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Our First Banksgiving

November 27, 2009 – Comments (4)

Thanksgiving is as American a holiday as they come.  We grow up hearing the story of how the European settlers joined with the Native Americans to have a harvest feast and give thanks to their communal spirit and for all the blessings the land had given them.

This however, is Banksgiving.  It is a feast of TARP money, with a side of bonus packages, cronyism, and the wonders of “too big to fail.” All set to a lovely centerpiece featuring a Cornucopia full of toxic assets. 

So I’m here to give thanks to all the “wonderful blessings” the banking industry bestowed upon us this past year.  Because if anyone got the equivalent of a small pox infested blanket out of this mess, it certainly was the American taxpayer.

This is what I’m "bankful" for learning from our nations lending institutions:

Dream Big:  The banks taught us to dare to dream.  Clearly someone dreamt of a fairytale future where home prices did nothing but go up and everyone had gumdrop buttons.  It was glorious!  How else does one explain complex financial models that when faced with falling home prices broke faster than that $20 Rolex I bought outside the Smithsonian during my most recent trip to DC.  (He said it was "authentic!!!")  And how about these toxic assets created by carving up the worst part of the national mortgage turkey and stuffing it into some sort of collateralized debt sausage so a ratings agency could slap “triple A” on it. If only we all dared to dream so big.

Regret Nothing. The best part about a dream, it’s a consequence free environment.  You get to wake up and feel no repercussions.  Thanks to bailout funds, the bonuses continue all over Wall St. Where is my spa retreat and retention award?  Unfortunately, for some reason I must be in a coma since I can’t seem to wake up from a nightmare of persistently high unemployment coupled with one in four people being under water in their mortgage.

Feign Righteousness. Finally I'm grateful you can admit your moral superiority so you don't only lord your intellectual superiority over us Mr. Blankfein. But while you mentioned you and your company, Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) were doing "God's work" you neglected to mention which God that was. Perhaps it is Ares, Greek God of War laying waste to all before him; or maybe it's a flying spaghetti monster. Oh wait, I know, it is “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”  Glad we cleared that up.

I will say this, given everything that has happened I appreciate what I do have even more, including the love of my family and friends.  At least until I can figure out how to cut that love up into different tranches and sell it to unsuspecting hedge funds.

-Dave (TMFGreenwave)