Resetting the Standards

Gentlemen, please take your seats, so we can begin. More Glenlivet, Frank?

As you know by now, thanks to our friends in the media (general laughter) … and the news reports lately, we’ve run into a problem with how we grade financial products. For the past 18, 24 months-who’s counting, really?-it seems our analytical team got creative when it came to assessing the credit-worthiness of our clients’ products.

In short, it seems that our analysts were slapping a triple-A rating on just about everything. Money market accounts got them, collateralized debt obligations got them, derivatives of those CDOs got them. Hell, on a lark, I created a vehicle I called the My Fat Butt Fund and it got a triple-A. I had to close it after it got swamped with orders.

Our problem is, in summary, grade inflation. Today I’m proposing a new set of grades for our clients’ financial products. Let those chumps at Moody’s keep AAA as the top-of-the-line rating; I assert the triple-A is already degraded and we need to move beyond it.

To wit:

AAA. Like Grade A eggs, XXX pornography and graduating summa cum laude from law school, AAA products are the new baseline. Everything we rate will be assigned at least a triple-A rating, unless it has been improved with additives.

AAAA. The quad-A is our new premium line. This rating will be reserved for products that collateralize AAA products so the risk is diluted. Or which have “hip” names, like our new Tweeter-Wolverine-XX-Fund.

AAAACH. One of our vice presidents named this one after her cat’s gag reflex. I think it’s an appropriate response to these products’ contents (more laughter). Thank you. I’m here until you fire me! (guffaws) Ahem…. Seriously, we were looking for the next real estate, namely, the next rocket we can ride for a few years before it crashes, by which point we’ll have moved on. We’ve settled on corporate hideouts, hence the CH. Any company worth its market cap is going to be investing on shelters, if you will, for its top assets and personnel, primarily in countries that do not have extradition treaties with the U.S. It’s a boom market, so we deem these companies safer than safe and, therefore, so will products be that are derived from their debt. We’ll build the cost of hurricane insurance into our management fees.

AAAARR. With the increase in the number of failed states, piracy is a rampant and growing problem the world over. Interestingly enough, our analysts have determined that the rate of growth in state failure and, thus, piracy, can be effectively commoditized, based upon the number and kind of ships, weaponry, and whether or not the pirates are working for a tribal warlord, a jihadist group, or are just looking to get captured by the Navy so they can get the hell out of their country. The risks are essentially the same for all subgroups. They need capital, and we can provide.

AAAAWE. Finally, we get to the top-of-the-line elite-level super-high-octane-with-a-cherry-on-top AAAAWE. The WE stands for “we.” As in, us. Throw our own bonds into the mix and we’ll guarantee the rating. Yes, we will directly benefit from products that carry this rating. But coupled with our management fees, the profits by far outweigh the potential costs of litigation or criminal prosecution. We also have invested in a shelter of our own on Grand Cayman if things get too hairy. But who’s going to complain? By supporting ourselves, we are supporting the economy. After all, the economy can’t function without us.

Now, are there any questions? No? Well, then, who wants a Cohiba?