I pledge to issue one (1) vagrant-class ‘barrel with straps’ to each man, woman and child
Dear Government of America:
Word has it you’ve been flashing a serious wad of cash, strutting around like the pimp of Recessionville, tempting and teasing everyone with your $700 billion. Maybe we’ll bail out your financial system, maybe we won’t, okay we’re going to bail out your financial system and—PSYCHE!
Let me make this simple for you. Forget about your treasury secretary, who wants to use the money to prop up ailing Wall Street firms and buy failing mortgages. This approach is, in the parlance of international finance, way stupid.
I offer a more prudent course. In these perilous times, you need to turn to a surefire cure for your economic maladies. You need to invest your $700 billion not in Wall Street but in Canada. In a very specific part of Canada.
The part of Canada that’s me.
Let me explain to you, the Government of America, why investing $700 billion in Scott Feschuk will help revive your economy, set you back on the road to prosperity and get the Visa people off my case.
From what I remember of the five economics lectures I attended in university, hangovers are a real bitch at 8 a.m. But what’s relevant here is the theory of trickle-down economics: you give a sweet, sweet ride to the people at the very top (i.e., me) and, thanks to economic gravity or whatever, stuff starts to “trickle down” to the jerks who used to look at me funny on the bus. Bingo—everyone’s solvent again.
But it’s not just about theory. When you invest your $700 billion in me, Scott Feschuk, I will immediately enact a five-point action plan to personally save the American economy:
1. I will buy a motorcycle. Admittedly, this will do very little to directly aid economic growth. But remember: so much of an economy’s performance these days is related to consumer confidence. Seeing me on my shiny new motorcycle, men across America will think to themselves, “Who is that winged god of speed and thunder?” while women think, “Perhaps that mysterious motorcycle man will pull over and have sex with me.” My consumer confidence? Through the roof.
2. I will pull over and have sex with the women who were thinking that thing I just said. I emphasize: it’s all about confidence. My confidence. Now do any of you know how to get out of these leather pants?
3. Not only will I purchase your defaulted mortgage, I will actually live in your house. Sorry about the coffee table.
4. I will get CHiPs back on the air. That show was awesome. And reviving it just might be tantalizing enough to lure Erik Estrada out of his current career: reminding everyone he used to be on CHiPs.
5. I will buy every single thing in the United States and declare myself Super President For Life. Sounds impossible—but a Japanese firm was just able to purchase the entire European and Middle Eastern operations of collapsed Lehman Brothers for a grand total of $2. Shouldn’t be long until I can pick up the Dallas Cowboys, Pearl Jam’s back catalogue and anywhere from three to seven Baldwin brothers for a five-spot.
I admit there will be a brief “transition” period before things start trickling down. As a stop-gap measure, I will personally issue one (1) genuine vagrant-class “barrel with straps” to every certifiably naked man, woman and child in the United States. (Legal disclaimer: I am not responsible for thigh splinters or the genital condition known as “oak rot.”)
In addition, I have prepared these Talking Points of Hope, which I will personally deliver via the prevailing media of post-crisis America: transistor radio, smoke signals and Yelling Really Loudly.
Dear huddled masses:
As a nation, you have long prided yourself as a capitalist society, guided by what Adam Smith famously described as the “invisible hand” of the free market. Turns out even an invisible hand can punch you square in the nuts.
[Pause for laughter.]
Ah, but seriously.
You may worry in these trying times that you and your family may soon be reduced to eating roadkill for sustenance. I am here today to assure you—that will not happen! It will not happen because none of you can afford the gas to drive a car. And take it from me: when you hit a raccoon with your bicycle, it doesn’t become your dinner—it becomes your enemy. Three words: pedal faster, Mommy.
I can tell you tonight that economic news is not entirely grim. Sure, many of you have lost your homes, your savings and your livelihoods—but on the bright side, Erik Estrada wants me to do a cameo on CHiPs.
In conclusion, I humbly submit—just as Roosevelt declared in a similarly grave moment of economic peril—that although all seems dark and ominous, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself. And also the vast hobo armies of Mississippi.