by Herman Sillas
I finally found a government job I’d be willing to take. The country’s economic and political wizards are still trying to figure out the title for the position, Moneybagman? Mr. Fixit? Whatever they call it, it doesn’t matter to me. Seven billion dollars come with it. That’s incentive enough.
Best of all, I won’t have to answer to anyone. Head-hunters, executive searchers, sign me up.
How did this opportunity come about? As I understand it, the wizards now say we must take the unusual step immediately of giving away $7,000,000,000 or the country’s common folks stand to lose everything.
True, in the past, when CEOs were taking home millions of dollars in bonuses, those same experts said those CEOs were entitled to such paltry windfalls. Forget that thousands of their employees were being laid off at that very moment.
Now, the logic goes, we taxpayers should bail out the CEOs and others who left us with these shattered financial institutions.
Money czar? Give me the job. On my first day at work, I’ll give my wife and each of my five children ten million dollars, whether they want it or not. Chump change. It removes any anxiety I have about their welfare when St. Peter acknowledges my contributions to society and opens the gate for me.
That accomplished, I can focus on the rest of my responsibilities: my friends and relatives. I’ll pay off their mortgages and credit card balances. Tio Louie will get the dollars he needs to churn and distribute his Kelly-green jalapeño ice cream bars I’ll fund Tia Lupe’s lifelong dream of going into competition with Taco Bell and McDonald’s with her foot-long double-decker tamales.
Then there are my grandchildren who want to be entertainment stars like Ricky Martin and Hanna Montana. I’ll launch their careers, remodeling them from idle to idols. No bookkeeping necessary. No need for paperwork to clog up a bureaucracy’s fi le cabinets.
Hey, I have trust in the younger generation. Next, I’ll hire folks who look like me, documented or not, to build a fence along both our borders and to police our airports so that the CEOs who took our money can’t get out of here. My next step would be to hire more U.S. marshals to locate those CEOs who are covering up their big assets. I’d put those Washington regulators who didn’t regulate anything on my “Most Wanted” list, too.
Now, you’re getting the gist of my plan. Stick it to the bad guys. Have them give us back our money. If they refuse, I’ll spend 100 million to build a long bridge for CEOs and regulators to traverse into my Alaskan encampment. There they would play monopoly with each other for the rest of their lives.
What next? I’ll tackle the immigration issue that has befuddled the Congress and the White House for so long and made a millionaire out of Lou Dobbs.
The solution is so simple. I’ll give a million American dollars to every undocumented person who steps forward and promises to return to Mexico. (That’s where they all came from. I learned that from watching the Fox channel on TV.)
Of course, I’ll have them photographed and fi ngerprinted fi rst and make them swear an oath never to cross the blazing Arizona desert again unless they secure legal papers (available at their neighborhood notaries).
That should free up 12 million American jobs. Ooops! I mean 24 million, since most undocumented persons hold at least two.
Out-of-work fi nancial advisors should have no competition applying for positions in restaurant kitchens, car washes, janitorial services, caring for other people’s infants and elderly, and filling boxes with fresh fruits and vegetables for the rest of us to eat.
I’ll also establish a nationwide network of schools to teach (in English only, of course no need for Spanish anymore) an alternative economics philosophy.
School attendance will be mandatory. Commercial lending and borrowing money will be outlawed. Oh, you could still borrow from a compadre. If he gets stung, it at least stays in the family.
The new schools would teach patience. You want a new car? Be patient. Save your money until you can pay cash.
I would keep all of my billions out of the greedy hands of the Wall Street hustlers, the ones who prodded us into borrowing for instant gratifi cation until we learned the hard way that greed is a bad seed.
Even if I visited Las Vegas every weekend, I should still have a cash balance large enough to fi ll a gigantic piñata with thousand-dollar bills. As an encore, I could load it on a super-jet and fl y across our land of opportunity, one state at a time, letting the bills flutter to earth. Everyone would have a fair chance to get some of the lucre. I assure you, those odds are better than any you’d get if the 700 billion dollar bailout finds its way back to Wall Street.Hispanic Link.
(Herman Sillas is a Los Angeles attorney. E-mail: sillasla@aol.com). ©2008
