Beware: fat cats will eat your homes, America
Craig Elbert (WG'09) Publisher
Issue date: 10/6/08 Section: Perspectives
Mathematically, Fat Cats = [Kittens]2.
It's a basic quadratic. Thus, by the transitive
property of adorableness, it holds
that Fat Cats are also irresistibly cute
and, oh my, so fluffy. So, I was naturally
skeptical when reading that these cuddly-
wuddly animals were being blamed
for the current financial meltdown. Unless
the Internet is messing with me again
(that Nigerian funds transfer is due from
Lagos any day now...), a herd of obese
felines originating from Wall Street,
Manhattan, are eating a Fancy Feast of
taxpayers' life savings, failed mortgages
and plump delicious children. Luckily
for us, our superhero presidential candidates
are going to bomb or surge evil
Wall Street and all its meddling MBAs.
Yeah recruiting season!
The current crisis catastrophe disaster thing is depressing, but it has its benefits. For one the media clipart is hilarious. Right now on the Knowledge@Wharton homepage there is a giant graphic of a bull and a bear engulfed in flames poised to murder each other while on a balance beam. I'm serious, go look. It's awesome. Beavis & Butthead took over on web graphics, apparently.
Perhaps even better though, is the innate desire to blame someone (ANYONE!!) for this mess. Politicians and shiny-faced news anchors are shrieking about Wall Street fat cats and predatory lenders as if they were comic book villains. They are wrong. If people would stop spazzing out every time the Dow Jones pulled an OMG they would see just where the true blame resides:
The Y2K virus - So, computers control the universe through satellites and Radio Shack outlets and stuff. And if my December, 1999 issue of Newsweek is to be believed, and I have no reason to think it wouldn't, this computer glitch has reverted everything to 1908. Computers have amnesia. We are all Amish and the stock market is measured in wooden nickels and beaver pelts. Oh, and by the way, sorry…your oxen died when you attempted to ford the river.
Axl Rose - Is Guns 'n Roses' long anticipated album, Chinese Democracy, ever going to be released? THE MARKET IS LOSING FAITH!! The credit markets clearly faltered when Axl let a guy named 'Buckethead' into the band and now the plummeting equity markets indicate that many investors fear 1993's The Spaghetti Incident may be the final chapter of the seminal hair-metal band. Prediction for the near term: November Rain.
You - You are tens of thousands of dollars in debt, have no job prospects and are probably drunk right now. Maybe giving additional thousands of dollars to predatory Leadership Ventures for a trip to the Jungle Book is not the most intelligent deployment of capital.
Math - America, you suck at math, why won't you admit it? We've outsourced our multiplication tables to India and China and now can't even count without getting confused (Hi Florida! Hi Ohio!). Maybe complex, algorithmintensive financial instruments are a bit ambitious okay?
Little Orphan Annie - Henry Paulson is an intelligent man. Yet tragically he resembles cartoony-capitalist Daddy Warbucks from the Little Orphan Annie stories and is thus inherently incapable of gaining the trust of the American psyche. Coupled with the crack-high fi- nancial advice to "Bet your bottom dollar that the sun will come out tomorrow," and Little Orphan Annie's detrimental economic effect is undeniable.
Kids these days - With their doggone MySpace pages, rap music and sub-prime mortgage holdings. Jeez. I've been telling the economy it needed to a haircut for months, but do you think it would listen? Do you think it would?! Not with its earphones and them em-pee-threes blasted it sure couldn't!
Santa Claus, obviously - So this guy trashed his credit rating by running up creepy Lincoln Logs charges on his Visa and now the only place he can get a mortgage is the North Pole or in a mall kiosk next to the Sunglasses Hut. Yet we still sit on his lap, tell him our deepest desires and vote for him over Gandhi on American Idol week after week. Wait, what do you mean we're too old to sit on his lap?
The current crisis catastrophe disaster thing is depressing, but it has its benefits. For one the media clipart is hilarious. Right now on the Knowledge@Wharton homepage there is a giant graphic of a bull and a bear engulfed in flames poised to murder each other while on a balance beam. I'm serious, go look. It's awesome. Beavis & Butthead took over on web graphics, apparently.
Perhaps even better though, is the innate desire to blame someone (ANYONE!!) for this mess. Politicians and shiny-faced news anchors are shrieking about Wall Street fat cats and predatory lenders as if they were comic book villains. They are wrong. If people would stop spazzing out every time the Dow Jones pulled an OMG they would see just where the true blame resides:
The Y2K virus - So, computers control the universe through satellites and Radio Shack outlets and stuff. And if my December, 1999 issue of Newsweek is to be believed, and I have no reason to think it wouldn't, this computer glitch has reverted everything to 1908. Computers have amnesia. We are all Amish and the stock market is measured in wooden nickels and beaver pelts. Oh, and by the way, sorry…your oxen died when you attempted to ford the river.
Axl Rose - Is Guns 'n Roses' long anticipated album, Chinese Democracy, ever going to be released? THE MARKET IS LOSING FAITH!! The credit markets clearly faltered when Axl let a guy named 'Buckethead' into the band and now the plummeting equity markets indicate that many investors fear 1993's The Spaghetti Incident may be the final chapter of the seminal hair-metal band. Prediction for the near term: November Rain.
You - You are tens of thousands of dollars in debt, have no job prospects and are probably drunk right now. Maybe giving additional thousands of dollars to predatory Leadership Ventures for a trip to the Jungle Book is not the most intelligent deployment of capital.
Math - America, you suck at math, why won't you admit it? We've outsourced our multiplication tables to India and China and now can't even count without getting confused (Hi Florida! Hi Ohio!). Maybe complex, algorithmintensive financial instruments are a bit ambitious okay?
Little Orphan Annie - Henry Paulson is an intelligent man. Yet tragically he resembles cartoony-capitalist Daddy Warbucks from the Little Orphan Annie stories and is thus inherently incapable of gaining the trust of the American psyche. Coupled with the crack-high fi- nancial advice to "Bet your bottom dollar that the sun will come out tomorrow," and Little Orphan Annie's detrimental economic effect is undeniable.
Kids these days - With their doggone MySpace pages, rap music and sub-prime mortgage holdings. Jeez. I've been telling the economy it needed to a haircut for months, but do you think it would listen? Do you think it would?! Not with its earphones and them em-pee-threes blasted it sure couldn't!
Santa Claus, obviously - So this guy trashed his credit rating by running up creepy Lincoln Logs charges on his Visa and now the only place he can get a mortgage is the North Pole or in a mall kiosk next to the Sunglasses Hut. Yet we still sit on his lap, tell him our deepest desires and vote for him over Gandhi on American Idol week after week. Wait, what do you mean we're too old to sit on his lap?
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