Holy shit.
Reuters: Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, made the comments [regarding AIG executive bonuses] Monday in an interview with a radio station in his home state of Iowa.
"The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them (is) if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide," Grassley said.
"And in the case of the Japanese," he added, "they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."
ShareThis
4 comments:
The Fine Art of Bailout Seppuku
WilliamBanzai7
Bailout Seppuku (only gaijin or smelly White men refer to it as "hari-kari") is a highly ritualized road show performance, as complicated as chado (tea ceremony). The principle difference is that at the end of chado, one is merely nauseated from too much green tea, while at the end of bailout seppuku, ones career is zombie dead.
The first thing to do is to recruit an analyst, a kaishkunin. Contrary to what is thought, almost all forms of bailout seppuku do not technically involve suicide, but merely inflicting fatal humiliation upon oneself, preferably on the internet or the Daily Show hosted my Master Sensei Jon Stewart. The kaishakunin does the actual killing. If one is ordered to commit seppuku by the bafuku (United States Congress), it will generally appoint its own kaishakunin. Otherwise, one should ask a great iaijutsuka (practitioner of the technique of killing with a single key stroke) or a close personal friend (as hard as they are to find on Wall Street these days) to be one’s kaishakunin. If asked out of friendship, one may refuse on the grounds that one’s waza (blogging technique) is inadequate; if the request is repeated, however, one should consent gracefully, as flaws in technique will be forgiven (by the blogosphere).
Bailout Seppuku is ideally committed by in a corner office or a Board Room (trading floors should not be defiled by bailout death). The participant dresses in Saville Row bespoke underwear, to express purity of intention and sits in the seiza position (legs drawn up under the body so that one is actually sitting on one’s blackberry). A servant places the sanbo (a Bloomberg terminal) before one. It will be accompanied with a tin cup, a balance sheet (water soluable paper handmade from mulberry bark) and blogging acoutrements such as an executive assistant with a wireless laptop, and a copy of the ISDA Credit Dehault swap with standard attachments (disemboweling blade). This can be a tanto (SWAP) without collateral ceiling, wrapped in several sheets of toilet paper to provide a better grip. Real Wall Street samurai, however, use their own wakizashi (ginzu steak knives). If one is of limited experience, or judged too dangerous to be trusted with complex derivatives, an autographed copy of Alan Greenspan's book "Age of Flatulence" may be substituted for an actual blade.
The tin cup is filled with Thunderbird from the left, by an attendant using his left hand (this is indescribably rude under other circumstances). The person committing bailout seppuku then empties it in two drinks of two sips each (one sip would show greed, whilst three or more would show even more greed). This makes a total of four sips; shi, "four", also means "trader death" (Japanese just love these kinds of puns, especially when they’re about to kill themselves).
One then writes a hail Mary sales pitch in the waka style (five lines of five, seven, seven, five, and seven syllables). The poem should be graceful, fraudulent, misleading, deceitful and about results of operations and capital resources. Under no means should it mention that the fact you are about to be terminated with "good cause".
At this point, the person slips out of his bespoke boxers (kamishimo) and them under his chin to prevent him from doing something undignified like telling the truth or paying back last years bonus. He picks up the kozuka, and with his other hand picks up the sanbo and sticks it up his buttocks, to cause him to lean forward slightly in the proper attitude.
If the person committing is so young or so evil that Greenspan's book has been substituted, the kaishakunin executes a kirioroshi strike (vertical) over the head as soon as the person committing bailout seppuku touches the book to his stomach. Otherwise, he will typically wait until the person plunges the ISDA SWAP into his left eye, and draws it across to the right, with a sharp upward cut at the end. A Wall Street samurai who feels himself capable may then plunge the SWAP into his groin and then up his sorry ass. However, the kaishakunin is supposed to keep a sharp (heh, heh) eye out, and strike at the first sign of pain or hesitation in his principle.
After the executive committing bailout seppuku is finally humiliated, the sanbo, the kozuka, and the katana are all sold on EBAY.
approves.
FWIW, Grassley has, predictably, retracted the calling on people to kill themselves part of the quote.
Yeah, he called it "rhetoric." Asking executives to commit suicide is "rhetoric." I'll have to keep that one in my back pocket.
Post a Comment