(it's a gag on T.S. Eliot, click here to read the original, or just skip to my previous entry where I make a very funny and completely appropriate joke)
Nihil timor populi, nihil concursus bonorum omnium, nihil hic munitissimus
habendi senatus locus, nihil horum ora voltusque moverunt? Patere tua
consilia non sentis, constrictam iam horum omnium scientia teneri
coniurationem tuam non vides? Quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris,
ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consilii ceperis, quem nostrum
ignorare arbitraris? O tempora, o mores!
I. THE BURIAL OF THE FED
September is the snidest month, reminding
Americans of our smallness, snatching
Votes and taxes, dragging out
Dull times with dullards.
Iraq and election buzz kept us busy, overgrowing
Wall Street in the shade of hedges, feeding
A weed or twelve with subprime mortgages.
Autumn surprised us,
Autumn certainly fucking surprised us, flooding over the Troopergate
With a torrent of actual seriousness; we stopped in the Starbucks
And stared at the flatscreen, muted with closed captioning,
And we were muted, and Paulson talked for three pages.
Blah blah crisis, blah blah rescue, blah SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION.
And I was like a child, because I thought someone
Would have at least mentioned this to me before the week before,
And I was frightened. Bill said, America,
America, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the Starbucks, we hold tight to our laptops.
I scan the job list instead of working, and consider Canada.
What is a hedge fund, what branches grow
Out of what is not there? Son of a bitch,
I could not say, or guess, for I had been shown only
A heap of broken images: lapel pins,
Hillaryites, car crashes, pregnant daughters,
And underinformed medical diagnoses. Only
There was a shadow of mounting crisis under it all,
(But I didn't know to look under that particular under it all),
And who knew that something different from either
Blahblah about change and not another four years
Or blahblah about experience and mavericks
Was the fear in a handful of headlines.
What I need -- from you -- because--Yet when they returned, late, from convening,
You're the bosses of the town essentially, and I know that
Is -- this is so hard. I mean there's
There's nothing easy about this
You know, this is like, you know
When you're gettin' your legs waxed
And they whip that thing off, real fast
That's what this is like. I need
More money. Okay. What I need
Is a hundred thousand dollars.
Their arms empty, their deal broken, I could not
Understand, and I really had heard of neither
Fannie nor Freddie before this, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the next Great Depression, or something.
Well I don't have any swimmin' in my show.
Suze Orman, my fiancee read her book,
I still don't understand, nevertheless
I know she's supposed to be readable for me,
Although I'm under 30. Here, said she,
Is your explanation: the Mortgage Thing,
(Those are parachutes of gold. Look!)
Here is Washington Mutual, that's your bank,
Or, it was your bank.
Here's an IRA (you don't have one), and a CD (same),
And here is the grad student, and his account,
In the double-digits, and some last ditch-help from his parents,
Which he is embarrassed to mention. I do not find
Any investments. You've got nothing to lose.
I see a House of Representatives, reaching across an aisle.
Thank you. If you see dear Mr. President,
Tell him I told him so:
But the new bailout will surely pass. It has to.
Unacceptable Swamp,
White dome beneath the red and yellow leaves,
These bitches takin' my money, still more,
I had not thought they could take even more.
Groans, loud, frequent, confused, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes upon the hill.
Turned up the news, and down Pennsylvania Avenue,
To where Saint Mary Toolface had kept the hours
Assuring us that everything was fine.
There my great aunt Kate saw me, stopped me, "Matthew!
You who spent on grad school what I'd saved!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Yadda yadda yadda. Will you eat this year?
Or will your ramen poisoning end it all?
Oh I remember the real Depression, Matt,
You're gonna wish that you had learned a trade!
Instead of learning French, you snotty shit!"
II. A DEBATE OVER DEBATING
The scrim behind them, like a sad Constitution,
Glowed different blues, a little darker where
At stage left, tie was crooked, lapel pin straight,
A lightened blue at right, above the white dome
(To keep him from looking too pasty pale),
Shined on and met the eye of Jim Lehrer
Who, though he felt the crisis coming on,
Was glad to see both candidates show up,
From suspension threats and witty quips;
At podiums of wood and plexiglass
They stuttered, proffered strange synthetic fumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours...
(To be continued later)
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