With financial markets from Baltic Avenue to Marvin Gardens in free-fall, many experts warn our entire economy could soon fold like the playing surface of a cheap parlor game, leaving fortunes, title deeds and dozens of small green houses strewn about our national rumpus room, just waiting for us to step on in the middle of the night.
The problem began, we are now told, when the financial services industry (hereafter referred to as "The Bank"), began issuing mortgages higgetly-piggelty to "sub-prime" borrowers. Embarrassed Bank executives say this was an isolated phenomenon, that the lax regulatory environment overwhelmed their long-held observance of fiscal restraint.
Balderdash! Over the last seven decades, backed by the full faith and credit of the Parker Brothers, The Bank has issued literally billions of dollars of bad paper, all of it garishly-colored and virtually worthless except in the most tawdry gentlemens' clubs.
The grim reality is that The Bank has been making ill-considered loans for as long as I can remember! Why, just this morning I reviewed the struggling (and highly leveraged) real estate portfolio of one local investor. Much to my consternation, he was unable to articulate the strategy--if one ever existed--behind purchasing such an unprofitable mix of properties. And the reason for his silence? He is a dog. A small pewter terrier, to be precise, one that has been to jail twice. Was The Bank being rapaciously greedy when it loaned 380 dollars to a dog that had spent time in the pokey? I submit that it was.
Surely, you've heard the plaintive wail of these now-chastened money-men: "If not to that adorable doggie, to whom was I supposed to lend this pastel money? An iron? That shoe thing that might also be a boot?" Such simpering only underscores the ineptitude of the usurers who have run The Bank into the ground. There are only two acceptable parties to whom an institution should loan money: the top hat and the thimble. We are, after all, a nation of winners.
We have also heard the flim-flam that during this latest housing bubble, it was impossible to distinguish between "prime" and "sub-prime" borrowers. Poppycock! Look around the four sides of your own city or township: it always manifestly clear which properties are the most desirable.
I believe you will find that your neighborhoods are similar to mine: conveniently color-coded in descending order of value. At the risk of offending the more delicate-minded reader, I dare posit that if you ever found yourself surrounded by the impoverished, light-blue residents of "Vermont Avenue" you would be seized not with the desire to furnish them with teaser-rate ARMs, but instead to get the hell out of there as fast as your little wheelbarrow could carry you.
Be that as it may, the markets are clearly roiled. And un-roiling them will take time, since many investors are seeking refuge on the comparatively solid ground of railroads and utilities. Well, let me proffer you some advice: owning railroads sucks. You cannot build a shiny red hotel on a still-working railroad, as I recently found out to my chagrin.
And utilities are even worse. I assure you, there is no quicker route to pulling out one's pockets and finding them empty as owning both Water Works and the Electric Company. Who needs water and electricity when there's real money to be made?
Now amidst the carnage, there is talk of fiscal molly-coddling from the Community Chest. Hogwash! There is not and, to the best of my knowledge never has been, any such thing as "Free Parking." Beware the scalawags who demand special "house rules" be quickly enacted to redistribute all the petty cash (such as the monies collected by the Income & Luxury Taxes) to the well-heeled residents of Park Place or Boardwalk! I can assure you that a close reading of the rules indicates this practice is expressly forbidden-- although it did remind me that three sets of "doubles" in a row lands a player in jail, which I had completely forgotten.
Perhaps the best way to get out of this crisis is the same way we got into it: with a simple roll of the dice. If nothing else, this crisis demonstrates that capitalism is a game of luck and not skill. Why have the Lehman Brothers been allowed to fail while Bear Stearns was saved? Luck. And why would anyone be awarded $75 for second place in a beauty contest? That's right, luck...and probably some backstage hanky-panky.
My point is this: human beings have long been enamored with silly games in which they exchange colored pieces of paper with no intrinsic value for mortgages on properties they know little or nothing about. The results, at least in my house, are predictable: the loser ends up crying, kicking over the board, and demanding the game be restarted so that they can make the same mistakes all over again.