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Recession
Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In
Washington--(from
the Onion) A panel of top business leaders testified
before Congress about the worsening recession
Monday, demanding the government provide Americans
with a new irresponsible and largely illusory
economic bubble in which to invest.
"What
American needs right now is not more talk and
long-term strategy, but a concrete way to create
more imaginary wealth in the very immediate
future," said Thomas Jenkin, CFO of the
Boston-area Jenkins Financial Group, a bubble-based
investment firm. "We are in a crisis, and that
crisis demands an unviable short term
solution."
The
current economic woes, brought on by the collapse of
the so-called "housing bubble," are
considered the worst to hit investors since the
equally untenable dot-com bubble burst in 2001.
According to investment experts, now that the option
of making millions of dollars in a short time with
imaginary profits from bad real estate deals has
disappeared, the need for another spontaneous
make-believe source of wealth has never been more
urgent.
"Perhaps
the new bubble could have something to do with
watching movies on cell phones," said
investment banker Greg Carlisle of the New York firm
Carlisle, Shaloe & Graves. " Or, say
medicine, or shipping. Or clouds. The manner of
bubble isn't important--just as long as it creates a
hugely overvalued market based on nothing more than
whimsical fantasy and saddled with the potential for
a long-term accrual of debts that will never be paid
back, thereby unleashing a ripple effect that will
take nearly a decade to correct."
Congress
is currently considering an emergency economic
stimulus measure, tentatively called the Bubble Act,
which would order the Federal Reserve to begin
encouraging massive private investment in some
fantastical financial scheme in order to get the
nations's false economy back on track.
Current
bubbles being considered include the handheld
electronics bubble, the undersea-mining-rights
bubble, and the decorative office-plant bubble.
Additional options include speculative trading in
fairy dust-which lobbyists point out has the
advantage of being an entirely imaginary commodity
to begin with-and a bubble based around a
hypothetical, to-be-determined product called
"widgets."
The most support thus far has gone toward the
so-called paper bubble. In this appealing scenario,
various privately issued pieces of paper, backed by
government tax incentives but entirely worthless,
would temporarily be given grossly inflated
artificial values and sold to unsuspecting
stockholders by greedy and unscrupulous
entrepreneurs.
"Little pieces of paper are the next big
thing," speculator Joanna Nadir, of Falls
Church, VA said. "Just keep telling yourself
that. If enough people can be talked into thinking
it's legitimate, it will become temporarily
true."
Demand for a new investment bubble began months ago,
when the subprime mortgage bubble burst and left the
business world without a suitable source of pretend
income. But as more and more time has passed with no
substitute bubble forthcoming, investors have begun
to fear that the worst-case scenario-an outcome
known among economists as "real-world
repercussions"-may be inevitable.
"Every American family deserves a false sense
of security," said Chris Reppto, a risk analyst
for Citigroup in New York. "Once we have a
bubble to provide a fragile foundation, we can begin
building pyramid scheme on top of pyramid scheme,
and before we know it, the financial situation will
return to normal."
Despite the overwhelming support for a new bubble
among investors, some in Washington are critical of
the idea, calling continued reliance on bubble-based
economics a mistake. Regardless of the outcome of
this week's congressional hearings, however, one
thing will remain certain: The calls for a new
bubble are only going to get louder.
"America needs another bubble," said
Chicago investor Bob Taiken. "At this point,
bubbles are the only thing keeping us afloat."
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