Parody: We are Bankers! We are Men!
Boys, we’ve got a problem. Ladies have busted into our banking clubhouse. And naturally, they want to clean up. There’s Sheila Bair, the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Since Dubya appointed her, I thought she’d toe the line. Heck, her name means sweetheart in Australia. But she’s been no sweetheart to the banking industry. She’s finally leaving the FDIC pretty soon. Good riddance.
Summers, thanks for taking care of Brooksley Born. You were a real bully. Don’t be embarrassed by that. Larry, I gotta tell you it was brilliant when you gathered 13 of us in a room and called her, saying, “Brooksley! I’ve got thirteen bankers who say if you go forward with this derivatives reform, western civilization will collapse!” Somebody oughta write a book about it. Call it “Thirteen Bankers.” Oh, thanks for the note. I see some pointy headed MIT economist named Simon Johnson already did that.
Greenspan: Alan, my dear old friend, thanks for pitching in with Brooksley as well. You’re a trooper. You’ll go down in history as the best friend the banking industry ever had, next to Aaron Burr, who took out that pipsqueak Treasury Secretary AL Hamilton for questioning his right to womanize. I see you’re still shilling for us even in retirement, what with that poison pen letter you published in the Financial Times about how the Dodd-Frank reform won’t work. Keep it up, old fella. I’ll take you on my yacht again soon.
Shelby, you Alabamans are clever: You sent your chief aide Kathleen Casey to take care of Mary Shapiro at the Securities and Exchange Commission. So, whatever Mary says, Kathleen just says the opposite. You’re a good ol boy, Shelby
And before I forget, a shout out to Speaker Boehner: Nice try with that budget proposal that would have gutted the funding for the bank policing agencies. You’ll do better next time. Apparently, some people remember that little financial crash we caused that sent 24 million people to the unemployment ranks. I’m sure you’ll do better in the 2012 budget.
But the new problem is women and they are showing up everywhere now. There’s Kara Stein, staff director for Sen. Jack Reed’s subcommittee on securities; Lawranne Stewart, staffer for Rep. Barney Frank, who is the ranking Democrat on House Financial Services; Charla Ouertetani, banking chief for Rep. Maxine Waters, who ranks second to Frank; Noelle Melton, banking chief for Rep. Capuano, who ranks somewhere after, and Maloney has a female aide. Amy S. Friend worked for for Sen. Dodd, chair of the Senate Banking Committee; this peskiness goes on and on and on.
Even some of the trade associations are now overrun with women. Ann Yerger’s a problem at the Council of Institutional Investors, what with all her /their goody two-shoes corporate governance glop. Gimme a break.
Soon, these ladies will want into the senior levels of bank management. Already, it was a girl, Meredith Whitney, who first blew the whistle on the sub prime problem when she wrote a scathing analyst report on our brethren at Citicorp. That hurt. And she didn’t even come from business school; she was an English major from Brown University. And the ladies are climbing the ranks. Whoever elevated Sallie Krawkcheck to be CEO of Alliance Capital, and then put her high in Bank of America, please see me after this meeting?
We are bankers! We are Men!
Now we’ve got a real doozy of a problem. There’s a rhymes-with-witch they’re fixing to make the head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That’s the new agency charged with ending “unfair, deceptive and abusive” banking practices. Fellas, they’re going squarely after our business. Her name is Elizabeth Warren. She’s looks harmless enough, from Oklahoma and all, with kids. But I hired a P.I., and found out she was a professor at Harvard Law School. When she goes rogue, unlike Sara Palin, who doesn’t seem to be ruled by any sense at all, common or book-learned, Warren has too much sense … and now I’ve lost my train of thought. I’m just so flummoxed by her.
Warren says things like, “fine print is where the muggers hide.” And then she points to a Pew study showing that the average checking account contract is 111 pages. (Nice job, by the way, on those contracts. I don’t have a clue myself what they say.) We cannot let her get the appointment. Repeat, CANNOT let this happen.
Bachus: You hold hearings before that House Financial Services Committee you chair on how western civilization is going to come to an end if they allow that Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform Act to go into effect. Tell your subcommittee chairs to hold special hearings to go after Warren. Good job on that vote May 13 to emasculate the CFPB. That may go nowhere in the Senate, but it signals the President that we mean business. Mean business.
Shelby, you get every right thinking senator and send a letter to that Indonesian-born President of ours and tell him to steer very clear of Elizabeth Warren. Get Snowe and Collins from Maine as well. I know they voted for Dodd-Frank, and I realize they are girls, but it would be good for cover. Remind them that we are their Number 1 source of campaign contributions, and we can turn off that spigot just as easily as we turned it on. Don’t worry about this becoming a scandal. America is forgetting who caused the crash. I’ve got a college-age kid and she and her friends don’t have a clue that the reason they can’t find a good job is because her dear old dad and his cronies went on a bender with home mortgage lending, CDOs, CDSs, etc.
Like I said, you’re good ol’ boys and I know we can trust you.
I’ve had enough with uppity women. We don’t spend $1.4 million each day, as that pest Bob Borsage of the Campaign for America’s future has pointed out, on lobbying Congress for nothing. Our lobbyists outnumber those pesky consumer advocates at Public Citizen and PIRG and their little band of do-gooders at Americans for Financial Reform (gag me!) by 150-1. We enclose checks with our legislative memoranda. We OWN this town! I want results! Now, Hustle. We have to get Warren before she gets us.