Category Archives: Bankers

Bulls Or Bears?

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Bankers To Be Traded Like NBA Stars
Will Get Endorsement Deals, Bubblegum Cards
He only gets a measly $18 million a year.

Richieville News Service – NEW YORK CITY

Inspired by the media frenzy over LeBron James’ decision to play for the Miami Heat, several large banks and hedge funds have decided to band together and form their own NBA, or National Bankers’ Association. In the new NBA, banks will not only compete for billions in profit, but for a national championship called the Lucre Cup, and bankers will be traded in the same way as professional athletes.

“People got so excited about LeBron,” said Julius Veneering, the new commissioner of the banking NBA. “But what does he make? A lousy $18 million a year.  Peanuts compared to some hedge fund managers! People complain that athletes get paid obscene sums for throwing a ball through a hoop. But our players get paid that much for doing absolutely nothing.” 
In the new league, major banks and hedge funds would be assigned to cities, although their headquarters would remain in New York. Proposed teams include the Bank of America Greenbacks, the Wells Fargo Simoleons and the Chase Manhattan Moolahs.  Fans will be able to collect National Banking Association trading cards and wear the jerseys of their favorite banker, although it is expected that all NBA teams will wear pinstripes.

Mr. Veneering said he expected top bankers to be offered lucrative endorsement deals. “I mean, who would you rather have on a Wheaties box?” he asked. “Some ridiculously overpaid, spoiled athlete or some even more ridiculously  overpaid, spoiled investment banker? Who’s a better role model for our kids? Bankers may rip off the entire country but at least they don’t take steroids.”
“We’ve known for a long time that money is America’s religion – but we think it should also be our national pastime. We’ve made money by trading everything else you can imagine – now we’re going to trade ourselves.”

For more Richieville humor, read the comic sci-fi novel, Rate Me Red.

Oil Spill Special

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SEC: Goldman Sachs 
Not Cause Of Oil Spill
Bankers Regret Lost Opportunity
Richieville News Service – WASHINGTON, D.C.
In a surprise finding, investigators for the Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that the massive oil spill threatening the Gulf Coast was not, in fact, caused by the investment firm Goldman Sachs.
“We were as shocked as anyone,” said SEC official Danny Podsnap. “After they wrecked the U.S. economy, bankrupted Greece and tricked kindly widows and orphans out of their life savings, we were sure that somehow they were behind this disaster, too.  I guess they’re not as smart as they think they are.”
The investigators were looking into the role of exotic financial instruments called “synthetic aggregate wildlife credit swaps.” Through these complex investment derivatives, the bankers at Goldman had attempted to take out life insurance policies on the “gannets, terns, tiger shrimp, mollusks and other vertebrates and invertebrates,” living in Gulf wetlands.
Like Goldman Sachs derivatives based on unsecured mortgages, failed real estate deals and wishful thinking, the exact workings of wildlife credit swaps is poorly understood even by those who created and invested in them. According to the SEC, those who bought the derivatives were essentially, “betting against the environment, Mother Nature and the circle of life.” But in the end, the SEC could find no evidence that the Wall Street masterminds had actually caused the deadly explosion, the loss of life and the release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic oil into the fertile waters off Louisiana. More surprisingly, they don’t seem to have directly profited from it.
Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein expressed regret, saying that in retrospect the firm missed an opportunity to profit once again from human misery. “We clearly messed up on this one,” he told reporters. “We should have made a couple of hundred million, easy. But hey, you can’t win ’em all!”