A MODERN CHRISTMAS CAROL

A MODERN CHRISTMAS CAROL
By WilliamBanzai7

STAVE 1: THE GHOST OF MARKET CAPITALISM

Market Capitalism was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of its burial was confirmed by the economists, the media pundits, the bloggers, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, the busted bankers, Secretary of the Treasury, the Chapter 11 undertakers, and the Commander in Chief. Scrooge signed it as well: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change', for anything he chose to put his hand to. Market Capitalism was as dead as a 1st generation IPOD.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about an old IPOD. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a Sony Walkman as the deadest piece of machinery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Market Capitalism was as dead as a 1st Generation IPOD.

Scrooge knew it was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and the free market zealots were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was Market Capitlism's loyal executor, its loyal administrator, its loyal assign, its loyal residuary legatee, its best friend and greatest mourner.

And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad September bankruptcies and bailouts, but that he was an excellent subprime banker on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bailout bargain.

The mention of Market capitalism's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Market Capitalism was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Trinity Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Market Capitalism. There it stood, months afterwards, above the headquarters door: Scrooge and Free Market. The firm was known as Scrooge and Free Market. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Uncle Milton, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a wily hand in the trading floor, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, conning, swindling conniving, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an unpolluted Hudson river oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his corner office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree until Christmas bonus season.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him on Wall Street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind busker's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of global finance, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "socialist nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy at his trading desk. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the H1N1 contaminated people on the Street go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them...

TO BE CONTINUED...