Wonkette
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested that a group of unemployed people who represent society’s most rapacious, morally flexible personalities sculpt the vulnerable minds of innocents. We speak, of course, of out-of-work bankers getting jobs teaching school children. Crazy Europeans! What will they think of next, milk in boxes?
More importantly, we should all be concerned that such a horrible idea might infect minds in our own United States, where unemployed bankers nearly outnumber school-aged children.
“Oh, but bankers know math,” say supporters, which just goes to show how little they were paying attention when banks somehow managed to take $500,000 worth of bundled subprime mortgages and leverage them into $5 trillion worth of debt which will be paid off by our great-grandchildren, who will have to work in uranium mines on Mars for the Chinese.
Brown: Jobless bankers can become teachers [AP]
Bankers does gud maths, yah?
Sure, bankers know math, but they also require the fresh blood of an innocent child to live. It’s a catch 22 really.
“Oh, but bankers know math,”, oh, ok, but is it “Nate Silver” math or “Karl Rove” math, because that matters…
I don’t think it’s a good idea having a generation of kids who learn that
2 + 2 = 45 Trillion with the right kind of leverage
There’s uranium on Mars? Sheeet, I’m sooo there!
It’s probably more of a “I know how many grams go into an 8-ball” kind of math.
…this is an AWESOME idea! And Octo-Mom can teach abstinence only classes!!!
No Banker Left Behind!
This will be reversed as soon as some parents wind up owing their gradeschooler ten million dollars.
As Jon Stewart said: “If I had listened I would have a Million dollars now. Of course, I would have had to have had 10 Million to start out with.”
The better idea is putting kids in charge of the banks.
Can’t we deport our financial professionals so they can bankrupt some other deserving country? Hmmmmmm?
some couldn’t count to 21 without getting naked. Their A.R.M. math is X%=fucking losers with a mortgage. I likes the math of just counting unemployed bankers at the soup kitchen or shelter, where I’m headed thanks to them. but I still haz my cellphone in case Michelle shows up.
If we had banker cats we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
What, no openings for ethics instructors?
that is one evil looking pussy
If I recall my history correctly, Britain tried this “we don’t need to train them, just run them out there” strategy in 1915. These untrained professionals proved very adept at stopping bullets.
Question: So Jimmy Has 2 oranges and 5 hungry friends. Jimmy wants to lend an orange to each of his hungry friends, but banking regulations require a certain amount of capital reserves per outstanding orange of debt. How can Jimmy lend each of his five friends an orange if he only has two and Federal banking regulations imposed by communist commissars in Washington require a certain level of capital reserves? (Show your work)
Answer: Jimmy can get around the capital reserve requirement by exploiting a legal loophole insuring his loans against default with AIG (which doesn’t have anything like the financial resources to back all the other banks it is also insuring, but never-mind that.) Once this is done, Jimmy can securitize the orange loans he’s made, sell them and then use the proceeds from the sale to score a few ounces of coke, party with rock stars and rooms full of hookers and laugh from the window of his Manhattan Penthouse as the financial world collapses around him due to all the oranges he lent out not being repaid.
I’d like to see Richard Fuld as a gym teacher.
Serolf Divad: Awesome.
ManchuCandidate: You forgot the most important part of the equation:
It’s 2 + 2 = 45 Trillion (minus bonus of 55 million)
Serolf Divad: Best laugh I have had all day. A+ for you.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to put targets on the bankers and force them to run and tell the kids to chase them and throw things? I’ve heard so much about this ‘obesity epidemic’ troubling the little chafers, and I’m sure the bankers would want to make a contribution to Murrica’s health and well-being…
Serolf Divad: goddamn teacher’s pet. Awesome.
Canmon (the Inadequate): Are Gonzo and David Addison still unemployed?
Serolf Divad: Yeah, but it’s still the lazy loser friend’s fault for taking the orange. He should have known better. USA! USA! USA!
Serolf Divad: You say “securitize” like it’s a bad thing.
ManchuCandidate: …you don’t seem to realize that the concept of “math” is a meta-physical “theory”! Kinda like “evolution”, “global-warming” and “sex-ed”; we don’t actually know if any of these things work! Therefore we should teach whichever concept or theory is the most Jesusfied!
Serolf Divad: win.
NoWireHangers: Serolf Divad: …you left out the part where ACORN forces you to lend them the oranges.
pff, mine’s better
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dy_FwJ1Jtls/SY4GZ7BFonI/AAAAAAAAAP0/OzQY1B-XyZU/s1600-h/bondmarketcat.jpg
Serolf Divad: Beautiful.
The only way Brown’s going to persuade bankers to teach is if he doesn’t mention to them that teachers don’t get an annual $10 million bonus. Not even a high-performers junket to a spa conveniently located near a Nevada brothel.
AngryBlakGuy: So effing good.
ManchuCandidate: actually, there’s no arbitrage in 2+2. You need a subtraction (net value of the asset - market price you’re paying) to generate a profit. Modern investment banking is about applying leverage of 100bn*($3-$2.9) = Profit of $1bn (to be distributed as bonuses and spent entirely on cocaine and bottle service). On the other hand, if the value of the junk you’re buying falls to $2, then you have a net loss of $9bn, you blame it on a “once in a century perfect storm”, get a government bailout, and retire to obscurity and sadness with nothing to console you except your past bonuses and your $50 million retirement compensation.
Serolf Divad:
I still would like to have your cyber babies. Call me!
Does this mean that teachers would get “golden parachutes” if their students flunk math?
shanemacgowan: Oh, would that we had the option today of sending these loathsome shylocks to the trenches without a gasmask.
Serolf Divad: You left out the part where 9 of Johnny’s closest friends also took out insurance with AIG in case Johnny didn’t get paid back, even though they had no oranges to start with. That way all 10 of them get to party wildly when Geithner slips AIG the money to make good on its insurance.
All hail Serolf Divad, The King of Kommenters.
And some of us remember when you could put your awesome graphics in these comments.
Serolf Divad: Dude, you forgot the part where you blame the inability to provide oranges to that one black kid in the class you gave a sliver of an orange peel so you could look good.
I’d rather get life in prison than be a school teacher
As I am a rookie poster, I can’t embed the link, but there was a hilarious story on NPR’s Money Talks podcast about a guy who, in the 3rd grade, managed to get all of the kids to give him their snacks and desserts at lunch for the promise of this future fabulous cake his mother was going to make someday. Worth a listen if you can find it. Perfect metaphor for this economic crises!
Winsome: ’sup Mr. Madoff?
“Oh, but bankers know math,” say supporters, which just goes to show how little they were paying attention…”
Look, give them a break. They are, after all, home schooled republicans! It isn’t easy “learnin’ yer siphers” in a cold trailer in some crappy Texas backwater (like Dallas), and managing to cheat your to the top, while keeping a little of it safe from the tax-and-spend democrats. It’s tough at the top….we should give them another tax break so we can keep our jobs safe from those union organizers that they always warn us about!
gmdoll: Easiest way to put a link in your comment is just copy the web address, as it appears in the long skinny window at the top of your browser, and paste it into your text.
Copy + paste.
Guys, you’re thinking about this all wrong. Make all the bankers teach middle-school math in the South Bronx. If nothing else, we could get a sitcom out of it. And possibly some dead bankers. Both are pretty innocuous outcomes, I’d say.
Anyone remember the old adage, “If you can, do. If you can’t, teach.”?
If you can’t, please don’t teach.
I wouldn’t let those assholes teach a dog to lick his balls.
Serolf Divad: Now I feel “less than.”
And so it begins…
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/substitute-teacher-said-drunk-class/story.aspx?guid=%7BF8C48229-38B2-46BE-B67E-A6B28D3FCD5B%7D&dist=msr_3
Also, if bankers were as adorable as Banker Cat, I would hate them far, far less.
<i…our great-grandchildren, who will have to work in uranium mines on Mars for the Chinese.
Brilliant. No snark intended.
Well, they can still serve as horrible examples.
I’m all in favor of ruining the future of America’s youth, what with their negro rock’n'rock, pushing me off the sidewalks while they speak into their Dick Tracy radio watches, intertubes, secret lingo words like “daddy-o” and “rad” and joy riding in my Hover ‘Round and recycling. And get out of my new tulip beds, you fucking, glue-sniffing beatnik hoodlums.
You know how you feel when you say something or make a suggestion before properly thinking it through? Gordon Brown knows.