It's Groundhog Day!

ANTI-BULLYING BILL
SOUGHT BY BANKS

By Samuel Z. Insull
Financial Editor with
Bella Whiner in Old Sludgebury, Mass.

In the wake of the piteous cries of banking supremos like JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon and Barclay's Bob Diamond, bank lobbyists are now pushing legislation both in Washington and in state capitols that would make it crime to bully, harass, injure, denigrate, or otherwise hurt the feelings of any bank or bank executive.

Dimon had told his fellow plutocrats during their annual stockholder-paid junket [Surely, high level economic confab? – Ed] in Davos, Switzerland that he could no longer bear the obloquy heaped on international banking giants just because they had ruined the world economic system and the lives of hundreds of millions, not to mention entire countries. "We said we were sorry," Dimon said.  "What more do they want?"

 
Some of Wall Street's most highly paid executives spend hours each day locked in their private bathrooms crying due to the unconscionable abuse they have had to endure.

In an interview with sycophants at Investor's Business Daily, Dimon said that the endless criticism emanating from Washington and Paul Krugman's blog was taking an enormous toll on his feelings of self-worth and self-esteem. "It's getting so bad," he said, "that some mornings I don't even feel like getting into my limo and riding my private elevator to my gigantic office suite." He said that his driver, first morning assistant, and coffee guy often spend an hour persuading the harried CEO to leave his 14-room penthouse triplex on Central Park West.

The next day, the official voice of plutocracy, the editorial page of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, blamed "liberal terrorist-coddling Kenyans" for sabotaging America's economic future through their relentless hounding of Dimon and other vulnerable CEO's like Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein. "What would happen to our country if white native born Americans like Blankfein and Dimon could no longer withstand the relentless taunting and teasing of lefty mean girls like Elizabeth Warren? Why doesn't she go back to the Kremlin on the Charles with the rest of her Red rabble-rousers?"

The perceived need to protect the delicate sensibilities of middle aged bankers is threatening to become a major political issue in the Nation's Capital. "We can't let upstanding contributors [Surely, executives? – Ed.] like Dimon and Diamond fear that when the open their newspapers while being driven to work, they will be called terrible names like 'greedy pig' and 'shameless bastard," said House Speaker John Boehner. The lachrymose GOP leader then puddled up in silence, apparently overcome by the specter of delicate financial titans being subjected to verbal abuse.

Well-dressed white men with advanced degrees paid by the Bizarro-academic Heritage Institute immediately published a study purporting to show that 68% of financial executives might drop out of capital markets if such abuse continued and that only 14% believed that their eight-figure pay packages were sufficient compensation for the verbal gauntlet they have to endure, or would have to endure if they ever moved out of their well-guarded executive suites and boardrooms.

"We have to realize that rich middle-aged white men are in a very difficult position, as they try to cope with the burden of their immense wealth and power. The least little jape in a Government report or New York Times column could send them over the edge," said Heritage Institute "Professor" and former Bush (and Goldman Sachs) coatholder Josh Bolten.

Utah man Wilfred M. Romney recalled how, when he still supposedly lived in Massachusetts, he was so scarred by the taunting he received from bullies like the Boston Glob op-ed columnists for employing undocumented aliens while slamming political opponents for not cracking down on them that he could barely drag himself to partners' meetings at Bain Capital. "Fortunately, since I was the guy who whacked up the $200 million bonus pool, I realized I had to pull myself together, fire a few wetbacks, and get to work," he said. "But not everyone has my strength of hair [Surely, character? – Ed.]."

In response to such outrages, Speaker Boehner said that he would introduce legislation making it a crime to blame the recent or any future economic catastrophe on anyone besides government employees and Democratic politicians. "Only then can we truly restore civility to our political discourse," he said.

Local reaction to the plight of bank supremos forced to endure criticism before cashing their $137 million option packages was mixed, reports Bella Whiner in Old Sludgebury. A survey of dispossessed families camping out illegally in Sludge River State Park because those bankers had foreclosed on their homes after peddling incomprehensible toxic waste mortgages and then refusing to mark them down to their true value revealed a surprising amount of sympathy.

"I know if I lived in a ten million dollar house and had another $200 million in the bank, my biggest problem would probably be people calling me names. Right now, though, the battery in my car died and I'm trying to figure out how to get my kids to the soup kitchen before they starve," said a heavyset woman calling herself "Jane Swift."