No sooner did I get home tonight than my land line telephone rang. Not too many people have that number, I guarantee, and I could see from the caller ID who it was, so, of course, I answered:
Tom: Chairman Bernanke? Is that you?
Bernanke: Gevalt! Who else would it be, nu?
Tom: Gee whiz, Your Majesty, you don’t usually sound like that.
Bernanke: Oy! Oy! Oy! I can’t help it – when I get upset, I just can’t help it, okay?
Tom: My goodness gracious, what could possibly get the Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Bank so bent out of shape, he loses control of his carefully cultivated WASP accent?
Bernanke: Come off it, you cannoli-stuffing Dago! You know as well as I do!
Tom: Your Highness, I would kindly thank you not to defame my worthy Italian ancestry – half of which, I hasten to remind you, hails from well north of the Tiber.
Bernanke: Tom, I’m sorry. I apologize. Some of my best friends are of Italian extraction, you know that; and you know I’m not usually like this. But you and I also both know what’s going on – the entire world monetary and financial systems are hanging by a thread! I tell you, this situation is not easy for me, by any means! My stomach has been tied in knots, I’ve got a boykhvehtig you wouldn’t believe; and the acid reflux, it’s killing me, iz brent mir ahfen hartz, like nothing you’ve ever seen, I tell you. Doesn’t matter what I take – Maalox, Tums, Mylanta, Pepto-Bismol, Rolaids, Alka-Seltzer, Phillip’s Milk of Magnesia, even Arm and Hammer, straight from the box, nothing keeps it down, I tell you, it’s murder! Not to mention the headaches! Zhu met mir in kop so bad, I can hardly stand! Aspirin, Tylenol, Advil, ibuprofen, nothing works for that, either! And my bowels, Tom, it’s like one minute I can’t [expletive] to save my life and the next, I’m about to have an accident, trying to get my pants down fast enough before the layseh mogen explodes all over the bathroom!
Tom: Glory be, Your Excellency, I’m not a doctor, but it sure sounds like you’re under a nearly intolerable condition of acute, massive stress, and your body is rebelling against it.
Bernanke: [Expletive] it, Tom, you don’t have to be the Surgeon General of the United States to figure that out!
Tom: Well, frankly, I don’t think Rear Admiral Steven K. Galson, M.D., M.P.H could accurately diagnose a case of hemorrhoids, but I understand what you mean, and I assure you, I offer my sincere sympathy.
Bernanke: Your sympathy and five dollars will buy a venti grand mocha coffee at Starbucks! Damn it, Tom, I need answers, solutions, results…
Tom: Determinations, explanations, conclusions…
Bernanke: Are you making fun of me?
Tom: What? There’s only the two of us; why would I do that?
Bernanke: Good point. Look, we have to figure this out.
Tom: “We?” Did you recently contract a tape worm? Maybe that’s why your tummy’s bothering you, bubbele.
Bernanke: By “we,” I mean the Bush Administration! Stop being such a putz!
Tom: So, go figure something out.
Bernanke: Listen, my dear goyishe shmuck, if we could, I wouldn’t be calling you!
Tom: And you’re calling me, because afh yenems tukhes is gut sepatchen, maybe?
Bernanke: No, no, that’s not it! That’s not it at all! Come on Tom, everybody knows, you’re the smartest person inside the Beltway…
Tom: Which is like being the tallest…
Bernanke: Yeah, yeah, the tallest building in [expletive] Baltimore, I know, already, I know! Everyone knows you say that! Now come on, tell me, you messhugenah shagitz, what’s the matter with these [expletive] Democrats in Congress?
Tom: Well, Your Eminence, after considering all the factors, assessing the historical circumstances, analyzing the relevant salient issues, and calculating the pertinent parameters, I’d say that the Democrats in Congress figure that the Republicans got us into this ridiculous, pathetic and shameful pickle, and they’re not about to let the Republicans stampede them into a sweetheart bailout for a bunch of rich, amoral criminals who happen to work on Wall Street and therefore have concluded that the world in general and the American taxpayers in particular owe them wheelbarrows of money in return for their extraordinary, unprecedented and monstrously huge displays of incompetence.
Bernanke: But they have to stampede!
Tom: You guys are asking for a blank check, Ben! There are no guarantees that, in six months, a year perhaps, the same gang of thieves isn’t going to walk off with all that money, reaping multi-million dollar bonuses for screwing things up worse. I hear your buddy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, was even arrogant enough to suggest that anything you guys do with that money be above the law. I mean, really, what’s he been smoking, anyhow? The bottom line is, people simply aren’t willing to stampede for a deal like that, Ben. It’s just to [expletive] absurd.
Bernanke: Look, Tom, invading Iraq was [expletive] absurd, and the Bush Administration got them to stampede for that!
Tom: Actually, I think that might have something to do with it. You know what they say: “Once burned, twice shy,” or as George Bush once put it “Fool me once, shame on you… fool me… can’t get fooled again.”
Bernanke: Listen, Tom, mocking the President of the United States never did any policy consultants I know of any good!
Tom: Forgive me, Mister Secretary, but I wasn’t mocking him, I was quoting him, and, I might point out, quite accurately at that.
Bernanke: Oh, Gotteniu! You know what George meant when he said that!
Tom: I certainly do. And what “the matter with” the Democrats in Congress is, they know what George meant, too, and, as he put it, they don’t want to get fooled again.
Bernanke: But we’re not trying to fool them! Not this time! This time we’re being as honest as possible!
Tom: Okay, that’s what you say, but why should they believe you?
Bernanke: Why should they believe us? I can’t believe you could ask a question like that! Just look, Tom, look at the stakes involved here!
Tom: As compared to what – the stakes involved making a decision to invade Iraq?
Bernanke: Invading Iraq? There’s no comparison!
Tom: Ah, you must admit there’s at least one basis for comparison between the two.
Bernanke: What?
Tom: Their price tags.
Bernanke: Oh, right, sure! Give me a break, will you? It’s only seven hundred billion dollars!
Tom: A few days ago, it was a trillion.
Bernanke: So we cut a few corners, so what? People should be grateful we’re saving them three hundred billion bucks on this deal.
Tom: And when you finally get the suckers to sign off on it, you’ll up the ante to a trillion two hundred billion and announce that things turned out to be more expensive than you originally estimated…
Bernanke: Who told you?
Tom: Nobody. I was making another of my educated guesses that have an eerie habit of proving themselves true in a remarkably short time frame.
Bernanke: Oh, okay. I thought…
Tom: You thought somebody in the Bush Administration had spilled the beans about your actual strategy to a mere peon like me.
Bernanke: No, no, of course not! You know, you have a very over-active imagination sometimes.
Tom: I’ll take that as a compliment. See here, Your Exalted Magnificence, just how stupid do you reckon the American people are, anyway?
Bernanke: Ech! Enschultig meir, but they put George W. Bush twice in the White House, farshtaist?
Tom: Far zikher, but if you give even a blind old cow gebrenteh tsores, it will kick you. I mean, at some point, even a gonif’s own mother will say “genug iz genug.”
Bernanke: You calling George W. Bush a gonif?
Tom: If the shoe fits, he should wear it.
Bernanke: Feh! Nifter-shmifter, a leben macht er?
Tom: Oh, in that case, excuse me, oh Lamed Vovnik des Gelt, but he put you in charge of the Federal Reserve. I thought you, ah, persons of the Hebraic Persuasion were supposed to be really good with money, and you, the gantseh macher with the PhD in economics from MIT, you ought to be the best, right? So, vos iz?
Bernanke: Politics, that’s what! And that’s why I’m talking to you!
Tom: Jews aren’t good at politics?
Bernanke: If we were any good at politics, do you think we would have a billion Moslems worked up into a frenzy, wanting to kill us all?
Tom: Boy howdy, now that you mention it oh Grand Kahuna, that’s a very insightful observation.
Bernanke: Right! Now, make with some insightful advice, vos gicher, alts besser!
Tom: Hey, wait a minute. The President’s speech is starting.
Bernanke: Hell, don’t bother listening to that. I’ve read the speech, and I can tell you exactly what he’s going to say.
Tom: What?
Bernanke: Well, first he’s going to explain, as blandly as possible, how trading in worthless mortgage derivatives made a lot of people on Wall Street obscenely rich, but now that everybody’s figured out those securities are total bull [expletive], we’re up to our necks in it. Then he’s going to try to scare the [expletive] out of everyone by describing what will happen if the Administration plan doesn’t get approved and put into action right away. Then he’s going blather about the virtues of Capitalism for a while, and end with some inspiring statements about how great American workers are, God bless us one and all, and so forth. Then he’s going to get the hell off camera like the Devil Himself was chasing his sorry [expletive].
Tom: Okay, thanks for the synopsis, Your Infallible Holiness.
Bernanke: You’re welcome.
Tom: But if that’s what Bush is saying right now, I doubt it will work.
Bernanke: Ah, me too. So what will?
Tom: Your Most Glorious Worship, I recommend that the FBI round up the five thousand richest and most obviously responsible Wall Street scum bags, and turn them over to the federal court system. Then, after trials that take no more than ninety days, the Government should confiscate every last penny of their ill-gotten gains, and every damn one of them should be locked up for life in the general population of a tough federal prison without possibility of parole, with big, nasty, horny drug kingpins, mass murderers, illegal alien smugglers and sex slave traders for cell mates.
Bernanke: What the [expletive] are you talking about? A lot of those people are Henry Paulson’s friends! He belongs to their country clubs! He belongs to their yacht clubs! They meet during intermission at Lincoln Center to socialize! He plays golf with them, for God’s sake! Ver dershtikt! Ver farblondjet! Um-be-shrien! Nishtu gedacht! Lig in drerd! Zol vaksen tzibbelis fun pipek! Kuck zich oys!
Tom: Sorry my advice upsets you…
Bernanke: Ich darf es vi a loch in kop!
Tom: Yeah, sure, and I need to waste my time thinking up miracles for the Bush Administration. If you don’t like it, hak mir nit kayn chainik, okay? Az och un vai! Gelt gait tzu gelt; gai feifen ahfen yam – es macht mir nit oys!
Bernanke: Gai tren zich!
Tom: Oh yeah? Dershtikt zolstu veren! Vus du vinsht mir, vinsh ikh dir!
Bernanke: Okay, okay… I’m sorry, you know I didn’t mean all that stuff. I’m just so upset… all my life, I’ve apple polished and [expletive]-kissed my way up the ladder of success… I was valedictorian at my high school… I lectured at the London School of Economics… I [expletive] Milton Friedman’s [expletive], God damn it…
Tom: Um, Ben, you really didn’t have to tell me that…
Bernanke: I was a fully tenured professor of economics at Princeton University! I’m a fellow of the Econometric Society and received the Distinguished Leadership in Government Award from the Colombia Business School! [Expletive]! And now, nobody will remember any of that! All they’ll remember is that I was Fed Chairman when the biggest [expletive]-storm since the Great Depression ran right up America’s [expletive]!
Tom: Oh, well – it’s better to be remembered for something like that than not to be remembered at all.
Bernanke: Gee. You think so?
Tom: No, not really. It was just the only thing I could come up with to say to you at the moment.
Bernanke: Sure. Goodbye, Tom.
Tom: Take care.
Bernanke: Uh, um… ah, I really, really didn’t mean that stuff I said.
Tom: No problem. Good night.