This was forwarded to me by a friend. It’s important to laugh, when the only other option is to cry.
From: Minister of the Treasury Paulson
Subject: REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship
with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country
has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of
800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it
would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my
replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you
may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation
movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need
the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these
funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly
under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for
a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the
funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund
account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to
[email protected] so that we may transfer your commission
for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will
respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used
to protect the funds.
Yours Faithfully
Minister of Treasury Paulson
Don’t laugh. That email was sent to China and Dubai and they bought it.
Oh. Dear. God. Quick, let me get my checkbook…
Here’s the less-funny thing: if you’re an American taxpayer, Bush and his enablers are doing everything they can to hit reply all on this e-mail.
How does anyone with the tiniest bit of common sense think it’s a good idea to pass the bill Bush wants – that explicitly strips out congressional, regulatory, and judicial review – to the same fucking morons who brought us the Iraq War, retroactive immunity for spying telcos, and the Patriot Act?
We have to do something, of course, but every single one of these motherfuckers on Wall Street who are responsible for this disaster should be forced to liquidate all of their personal assets, dump it all into a cleanup fund, and spend some time seeing what life is like for the people whose lives they helped ruin.
And for the love of god, can we please stop pretending that deregulation is a good thing, and that Republicans have any fucking idea at all how to run . . . well, anything?
I’ve been reeling in one all day… I got tired off getting spammed on my craigslist posting, so i’m going all batman on them. Take that, thieves!
Here’s the conversation:
[email protected] wrote :Is the item available?
I said: The item is still available. I prefer face to face sales if possible.
She said: Mrs Enyola Walcott is my name, Am really interested in buying your
item list for my grandchild schooling abroad(west Africa)…I would
be making your payment through the fastest payment method(PayPal) so
do reply me with your paypal email address so as for me to make a
very fast follow up on the payment.Am offering you the amount of($1400) including the shipment.Shipment of the item would be through the USPS GLOBAL EXPRESS MAIL.
Presently am out of town , my daughter(my last born) just gave birth so i really need to be with her and make sure she and are baby is fine, due to my tight schedules now in AL,it would be very difficult for me to come and pick up the item or ship from me to him.Thanks for your understanding.
I replied: If Enyola Walcott is your name, how come your email is brandycarty? I only do face to face sales.
She(?) said: You just talked like an illiterate, so sorry to say…brandy carty is just a cousin’s name that died few years back, i only opened this email just for me to remember her from time to time….ok?i would be glad if you can re consider my offer, my paypal id [email protected], you can send me a payment request or your paypal email id if my offer is accepted thanks
I said: “…so i really need to be with her and make sure she and are baby is fine…”
She and are baby? Who’s illiterate now?
She said: lol… you are such a funny person, i never meant to talk to you like that,ok ? so sorry! i just hope you understand my concerns,ok? reply me if my offer is granted….no body is above mistakes though.
I said: Yeah, I think I’m pretty funny too. I only deal face to face, so I’ll need you to send a picture of your face please, here’s my picture so you’ll know I’m real. Thank you for your response. (Attached picture of super mario)
They haven’t emailed back yet. 😀
Don’t worry. Once the crisis has passed, the special powers will be voluntarily given up.
Where have I heard that before?
Unfortunately, the democrats don’t have any f**king idea at all on how to run …anything, either.
We need another party….ppl need to get out of the whole 2-party idea rut. It ain’t working.
Awesome. We should send this to the people of Nigeria. With all of the money their princes have received from us, they should be able to help bail us out. Right? Come on, am I right?
Hey… I hear the Republican Party is passing out handbaskets to everyone. I can’t wait to get mine…
I nearly spewed my coffee when I read this 🙂
UGH! Hubby talks about this day and night – he keeps track of all the politics stuff … reads everything he can on it. No need to turn on the TV, just ask Don LOL.
Anyways, it is a righteous mess. Members of government has forgotten that WE are their employers. They work for US. Not themselves. But no … all they care about is power and how to get richer. To hell with the rest of us.
It’s almost like the Roman empire all over again … a nation rises to ultimate power, and those at the top just didn’t know when to quit and ruins it all … and the nation crumbles to nothing. The US is heading that way if nothing is done to stop it now.
Now, back to that email/letter. I don’t think the whole US has 800 Billion Dollars, much less one person in order to write a blank check! And, I know we have a Secretary of Treasury – but when did we ever have a Minister(y) of Treasury ??? LOL
A new twist to the Nigerian scam emails.
Oh c’mon now what if some of us don’t have a college fund for our wee ones? What if we have, instead, a college loan to repay? So many question to pose back to … uh, the Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. And good thing the author name dropped Phil Gram because when Googled it brings up McCain sites.
@Jaz: it namechecks Phil Gramm because Phil Gramm was instrumental in passing the deregulation – supported enthusiastically by McCain until Monday – that lead directly to this crisis.
Having brought us to the brink (while ignoring the warning signs and questioning the patriotism of anyone who sounded the alarm) these people want, once again, to be given a complete blank check to do whatever they see fit to bring it to some undefined resolution.
Bush, McCain, and all the people who created this crisis through rampant deregulation and gutting of governmental oversight have no credibility. They can’t be trusted to act in the best interests of the American taxpayer, and anyone who heeds their demand to “just trust us” needs to have their head examined.
I was just thinking “I wonder if Wil has been caught up on the 700 Billion $ shenanigans going on in Washington?”
The Rude Pundit has a sharp (beware swear words and rated-R humor) take on this topic, too: http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/bailout-con-game-rude-pundit-is-not.html
The best thing to do would be to let the whole thing come tumbling down right now. The true issue is that American voters either don’t understand or can’t tolerate the fact that they are going to be punished for electing charlatans with big promises into office for the past generation. That punishment can be postponed, but not indefinitely.
““The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” – de Tocqueville.
I thought it was bad enough when they flipped the Nigerian email routine by claiming to be American soldiers in Iraq who were trying to get stolen money out of that country…
I’ve been expecting something drastic like this for over a year. I just didn’t know which way it was going to swing. Without the bailout we would see massive deflation — money supply dries up, people quit spending, companies lay people off, the remaining people take pay cuts (which keeps them at the same salary in deflation adjusted dollars), people with cash get an effective positive rate of return just by holding onto their money (this exasperates the deflation by the way), people with debt get screwed.
Instead the government is going to create massive inflation. People with savings get screwed. People with debt get off the hook. If you have any money, get it into something that is inflation resistant quick. By the way, real estate has tradiationally been a fantastic hedge against inflation. It is not right now. Real estate prices are pre-inflated. The doubling and tripling of prices over the last several years? All other prices are going to catch up to that. Expect $6/gallon for gasoline, $15/hour minimum wage, and $160k median incomes. And that $750k mortgage that Joe Public took out with his $90k salary? He is only going to have to pay back $375k in today’s dollars.
While discussing this several months ago with someone I expressed my inability to predict which way things would go. The response I got was, “America and most of its public is heavily in debt. Why on earth would the government allow deflation? Of course they are going to hyper-inflate our way out of this mess.”
You know, I actually replied to one of these once. I was editing a magazine at the time, and thought it would make for a good story — to explore just what happens if you get caught up in these scams. They never got back to me. I guess my personal information wasn’t worth enough for them?
WooHoo… Liked it… copied it to MY blog (obamausa.com) {Shameless Plug}.
Why is it I cringe whenever I see Bush says “Trust Me”?
And why can’t I edit my notes before I post them? *sigh*
What a fine piece of satire.
I love it.
Sadly, the satire is all too true. Paulson wants no law to restrict him (or his buds) in what they do — absolutely zero accountability.
Now, that’s not just inviting irresponsibility — that’s inviting acts that are otherwise criminal!
Total immunity for spending $700B as you see fit.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
The only thing missing are the rampant typos.
I’m politically conservative and I think this is BAD idea. You decry it as a pro-corporate bailout. I see it as the Gov’t buying up control of private property. Either way, it’s bad bad bad for the average US resident (citizen or otherwise). By the way, your Democratic Congress is just as much to blame for the current situation as Bush. Rather than decide which piece of crap political group is more at fault, can we just find some solutions?
Hilarious post though.
Awesome! Phishing scam? No wait, it’s yet another government bailout.
Bonus material: the executives in the wrecked companies are still getting their golden parachutes, walking away with millions of dollars in severance pay.
This mess prompted my first ever letters to my congressmen.
This parody gets it right on, on account of not being TOO much of a parody. I can’t believe our government thinks it can do something so monumentally STUPID.
I would love to know what the outcome would be if the bailout failed to pass. Seriously, can wall street not recover on its own? Isn’t this what Chapter 11 is for?
And did anyone notice that the two remaining investment banks went on and on about how they were ok until after the bailout was announced? Then suddenly they change their tune and switch their business to bank holding so they can get a cut of the bailout? Not to mention that Paulson was the CEO of one of those companies until 2006… Hrm…. Do I smell a conflict of interest here?
I say we all get together and start a new party. We can call it the Wheaton party. We’ll stand for peace, justice, role playing, and guitar hero. We’ll rock out with our cocks out and lead this country into a new era.
Who’s with me?