BEIJING — In a show of friendship coupled with a desire to keep the world’s banking system from crumbling like a stale fortune cookie, the Chinese Olympic Committee (motto: “Phelps schmelps — what else ya got?”) – the organization responsible for putting on the successful Summer Olympic Games in Beijing as well as fielding China’s strong Olympic team – has offered to help Wall Street get back on the right track. Hari Chin, head of the committee, explained it to reporters this way: “Take away our ten-million-man army, 200 million sweatshop workers and 30 million incarcerated college students and we’re die-hard capitalists just like you Americans.”
Chin developed the program that made the Beijing Olympics a success and he was able to convince China’s government to drop its Internet censorship firewall for five seconds so he could send Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson an email outlining a similar five point plan he recommends to get the American economy performing like a Chinese high diver needing enough points to get a gold medal and avoid a career trawling for escaped alligators in Beijing’s sewage system. Here are the five recommendations from the email:
1. Pageantry. Get traders excited about the market again by replacing the boring opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange with five thousand cute young Broadway performers singing “If I Were A Rich Man.”
2. Intimidation. Like the Chinese athletes who psyched out their bigger and stronger opponents by repeating lines from Jet Li movies, investment bankers need to intimidate politicians, foreign investors and the FBI by getting Speedo to design a skin-tight pinstripe suit that looks like it can shave seconds off their trading times.
3. Training. Wall Street needs to scour the country for infants who show a preference for getting their daily nourishment from watching CNBC instead of breastfeeding and ship them off to secret training centers at the Harvard Business School where they will be isolated from reality and groomed for 20 years into world-class hedge fund managers.
4. Deception. Like the fake clean air piped into Beijing for two weeks from a remote village in Upper Mongolia, Wall Street needs to deceive the public into thinking everything is wonderful by pumping the smell of money through the ventilation systems in all U.S. banks, except for those in Texas which will pump the smell of oil.
5. Guilt. Just as the fabulous Olympic closing ceremonies made billions of people around the world feel guilty for not watching the Olympic games, Wall Street needs to end every trading day with a nationally-televised parade down Fifth Avenue (think Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with floats carrying people whose investments went up that day) making Americans feel guilty about not watching CNBC and investing in the market.
Chin also pointed out that it’s just a coincidence that these are the same five points he sent to Bill Belichick to help the Patriots overcome the loss of Tom Brady.