Tuesday 3 August 2010

The not so great depression

The homely, gnome-like and distinguishably gnarled personage stepped, stooped, bearded and bespectacled, out from the front of the recently re-branded Federal Reserve – now FED-UP! (it was thought that the addition of “UP!” would engender positive - uplifting - connotations) – and, saying nothing, he simply arched an eyebrow to indicate to the world markets that the “rescue package” was ready to be launched. His name was Ben Noah, Chairman of FED-UP! (also known as Ben Dover to his friends).

The packs of feral hacks - “media correspondents” - went hog wild.

With that one asymmetric see-saw of the brow, a signal was sent directly to the dingily-lit FED-UP! basement where a single clerk stood (at the phalanx of a specially trained troop of apes) and pressed the numeral "1" button on the single-keyed keyboard before him. This in turn triggered a wave of zero-only-keyboard ape key-clicking that rose to form a cricket-like cacophony.

Overhead, a luminescent digital-readout racked the unaccountably massing zeros after the one “1”.

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 [...] 0.

Soon filling the entire display like a caterpillar on speed until it moved to to-the-power-of mathematical shorthand.

It certainly beat the old fashioned printing press.

Soon the world was flooded with dollars watering down people's saving and investments until they were washed away in a tsunami of naughts; meanwhile, the board of FED-UP! were tasked with collecting two of every special investment vehicle they could lay claim to before they were all worthlessly extinct. Perhaps, sometime in the future, they could multiply again. The business cycle must go on.

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