Customer: Good Morning.
Bonds: Good morning, Sir. Welcome to the Goldman Sachs Penn Station West Branch, Upper Level!
Customer: Ah, thank you, my good man.
Bonds: What can I do for you, Sir?
Customer: Well, I was, uh, sitting at Tracks just now, on the Lower Level, skimming through "End the Fed" by Ron Paul, and it suddenly hit me that my entire financial planning regimen had come over all destitute.
Bonds: Destitute, sir?
Customer: Impoverished.
Bonds: Eh?
Customer: Ahhh, I'm loosing me scratch!!!
Bonds: Ah, your portfolio has tanked!
Customer: In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, "A little visit to my banker will do the trick," so, I curtailed my a-Pauling activites, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the maximization of some legal tender!
Bonds: Come again?
Customer: I want like to make an investment.
Bonds: Oh, I thought you were complaining about the bazouki player! *
Customer: Oh, heaven forbid: I am one who delights in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse!
Bonds: Sorry?
Customer: 'Ooo, Ah lahk a nice tuune, 'yer forced too!
Bonds: So he can go on playing, can he?
Customer: Most certainly! Now then, some financial products please, my good man.
Bonds: (lustily) Certainly, sir. What would you like?
Customer: Well, eh, how about a little Bank Loan?
Bonds: I'm a-fraid we're fresh out of Bank Loans, sir.
Customer: Oh, never mind, how are you on Debt Financing?
Bonds: I'm afraid we never do that at the end of the week, sir, we do it straightaway on Monday.
Customer: Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout yeoman, four ounces of Prime Brokerage, if you please.
Bonds: Ah! It's beeeen on order, sir, for two weeks. Was expecting it this morning.
Customer: 'T's Not my lucky day, is it? Aah, Urban Investments?
Bonds: Sorry, sir.
Customer: Fixed-Income Securities?
Bonds: Normally, sir, yes. Today our Fixed-Income man is on holiday**.
Customer: Ah. Asset Management?
Bonds: Sorry.
Customer: Private Equity? Clearing Services?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Any Closed-Ended Investments, per chance?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Private Wealth Management?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Execution Services?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Transition Services?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Hedge funds?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Money Markets?
Bonds: (pause) No.
Customer: Futures?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Commodities
Bonds: No.
Customer: Pensions, Mortgages, Small-Cap, Mid-Cap, No-Load, High-Yield, Venture Captial, Public Trades, Illiquid Assets?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Securitised Derivitives, perhaps?
Bonds: Ah! We have Securitised Derivitives, yessir.
Customer: (surprised) You do! Excellent.
Bonds: Yessir. It's..ah,.....they're a bit unstable...
Customer: Oh, I like them unstable.
Bonds: Well,.. They're very unstable, actually, sir.
Customer: No matter. Fetch hither the instruments that make possible public and private distribution of structured finance Mmmwah!
Bonds: I...think they're a bit more unstable than you'll like, sir.
Customer: I don't care how $&#*ing unstable they are. Hand them over with all speed.
Bonds: Oooooooooohhh........!
Customer: What now?
Bonds: We don't offer them in the U.S., sir.***
Customer: (pause) Don't you?
Bonds: No, sir. Sorry.
(pause)
Customer: Risk-Weighted Assets?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Mergers ?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Acquisitions?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Hostile Takeovers?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Reference Securities?
Bonds: No, sir.
Customer: You...do have some financial products, don't you?
Bonds: (brightly) Of course, sir. It's a bank shoppe, sir. We've got--
Customer: No no... don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.
Bonds: Fair enough.
Customer: Uuuuuh, Bonds?
Bonds: Yes?
Customer: Ah, well, I'll have some of those!
Bonds: Oh! I thought you were talking to me, sir. Mister Bonds, that's my name.
Customer: Equity Capital Markets?
Customer: Uuh, Exchange Traded Warrants?
Bonds: no
Customer: Treasury Bills,
Bonds: no
Customer: Convertible Arbitrage,
Bonds: no
Customer: Synthetic Capital Gains,
Bonds: no
Customer: Hybrid Securities,
Bonds: no
Customer: Environmental Markets,
Bonds: no
Customer: Venezuelan Oil Speculation?
Bonds: Not today, sir, no.
(pause)
Customer: Aah, how about Currency?
Bonds: Well, we don't get much call for it around here, sir.
Customer: Not much call!--It's the single most popular form of money in the world!
Bonds: Not 'round here, sir.
Customer: {pause}and what IS the most popular form of money 'round hyah?
Bonds: Collaterized Debt Obligation, sir.
Customer: IS it.
Bonds: Oh, yes, it's staggeringly popular in this manor, squire.
Customer: Is it.
Bonds: It's our number one best seller, sir!
Customer: I see. Uuh...Collaterized Debt Obligation, eh?
Bonds: Right, sir.
Customer: All right. Okay. 'Have you got any?' he asked, expecting the answer 'no'.
Bonds: I'll have a look, sir... nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnno.
Customer: It's not much of a bank shoppe, is it?
Bonds: Finest in the district!
Customer: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.
Bonds: Well, it's so clean, sir!
Customer: It's certainly unemcumbered by legitimate investment opportunity....
Bonds: (brightly) You haven't asked me about Credit Default Swaps, sir.
Customer: Would it be worth it?
Wenslydale: Could be....
Customer: Have you --SHUT THAT BLOODY BAZOUKI OFF!
Bonds: Told you sir....
Customer: (slowly) Have you got any Credit Default Swaps?
Bonds: No.
Customer: Figures. Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me
Bonds: Yessir?
Customer: Have you in fact got any financial products here at all?
Bonds: Yes,sir.
Customer: Really?
(pause) Bonds: No. Not really, sir.
Customer: You haven't.
Bonds: Nosir. It's all smoke and mirrors. I was deliberately stealing your trust and goodwill, sir.
Customer: Well I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to shoot you.
Bonds: Right-0, sir.
The customer takes out a gun and shoots the banker. †
Customer: What a senseless waste of human life.
** in fairness, Lloyd is not personally named in the fraud suit the Securities & Exchange Commission has brought against Goldman Sachs. That said, he has been spending some time "out of the office" this week...
*** this is true. In fact, most of the mumbo-jumbo financial terms I cribbed straight from Goldman Sachs.
† For the record, no one here at BlaiserBlog advocates the actual shooting of bankers. Metaphorically, however, is up for discussion.
Thanks for reading, and please remember that just because the most easiest way to parody your name is "Blankchek" doesn't mean that you haven't been worth
$1.15 EVERY SECOND FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS...
POOR FELLA!
OMG...that was so terrifically funny! I could see it all happening in my head. I'd not have shot him w/a gun though! Not that I'm against the notion of taking out one or more of those financial wizards. It's just I'd rather use those really thick rubber bands that come around asparagus. Besides, there's all that paperwork and legal stuff one must do if one inadvertantly lives out a scene from Dirty Harry.
ReplyDeleteBesides those thick rubber bands HURT if you get one upside the head. And they leave a great mark behind, too. I figure we could line up the nimrods who are 'the bank' and make them run a 100 yard long rubber band gauntlet. OUCH!
-Avery
Brilliant. I can't believe I hadn't thought of that cheese/bank shop similarity before. Cracked me up.
ReplyDeleteLove the statistic for our good friend Lloyd's compensation. Here's one back: if Lloyd spoke to 1000 average Americans, he and his audience would be making money at the same rate.