Every day, yet another bank in America totters, teeters and limps itself into a recovery package. Pink slips are more common than blank cheques on Wall Street. Millionaire investment analysts are now hawking their black Armani suits. And hedge fund managers have turned to snipping hedges for a living. Banks with names likes WaMu and Wachoa are now conversation pieces in places as central as Jhumritalaya. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (who on earth would call their investment companies that?) are household names across the world. But unfortunately, while the banks collapse, merge, de-merge, buy themselves over and bail themselves out, in complex financial deals that only bankers and lawyers can decipher, things are going to get far more serious.
While the Porsches and swimming pool-attached condos are being sold to the first bidder, a lot of tightening up is going to be happening across the average Wall Streeter's spending habits. So, instead of eating two Big Macs at lunch, Fred from Delaware will make do with just one. Which is going to severely affect Mac's bottomline (Not to mention Fred's waistline.) Like the banks, Mc Donald's will be forced to scout for an active buyer too. Last heard, Saravanaa's from Chennai was interested in taking them over. Proposed items on the new menu include waiters in every McSaravana restaurant reciting the days' offer at 60 kmph, and Maharaja mini idlies.
And what if Kentucky Fried Chicken had to suddenly down its shutters one day too even after fighting for so long to enter this country? Buckets of frozen chicken wings, destined to be "finger lickin' good" in 2010, would be suddenly classified as radioactive waste. Centuries later, archaeologists digging up a bucket would find it just as the good captain intended it to be frozen solid sawdust!
Treatises on the diets of homo-sapiens circa 2008 would follow but then, that's another story. The unlimited expense accounts at Saks and the martini lunches are a thing of the past too. Ex-wives can no longer afford to make the silicone and botox payments. (No money in the bank, so no money to upkeep my body, you know!) How on earth would they go around collecting unpaid EMIs for silicone implants (You know what I mean, if you don't pay for a car, they seize it!).
Necessities of life, like Disneyworld would disappear into a joint venture with Sammy's Dreamland. In Mickey Mouse's new avatar as Ravi Rat, he'll dance around trees as he romances Minnie-mol Mouse, and beats up baddies in the rat kingdom. The God of Rats will grant him a boon of eternal youth.
And Ravi and Minnie-mol will live happily ever after happier than they were in Orlando with its divorce rate, fake sun tans and crashing banks.
