Wednesday, March 31, 2010

HUMPTY BANKER

However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was HUMPTY BANKER himself. `It can't be anybody else!' she said to herself. `I'm as certain of it, as if 2Big2Fail were written all over his face.'

It might have been written a hundred times, easily, on that enormous face. Humpty Banker was sitting with his legs crossed, like a Turkish Derivatives Trader, on the top of a high wall — such a narrow one that Alice quite wondered how he could keep his balance — and, as his eyes were steadily fixed in the  direction of a pile of greenbacks, and he didn't take the least notice of her, she thought he must be a stuffed figure after all.

`And how eggactly like a rotten 2Big2Fail systemic egg he is!' she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fail.

`It's VERY provoking,' Humpty Banker said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, `to be called 2Big2Fail — VERY!'

`I said you LOOKED like a rotten 2Big2Fail egg, Sir,' Alice gently explained. `And some eggs are very rotten, you know, she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment.

`Some people,' said Humpty Banker, looking away from her as usual, `have no more common sense than a quant!'

Alice didn't know what to say to this: it wasn't at all like conversation, she thought, as he never said anything to HER; in fact, his last remark was evidently addressed to a  United States Senator standing on the back of the wall — so she stood and softly repeated to herself:

'Humpty Banker sat on a wall.
Humpty Banker was just too great to fail.
All the Fed's Bankers including the Chairman
Were sure to let Humpty do it again.'

[Adapted from Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll)

On 13 Bankers

1 comment:

  1. Very good. I hope they listen to Volker and Simon Johnson.

    These bankers seem like they are "ucking funqualified" to quote Jimmy Fallon (on Sarah Palin) to be running anything like a bank, given their track record.

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