreement was short lived. When confronted with de Mallard’s calculations, a member of the American negotiating team, Ekrem Kaplan, reminded the gathering of more recent Greek offerings to Western culture that had had “devastating effects.”

“John Stamos, for example,” Kaplan pointed out, referring to the former World Mullet Champion and 80s heartthrob actor from television’s distasteful “Full House” sitcom that consisted of poorly crafted one-liners followed by slack-jawed reaction shots of power-toddler-duo the Olsen Twins.

Kaplan said he approximated the damage inflicted by Stamos on Western culture to be “roughly in the Hurricane Katrina range, or just under $90 billion.”

“But that quickly became a moot point when we adjusted for Arianna Huffington,” Kalan said. Huffington [née Arianna Stassinopoulos] is the sluggish-tongued liberal pundit who ascended from the bowels of the blogosphere and successfully installed herself as a fixture on left-leaning talk shows.

Huffington is rated an “8″ on the Chris Matthews Leg Quiver scale, a globally acknowledged indicator of liberal morosis.

“Once Arianna was entered into the equation, further valuation became moot,” said Kaplan. “We could bring up additional abominations like Jimmy the Greek, Michael Dukakis, and George Stephanopoulos, but we didn’t want to actually add to the amount the Greek nation will owe the IMF, so at that point we agreed to call it a wash and just proceed with the conventional bailout loan.”

“Loans are just another way for our financial overlords to quench their thirst for the workers’ blood,” observed Yannis Panagopoulos, chairman of the Greek labor union that effectively sets the country’s policy. “I’m talking about the kind of loans that you have to pay back, of course. If you don’t have to pay them back, then we’re ok with them, which is why we were so hopeful about this deal to finally credit Greece for the gifts it has given to Western Civilization.”

“In fact,” continued Panagopoulos, “we were so open to it, we were prepared to stop setting pregnant bank workers on fire if it were signed. Unfortunately, now it appears we’ll have no choice but to once again make these minions of the bourgeoisie estate the outlet of our righteous anger.

“Imagine expecting someone to wait until age 40 to retire with full benefits! That’s not austerity, that’s depravity – that’s something far worse than John Stamos has ever done.”

Originally posted 2010-05-12 19:05:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Disgust with the 11-hour show trial focused mainly on the self-righteously affected rage that Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) put on show when hectoring Goldman executives. During the course of his ramblings, Levin repeatedly brandished an internal Goldman memo containing an expletive that he seized upon as an opportunity to utter profanities with impunity within the halls of the Senate. Peering sharply over the edge of his low-slung readers, the senator punctuated a hateful, didactic stare with nearly a dozen repetitions of the word “shit.”

Levin excoriated the executives for taking advantage of the housing bubble by short selling packages of mortgages tied to houses that were vastly inflated in value and occupied by people who, far from paying down their housing debt, were using the properties as ATM machines.

Now, pressured to at least pretend there was a shared responsibility for the housing collapse, Levin and the Subcommittee have agreed to subject greedy consumers to at least a cursory level of questioning.

Senator Levin, in mid-shit.

One couple that will testify is Chloe and Logan Robinson. In 2004, the couple purchased their first home in suburban Phoenix. “It was our starter home,” Chloe recalled. “Only 4,000 square feet, so pretty cozy, but for a couple of newlyweds, we couldn’t complain.

“Mommy and Daddy had just taken out a second mortgage on their own home to pay for our wedding in Tahiti, so it’s not like I could ask them to help with our house, so of course we were all over the deal.”

“The deal” entailed no money down and a monthly mortgage payment of $200.

“Like, it was cheaper than the rent for the studio apartment in Tempe where we used to make the Girls Gone Wild videos with Chloe and her ASU friends,” observed Logan.

The couple admitted they scarcely glanced at the reams of papers they willingly signed. “I think it said something about an introductory rate, kinda like a credit card, I guess,” Logan said. “We didn’t worry about it ‘cause home values always go up and we knew we’d need something bigger within two years anyway, plus there was a Nickelback concert we really had to get to and the closing was, like, taking forever.”

But home values went down, interest rates went up, and the Robinsons walked away from their home. “They wanted like $2,000 per month or something totally crazy like that,” laughed Logan. “We were like, ‘see ya!’”

The couple is not worried about the line of questioning they will receive before the Senate Subcommittee. “First of all, they’re paying us to come – as a special exception, we’re going to get the $8,000 in free money that Obama gave to first-time home buyers, so that’s cool,” said Chloe. “And second, we’ve heard it all before – like how someone can walk away from a mortgage they agreed to?

“Well, we never agreed to any of that. You can’t seriously hold a person to a signature ‘cause a signature can’t read the regular print, let alone the fine print. That’s no fair. Plus, they should of [sic] verified our income – maybe we exaggerated a little bit but banks have access to all of that. They have those accounting thingies.”

In fact, the Robinsons were both unemployed when they closed on their home. However, they listed income of $100,000 per year. “Actually, it was probably closer to $60,000 per year Mom and Dad gave us,” admitted Logan.

Today, the Robinsons reside in Chloe’s parents’ basement. To make conditions more bearable, they arranged to have the basement expanded and completely finished, using a home equity line of credit the Robinsons tapped out before completing their tactical foreclosure.

Another prior homeowner who has agreed to testify is DeTwan “Harpoon” Ishmael, 18, of Detroit. Ishmael, who has seen revenue from his heroin and cocaine sales plummet nearly one percent during the recession, admits he made up “everything” on his mortgage application.

“Yeah, man. I wrote down that I was a financial analyst for some made-up firm – you know, one of those evil firms over on Wall Street, wherever that is – and that I was making all this cash,” he said. “They was so happy to get me in that house – they kept smiling and congratulating me for being in a ‘targeted demographic,’ whatever that means.”

“I asked them what my payment was going to be, they asked me how much did I want it to be, so I said ‘free’ and they was like “We can work with that.”

Ishmael paid nothing for the first 12 months of his mortgage. He was foreclosed on after being arrested for selling drugs out of his home. In exchange for testifying before the Subcommittee, all charges will be dropped and he, too, will be paid $8,000 sourced from the first-time-homeowners bailout fund.

Senator Levin, when asked whether or not it was prudent to pay witnesses to appear before the Senate, angrily replied, “Shit, there is nothing prudent about dragging innocent American consumers – pursuers of the American Dream – before this Subcommittee shit.”

“But, if the Republicans want to play this shit game, if they want to insinuate that somehow this shit idea of personal responsibility lessens the suffering – the anguish – of those victimized in this housing holocaust, we’re confident that they will be judged accordingly by the American people.”

“Shit,” he added. “Shit.”

The hearings are scheduled to start next month.

Originally posted 2010-04-29 08:42:18. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

They point to examples like Tony Mosley, who is currently unemployed and recently failed yet again to impress a recruiter in the Human Resources Department of a major prospective employer.  Mosley, 36, embodies many of the same characteristics of the “suddenly employable” who would not normally be hired unless an employer needed to fill a vacancy quickly despite the risk of not hiring the highest caliber employee.

Mosley previously worked as a Customer Service Specialist for the Little Giant Vacuum Company of Walla Walla, Washington and has been unemployed for eight months now, but has managed to earn several interviews during that time.

“The economy’s hard right now.  But I’ve been interviewing.  And until Obama extends the bailouts to individuals, I guess I have to keep looking.  They say that getting past HR is the easy part, but I never seem to clear that hurdle,” he said.

As it turns out, Mosley, who got his job with Little Giant via an executive-level uncle, has made lasting impressions – but of the wrong kind.  Recruiters for nearly every major prospective employer in the Pacific Northwest have rejected him after initial interviews.

Apparently, at various times, Mosley has undermined himself by complaining about his former job, daydreaming during the interview, eating crackers while speaking, and excessive flatulence, among many other blunders.

One common theme in every interview attemped by Mosley and those like him is the belief that somehoe the job seeker is entitled to the position simply because he/she doesn’t currently have one.  In short, say headhunters, Mosley has become a microcosm of incompetent, poorly trained nitwits possessing bloated senses of self-entitlement.

“He looked the part enough, and his resume was OK, but as soon as he opened his mouth, it was all downhill,” said Gloria Ruiz-Tuscalera at a seminar for Women in Recruiting.  Ruiz-Tuscalera was the latest recruiter who declined to forward Mosley’s information to the hiring manager.  “If he’d had toilet paper stuck to his shoes, it wouldn’t have been any worse.  He even had the nerve to ask me if there were any attractive women in our firm.  I mean, who asks that in an interview?  Besides, what does that say about me?  Yes, I’m married, but I like to think I’m not some fat pig.”

Other recruiters shared Ruiz-Tuscalera’s low opinion.  A recruiter for Boeing, who requested anonymity, indicated that when Mosley wasn’t staring at her chest, he practically begged for a job, as his extended unemployment has forced him to move back in with his parents.  Compounding matters, he picked his nose while groveling.

“That’s nothing,” said a recruiter for Alcoa, Co. “When I interviewed him, he propped his feet up on my desk, and promptly stopped paying attention to the interview.   He just spaced out.  I don’t know if he was on drugs or just stupid, but his head was somewhere else.  So to cross him up, I asked him, out of the blue, what ethical considerations the CERN physicists should have when repairing their particle accelerator.  His answer? ‘How the [expletive deleted] should I know?’  The guy actually dropped an f-bomb in the middle of the interview and wonders why he didn’t get hired.”

“At least he didn’t insult your children,” countered Ruiz-Tuscalera.  “My son is in the Navy, and he made a wisecrack about the Navy taking the Army to the action so they could do all the fighting.  I think he thought it was funny, but I was genuinely offended.  The really sad thing is, in a better economy, he might have gotten hired anyway just because anybody better already had a job.”

For his part, Mosley believes that if he could just get past the recruiters, he could impress a manager and earn gainful employment.  “Those HR airheads wouldn’t know a good employee if one bit them in the backside – which I might do next time,” he said.  “At least then, I know I’ll have made an impression.”

Originally posted 2009-03-04 19:39:12. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

The sudden recantation came just hours after the bank’s recent tangle with lawmakers over what one analyst called “spitting in the face of the American taxpayer.”

“With everyone complaining about government bailouts, executive bonuses and wasteful spending, we figured ‘Why not double our money the old fashioned way?’” said the bank’s CEO, Monty Swindles as he boarded his private jet near Wells Fargo’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco.

Bailout, schmailout says Wells Fargo.

“We gamble with people’s money every day,” he continued.  “And in these uncertain times, ROI’s aren’t guaranteed.  This way, we’ll know right away if it pays off or not.  Investors don’t need silly burdens like time standing in their way of profit.”

When pressed for further explanation of the brash and flippant remarks, Swindles simply responded by brandishing a rabbit’s foot charm, rubbing it softly as he disappeared into the plane.

Stunned by the news, President Obama planned an early morning press conference to address this shocking turn of events.

Originally posted 2009-02-05 22:37:43. Republished by Blog Post Promoter