The Very Hungry Global Economic Crisis*

In the light of the golden arches from the Maccas across the road, a little house with a sub-prime mortgage sat in the middle of its block.

One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop! - went the US property market. Out of the rubble came a tiny and very hungry economic crisis.

It started to look for some food.

On Monday it ate through one bundle of securitised loans. But it was still hungry.

On Tuesday it ate through one half of the middle management of a mid-tier bank, but it was still hungry.

On Wednesday it ate through the rest of the middle management of the mid-tier bank then ate all the other levels of the bank, but it was still hungry.

On Thursday it ate through one Merrill and one Lynch, but it was still hungry.

On Friday it ate through one emerging market economy, but it was still hungry.

On Saturday it ate through one nest egg, one framing business, one aid program, one maternity leave provision, one camping trip, one Laura's Hot Bake and one nice new pair of Connies (Chuck Taylor All Star Multi Eyelets). That night it had a stomachache!

The next day was Sunday again. The caterpillar ate through one nice greenback, and after that it felt much better.

Now it wasn't hungry any more - and it wasn't a little economic crisis any more. It was a big, fat global economic crisis!

It built a house, called corporate law, around itself. It stayed inside for more than two weeks. Then it nibbled a hole in an amended subclause of a subsection, pushed its way out and...

Boarded a private jet and winged it to the Caymans where it's now lying about in a banana chair drinking pina coladas and barking commands at the help.

* Apologies to Mr Carle and his very lovely caterpillar.

The King of Musicals

I've been trying to think of a way to describe, in the few short words that make up a post, just what fabulosity is in store for me in 58 short days when I go to see Jerry Springer: The Opera. I couldn't put it any better than this blurb from the Opera House's website:

A pre-op transsexual… A man with nappy fetish… A pole-dancing housewife… Dancing Klansmen… The Devil… And a Jesus who admits he’s just a little bit ‘gay’…

A cast of 21 performers, with an 8-piece band, play a succession of lowlife characters, each desperate for their own ‘Jerry Springer’ moment. They fight, they cuss, they reveal their secrets – all via a sung-through score that ranges from pop and Broadway to classical and contemporary opera.

“It’s got tragedy, it’s got violence, there are people screaming at each other and you can’t understand what they’re saying. It’s perfect for opera.” Richard Thomas, Conductor

And oh my lordy David Wenham is Jerry! Be still my beating fun-stick.

How ever will I hold down my job, perform home economics, and remember to wash and dress myself when such a transcendental, transformative experience awaits? (Seriously, any suggestions welcome.)

The only thing that would top off the show itself would be a pre- or post-show interview with the pre-op transsexual, the chap with the nappy fetish, or the pole-dancing housewife, etc.

I reckon it's so gonna happen because my brother's uncle's sister's nephew snogged a guy who knows the chick who used to work behind the bar in the restaurant across the road from where the guy who donated his left testicle to the infertile couple who were on the real Springer show in June a couple of years ago used to have noodles after work. It's all coming together beautifully.

What a piece of work

Having spent a day searching for houses for sale under $152 (in an effort to emulate Mrs Richard Fuld, who picked hers up from Mr Richard Fuld, former Lehman Bros chief exec, for said price) I am sorry to report that there are no such houses for sale in Sydney.

To my great surprise houses here start at $50 gazillion so I'm going to have to call off my $152 Deluxe Gold-Plated Mansion Housewarming Party planned for Friday night.

On the plus side, and well within my budget, I found the simply smashing brooch above. It has the visual simplicity of an Anselm Kiefer, the comical whimsy of a Bob Saget, and the intellectual acuity of a George Dubya AND it's got a 'buy it now' price of $10 on eBay. Sweet.

But who would buy such a thing, dear reader? If you look really closely at the imitation wood grain on the 'for sale' sign you can just make out the inscription: "Dear Wubsy, we really screwed those suckers. Love, Richard."

My kinda investment

I've read plenty of stories over the past year about huge drops in property markets around the globe but thought they were mostly media beat-ups, you know: "property values plummet!", "repossessions soar!" What shall we do! Who shall we turn to!

I usually snort at such media silliness but this time it appears they're right. Imagine my surprise.

Apparently Richard Fuld, who was the chief executive of Lehman Brothers before it filed for bankruptcy, sold his $AU20.3 million ($US13.3 million) Florida mansion to his wife for $152 ($100) last November.

So there really are some great bargains out there at the moment! I bet there are heaps of $152 mansions for sale in Sydney. I don't think it's overly optimistic to say make sure you keep Friday night free for my $152 mansion housewarming; it's gonna rock.

Buy early, buy often

As we the people have exercised our democratic right not to spend over the past few months we've seen a rash (a rash!) of new and new-again sales techniques to help us part with our money.

The classic buy-one-get-six-free technique has had another run around the park, the 10% off minnow sales have been replaced with 70% off behemoths, and I've received enough catalogues in my letterbox to make a decent sized thatched roof.

Some brochures have tried to cajole me into buying, some have presented me with such darn good value I cannot but buy, and some have promised me all sorts of wonders like fridges so attuned to my every need that I won't know where my friends/loved ones end and my fridge begins.

But none have made me feel like I'm under the rule of a non-benevolent dictator, until now. Today I received one of those book club brochures in the mail; you know, one of those "we'll send you a remaindered crap-arse book every month until the end of time and charge you often and well for the privilege and all that we ask of you in return is that you forget to cancel the direct debit"-type book clubs.

So this book club brochure is full of great-sounding deals like "3 books for $10," VIP this and savings that. It even lists "six great reasons to join [crap-arsed book club] today," which is all well and good until number six: "WE'VE RELAXED THE RULES - You don't have to buy a book from each magazine and you never have to buy a book you don't want. All we ask is that you buy 6 books in your first year of membership."

Firstly, the formatting is straight from the brochure, including the bits where they YELL AT YOU with caps and the bits they pitifully implore you with italics. Secondly, thanks, I guess, for not forcing me to keep a book I really don't want. Um, that's very generous.

And thirdly, telling me they've relaxed the rules doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy about being clasped to the bosom of the book club; it makes me think they've opened the gates to the compound and are dangling chocolate-coated books just inside the doorway and that snap! As soon as I sign that direct debit form the gate will close and the Waco-esque cult will resume its normal operations.

On the other hand, they're giving away a free wok set (a set! Including wok, bowls and utensils) with every new membership, and three books for $10 is pretty good, and you don't need an envelope or stamp to send the form away... hand me that pen.

Would you like fries with that?

Pic from here.

There are few things more entertaining than the pseudo-science that gets trotted out every spring. Why spring? Because that's when the magical get-ready-for-summer diet stories start to appear.

We've seen them all, year after glorious year on A Current Affair: the Hallelujah diet (follow the Bible's diet principles); the wrong-hand diet (eat with your wrong hand! Your body will be so confused it simply won't know how to eat so won't!); and my personal favourite, the Atkins diet where, let me get this right, you just eat pork crackling?

It's not until a few summers have passed that the side effects of many of these diets hit the news: the Hallelujah diet will see you frequently tossed to the lions; the wrong-hand diet will teach you to be ambidextrous so you'll be twice as efficient at eating; and the Atkins diet will lead to certain and early death.

This year the focus is on carb-free diets. A new study has shown that a diet without carbs makes you dumber. As the SMH reports, "Popular low-carbohydrate diets may slim the waistline but they can also shrink the brain," and that's not something many of us can afford.

So in the interests of public safety I thought I'd put together a list of people who are obviously on a low carb diet and have clearly experienced significant brain-shrinkage and thus need help:

1. Any of the winners of the Darwin Award
2. Helen Demidenko
3. The safety officer at Chernobyl
4. Schapelle Corby
5. Any of the writers on the Home and Away team

If you ever meet any of these people, send them to the nearest trattoria, stat! Or else just throw them to the lions with the Hallelujah crowd.

Jingle balls... up

Now that the inanity of my previous post has receded from my immediate memory (good lawd what was that about?) let's get back to more interesting things: a biffo at a Christmas funpark in London. Hurrah!

So a whole bunch of silly sods paid £30 for entry into what has been charmingly re-named a "Winter Blunderland".

Apparently the funpark was little more than a "glorified car boot sale" with a Nativity scene painted on a billboard, a broken ice-skating rink and huskies tied up outside their kennels in a muddy field. Sounds simply crap-o-riffic to me.

It also sounds like another mighty fine way to part fools from their money. To my list of ways to make money post-economic downturn (including selling moss-scented candles and stealing things off the blind) I can now add Christmas Dream Destroying and Bubble Bursting.

Not to mention Professional Funpark Troublemaker... because that's who the park is blaming for the rucus (yep, seriously).

So there were four-hour waits to see Santa (who then refused to let kids sit on his knee), followed by the punching of said Santa by one angry Dad, then a four-hour wait to pick up a present, followed by the slapping of an elf by one angry Mum. I can't wait for Jerry Springer's erudite analysis of the situation.

Apparently one child had to be comforted after finding a Santa smoking a cigarette outside his grotto. Lucky the kid didn't see the Santa shooting up behind the dumpster.

Don't you love the festive season?

I knew you were going to say that

Illustration by Spashlight; Photograph by Angela Jimenez for The New York Times

My search for a new wealth creation plan post-financial-bun-fight continues and I think that I may have just hit upon the winner.

The financial benefits of my earlier suggestions (including commandeering an oil-laden tanker, and encouraging our friends and loved ones to become Jehovah's Witnesses in order to save on birthday presents) pale in comparison to today's sterling example of entrepreneurship: become a psychic and give financial advice!

The New York Times interviewed one poor dear chappy (a Mr Taccetta, stock trader) who is reported as saying “when conditions are this volatile, consulting a psychic can be as good a strategy as any other.”

Mercy! On this logic standing half way across a bridge wearing plimsolls and facing north-east while throwing bundles of dollar bills to the evening wind is a good strategy.

I've been so black hat about the financial crisis, harping on about despairing brokers and suggesting we spend our freshly minted unemployment watching re-runs of Twin Peaks and stealing things off the visually impaired (sound the moral bankruptcy alarm!).

But now I'm switching to my yellow hat because fabulous new growth areas, with 'practitioners' eager and willing to help part fools from their money, are starting to appear.

These are happy business days for psychics, astrologers, people who channel spirits and those who read palms. Due to high demand, some psychics have been able to charge up to $1,000 an hour for 'insights'. Give me a thousand bucks and I'll give you an insight, any insight you like.

The NYT reports a psychic in LA is charging $70 for moss-scented candles, available on her website. I'm not entirely clear what a moss-scented candle would do, but if I felt like standing on that bridge wearing plimsolls flinging money etc I'd be happy to let you know how it goes.

I see great things for these industries. See, I have the gift.

Knock knock...

One of these things is not like the others. Can you pick which one doesn't belong?

1. Why do farts smell so bad? So deaf people can enjoy them too.
   
   
2. Why was the leper caught speeding? Because he couldn't take his foot off the accelerator.
   
   
3. Who is to blame for the subprime crisis? Illegal immigrants and Hispanics "greedy" enough to seek subprime loans, Latinos and gays, and congressmen who were "pushing for more minority lending" without disclosing that "loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster".

So which one's different? That's right! Number three because it's a bad joke in poor taste.

Sadly number three represents the combined efforts of Michelle Malkin of The National Review and her take on "greedy" illegal immigrants and Hispanics, Mark Krikorian of the same publication who brought us the novel opinion that Washington Mutual's demise was caused by its propensity for employing, you guessed it, Latinos and gays, and Fox News's Neil Cavuto who knew those minorities and other risky folk were darn right risky because they're minorities, and thus risky, and thus minorities...

It's funny, I thought you defaulted on a loan when the repayments were set at a level beyond your capacity to meet them, not because you were born in another country or liked having sex with people with the same pink bits.

My mistake, this whole subprime crisis thing is a conspiracy against the good, rich, straight, white folk. Gotcha.

* For an interesting article on the possible social political effects of the financial crisis check out:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/whats-waiting-when-markets-settle-down/2008/10/12/1223749846530.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Top savings tips

Watching the global financial system slide into bankruptcy has, frankly, given me the irrits. What the crap were they thinking?

So it all started with some bright sparks who thought it would be a good idea to lend money to people who had more chance of winning lotto (modest odds of one in 55 mill) than making the repayments. Remember that acronym that was being thrown around at the start of this whole mess, NINJA? Stands for No Income, No Job (and) No Assets. Heck darn, sounds to me like a pretty reasonable set of borrowing criteria. And you know what's even worse? The phrase was coined by HCL Finance AS A NAME FOR ONE OF THEIR PRODUCTS.

Anyhoo, since we're all going to spend the next five years watching a lot of tv (as part of the growing unemployed) and selling our organs to fund the increasing cost of living, I thought I'd share this list of helpful tips for cash-strapped times:

1. If you're a wine drinker, switch from bottled to cask wine. If you already drink cask wine, have a good hard look at your self then get that cask flowing again.

2. Don't throw anything out, you never know when you'll need it (or it'll be fashionable) again. As one survivor of the Great Depression said: "I don't ever want to throw anything away. My old coats, dresses and pant suits hang in the closet". Happily, pant suits are in again this year.

3. Cross your legs until you get to work; get your employer to pay for the toilet paper.

4. Don't have too many children. Most families during the Great Depression seemed to have had at least nine kids, which is obviously too many and they suffered proportionately for it. If you have kids already, consider selling them. If you don't, consider having some in order to sell.

5. Encourage all your friends to become Jehova's witnesses; save on birthday presents.

6. Steal things off the visually impaired.

As you can see, the slope from monetary bankruptcy to moral bankruptcy has a steep gradient. For something lighter, tomorrow let's do 'Capitalism to Communism: Is There a Better Way?'