Wednesday, September 24, 2008

HANK'S RESTAURANT
(Arlo Guthrie--Alice's Restaurant)
Adapted by William Banzai7

This song is called Hank's Restaurant, and it's about Hank Paulson, and the
restaurant, but Hank's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Hank's
Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Hank's Bailout Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Hank's Bailout Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the Federal Reserve Bank
You can get anything you want at Hank's bailout Restaurant

Now it all started Thanksgiving Day 2008- when my friend Warren and I went up to
visit Hank at the restaurant, but Hank doesn't sit in the there, he sits near a fella named Blank in Goldman Sachs
Wall Street office, in a big glass corporate tower. And being in a tower like that, they got a lot of
room downstairs. Havin' all that room, they decided that they didn't
have to take out their subprime garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the toxic subprime garbage in there, and we decided it'd be
a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the non-performing asset dump. So
Warren and I took the 700 billion tons of subprime garbage, put it in the back of a red Humvee
stretch limo, including CDSs and CDOs and other implements of mass financial destruction and headed
on toward the non-performng asset dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the
dump saying, "No Dumping on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dump
closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off
into the sunset looking for another place to put the financial garbage.

We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the
side road there was another fifteen foot hole and at the bottom of the
hole there was a pile of Dot.com garbage, prospectuses, analyst reports etc. And we decided that one big pile
is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we
decided to throw our's down.

That's what we did, and drove back to the restaurant, had a thanksgiving
dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the
next morning, when we got a phone call from FBI Director Mueller. He said, "Kid,
we found your name on an offering circular at the bottom of a half a ton of
subprime garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And
I said, "Yes, sir, Mr. Director, I cannot tell a lie, I put that OC
under that garbage."

After speaking to Director Mueller for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we
finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down
and pick up the subprime garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the
NY Bureau office. So we got in the red Humvee Limo with the
CDOs and CDSs and implements of financial destruction and headed on toward the FBI's NY Bureau office.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that the Director coulda done at
the FBI's office, and the first was he could have given us a medal for
being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and
we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out
and told us never to be see driving toxic asset backed garbage around the vicinity of Wall Street again,
which is what we expected, but when we got to the FBI's office
there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was
both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said Mr. Mueller sir, I don't think I
can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the car and drove to the
quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about Wall Street, where this happened here, they got three Federal regulators, the SEC, the CFTC and the FBI, but when we got to the
Scene of the Crime there was all kinds of state and federal regulators running around, this
being the biggest financial crime of the last five years, and everybody wanted to
get in the newspaper story about it. And the FBI, they was using up all kinds of
equipment that they had hanging around the antiterrorist bureau.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, finger prints, dog smelling prints, and
they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each
one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach,
the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to
mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Director Mueller said he was going to put
us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your
wallet and your belt." And I said, "I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I
said, "did you think I was going to hang myself for subprime fraud?"
Mueller said he was making sure, and friends Director Mueller was, cause he took out the
toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took
out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the
toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. The FBI Director
was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Hank
(remember Hank? It's a song about Hank), came by and with a few
nasty words to Mueller on the side, Bailed us out using Federal taxpayer money, and we went back
to the restaurant, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat.

You can get anything you want, at Hank's Bailout Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Hank's Bailout Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the Federal Reserve Bank
You can get anything you want, at Hank's Bailout Restaurant

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