LETTER OF THE WEEK

Joe Bloggs

16 Working Class Ave

Strugglefield

Private Post-Code 

Donald J Trump
The Trump Organization
725 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Dear Donald (or Mr Trump)

You are no apprentice when it comes to great television. Without a doubt, you are a media extraordinaire whose creative vision is never distracted by the other duties in your life.

I realise you probably have 100 private calls going through to your exclusive voice mail right now, so I'll cut to the chase.

The jerks on Wall Street are up to their old tricks once again.

My mates in the Wall Street Journal reckon that 35 wall street firms including banks,hedge funds and money managing groups are preparing to pay a record $US 144 billion in compensation and benefits.

When I first saw the words "compensation" and "benefit", I immediately did my best impersonation of former NSW Premier John Fahey doing a Toyota "Oh what a feeling" leap into the air after Sydney was awarded the 2000 Olympics.

Unfortunately the landing wasn't so comfortable, especially when learning that all the energy I invested into my jump was for nothing.

It turns out these payouts which include bonuses, premiums and stock options are going up by 4 per cent on top of the $US 139 billion that was forked out last year. 

That's despite the fact that the profit of those firms is still 20 per cent less than what they were making in 2006. 

And you can bet that most of it is going back into the coffers of the same highly compensated individuals that pre-GFC proved to be as competent as the Wet Bandits in Home Alone 1.

They took a risk you and I would not take by developing a bad business model called sub-prime loans whereby banks started lending money to those who were at a high risk of defaulting on their loans, so they could buy a house. But too many people at the top lacked the courage to say "NO" when it mattered and the commonsense to listen to their head, not their greedy hearts. 

In other words, just like the Wet Bandits, these people turned on the taps, left the financial water running for too long and then flooded the world's most vulnerable individuals and groups with problems they neither instigated let alone could afford to fix. 

Dancing with the Unemployed quickly became a concept relevant to millions right around the world but with advertising revenue in the shit-house, obviously someone in TV land didn't want to give those in business another reason to tighten their belts. 

Julianne Schultz points out in the Griffith Review in her essay End of another Era, that "each of the major recessions of the past century has resulted in a profound economic re-structure; from agriculture to industry, from industry to services, from local to global." 

Nothing is mentioned about converting from insane, reckless cowboys to intelligent professionals. 

That's because today's article in the Wall Street Journal merely confirms that the culture of not thinking has not changed, that rather the boofheads are having to be dragged kicking and screaming into buying shares in that thing called a CONSCIENCE. 

The mistaken conventional wisdom of the high end of town is to take a top-down view; do whatever it takes to stay at the top.

Clearly there is a need for a new type of vaccination to cure a syndrome that too many of America's jet-flying, limousine lovin' financial leaders are suffering from; excessive executive total pay.   

And who better to inject a sense of common sense and reality back into the lives of these beavers living in financial fantasy land than television where powerful idiots who think five holiday homes are more important than creating an economic environment where we can all afford one home, can be subjected to entertaining forms of accountability. 
  
Super Wall Street Nanny would involve the top 30 richest executives on Wall Street being locked into an office block for six-weeks. They would be assigned the portfolios of 30 people who were left worse off during the global financial crisis and would have to make them financially better off. 

Each week the executives are judged on how much money they make their clients.  If they are worse off than when they started or if commissions on their clients profits are too high, the Wall Street Nanny can spank the execs in a number of ways by spinning the wheel of misfortune.

A great assortment of punishment prizes could be won by the talented stars of the show including such great economic windfalls as:

• Mansions being turned into homeless shelters
• High-maintenance luxury cars being crushed.
• A revelation being leaked to one of the wives about the six mistresses located in Bermuda, leading to a costly divorce settlement.

And if they take any form of incentive compensation or throw in anything remotely dubious and unnecessary into the paperwork, for the simple act of getting off their bums and turning up to work, they are given a bonus punishment: spending a night in a haunted house with Bernie Madoff.

For those not familiar with Bernie, he was an investment manager who set up a $50 billion fraudulent hedge fund that was perpetrated at the expense of rich professionals, not poor suckers.

Viewers could award the executive a mystery bonus by participating in a poll. I vote for a lead pencil with an eraser on the end to pre-emptively rub out all the future cock-ups in the finance and banking sector.

This might seem like an extreme punishment. But reality television should after all represent real conditions that real people really experience in the real world. 

Such a reality television program could send out a clear, fair and simple message to the greedy vermicious knids running the economic universe we all rely on: stop short-changing the less well-off and start giving them a chance to take a dump in a home they own. 

What do you think?

At last glance on the world market ,shares prices have risen in renewable resource supplier, Stupidity Unlimited Inc. 

Your creative pal,

Joe Bloggs