A Flea In His Ear (James Howard Kunstler)

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

May 16, 2011 -- magine the fright mask that the Sofitel Hotel maid's face turned into when a black swan in the form of an international banking poobah waddled out of the suite's bathroom with wings rampant. Black swans appear now in the unlikeliest places.

I bet you a million Euros that Dominque Strauss-Kahn's lawyer will say that his client was driven mad by relentless, revolving, unresolvable thoughts of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, and that he mistook the hotel maid for Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou. Wasn't it poor Karl Marx, driven mad first by capital and then by boils, who said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce."

Conveniently, the bedroom farce is something at which the French excel. So much dignity, so little impulse control. Not to go overboard with quotations right off top, but cuddly ole T.S. Eliot famously informed us that "...this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper." I suspect the whimper was emitted by DSK in his Harlem jail cell when he discovered that the standard Sunday morning breakfast issued by the New York City Department of Corrections is a baloney sandwich. Quelle horreur! A French convict serving thirty years for tunneling into a Toulon bank gets a brioche, at least!

The question all this raises is: can you think of any other high-up officials, say in American finance or banking, who have tried to jam their generative member someplace it was not exactly invited? I can think of a few, starting with, oh, Hank Paulson. He stuck it to a couple hundred million US taxpayers and is now scott-free in the marshes of Maryland pursuing his beloved wild birds with the Swarovski EL 8x32 binoculars ($1,879.00, retail w/discount) and the excellent Sibley field guide. Only a week or so ago Senator Carl Levin's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations sent a bill of particulars to the US Department of Justice outlining the spectacular misdeeds of Goldman Sachs executives Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks, et. al, alleged to have performed a kind anal rape on customers who did not have that kind of "yield" in mind when they came through the door at 200 West Street. Sources tell me that Attorney General Eric Holder has been using the report as a cocktail coaster.

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