Long is accused of plying at least three angst-ridden urban youth, who had come to him for religious counsel, with gifts and then duping them into accepting his sexual advances as a milestone on their road to spiritual growth during his unfortunately named youth retreat, “LongFellows.”

“When you’re evaluating the potential for yield growth you want to see diversification and proof that you’re not mired in a market that has matured,” gushed Sal Rigatoni, a senior trader for Krotchgrab, Bangbold and Pukebreath, the largest Wall Street firm that specializes in trading CAA futures.

Bishop Eddie Long could represent a safe haven for investors.

“The big news out of this is that you’ve got all the market fundamentals you want but you’re tapping into a brand new market –the Southern Protestant Megachurch.”

Rigatoni cited the high social standing of the defendant; the shock-value of the claims and their ability to humiliate the bishop while incensing a sympathetic public and jury; and the fact that the atrocities supposedly occurred years ago as “rock solid fundamentals and hallmarks of substantial net growth.”

“They’re following the time-honored tradition of shaking down a church that many investors thought had peaked with the ‘I remember now’ lawsuits made against the Catholics,” explained Rigatoni, referring to the wave of court actions against the Catholic Church by people claiming to have been abused, sometimes decades earlier, and who often reaped rich payoffs, sometimes in the millions of dollars, as a result of the suits.

“That was a great model, but there was always a question of sustainability. The common thinking was that if you didn’t get in by the early 90s, you had missed most of the upside. I think the action against Bishop Eddie Long is going to move a lot of money, even from big institutional investors, off the sidelines, especially with such weak confidence in the dollar and stocks.

“The fact that his title is ‘Bishop,’ you can’t price enough into that; it’s golden,” he added. “That’s the perfect bridge to the NextGen wave of CAA trading.

“At least in the near term, we’re calling Megachuch shakedowns a viable safe haven that is a real alternative to gold.”

Rigatoni did caution that a lot of “rebranding work” remained to be done on Protestant Megachurches.

“The plaintiffs, lawyers and media that worked during the great bull cycle of Catholic CAAs did yeoman’s work in getting the masses to think ‘child molester’ whenever they heard the word ‘Catholic,’” he said.

“That laid the groundwork for a lot of slam-dunk cases. We hope to see that here as well, but we don’t think that’s realistic. There’s just not the same level of hatred and prejudice to tap into.

“But these CAAs will still be highly profitable for those who can get in early enough, and it beats the hell out of the dollar.”

Note: Wine and Excrement and some of its subsidiaries, employees, interns and pensioners own certain exchange-traded derivatives, but at press time, Wine and Excrement held no positions in CAAs or any other security mentioned in this report*

*As far as you know.

Originally posted 2010-09-24 15:49:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

However, the cuts don’t stop there.

“We didn’t feel like it would be right to ask only our staff to participate in our recovery, so these cuts will also affect the letters ‘Q,’ ‘X,’ ‘Z’ and ‘K,’” said Pandy Simpleflower, a spokesperson with Sesame Workshop, the non-profit producer of the show. “We wanted to target roughly 20% of the alphabet as well. Since five letters would have put us just over, we decided to cut four of them, plus the semicolon, which no one under the age of 50 knows how to use properly anyway, if they’re even aware it exists.”

Simpleflower said the four letters were drawn from the least-used members of the alphabet. “We felt it only right that those that were least productive should be the first ones to go,” she added.

Big Bird - and the letter "H" - were both unaffected by the layoffs.

One of the easiest decisions, she said, was the elimination of the letter ‘Q.’ “99% of the time, that letter required its own dedicated support personnel – namely, the letter ‘U.’ We just can’t support that level of inefficiency in today’s economy.”

Early-childhood education experts generally praised the actions.

“Sesame Street was in a tough spot, and they had to make cuts,” said Dr. Frontloaded Pederast. “You never like to lose accessories, but I’m glad to see that they targeted letters that few, if any children – and many adults – would ever have a use for. The semicolon, while fun to draw, probably should have been eliminated decades ago.”

The letters’ absence will be felt more by some words than others, said Pederast, and kids who rely on Sesame Street in their efforts to gain literacy will be running into some classic words with new twists. As examples, he cited the substitution of the word “cwicly” for “quickly” and “cic” for “kick.”

Pederast was unsure how words such as “zip” would be written, while Simpleflower would only say that Sesame Street had devised a “fun, uplifting way” that would “accommodate all learning styles, from the gifted to the profoundly stupid.” However, she refused to offer further details, deferring to a rollout of an entire new phonics system, which will be introduced on the show in coming weeks.

“Ultimately, none of this matters,” noted Pederast. “The only time today’s youth ever use the alphabet is when texting, and everything is abbreviated in those circumstances. Letters really become secondary to emoticons and the general absurdity of pointless communication.”

Pederast envisions a future alphabet consisting only of the vowels plus the consonants S, R, L and C. “A nine-letter alphabet is in our future,” he said. “The only question is when.”

Originally posted 2009-03-16 17:59:56. Republished by Blog Post Promoter