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Swanny
22-10-11, 10:59 AM
Helga Funk is the proprietor of a bar.

She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics

and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar.

To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows

her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Helga keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the

customers' loans).



Word gets around about Helga's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy

and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Helga's bar.

Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in town .



By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Helga

gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases

her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.



Consequently, Helga's gross sales volume increases massively.



A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these

customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Helga's

borrowing limit.



He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the

unemployed alcoholics as collateral !

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make

huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS.



These "securities" then are bundled and traded on international securities

markets.



Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to

them as "AA" "Secured Bonds" really are debts of unemployed alcoholics.

Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb!, and the securities soon

become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage

houses.



One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at

the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on

the debts incurred by the drinkers at Helga's bar, so he informs Helga.

Helga then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed

alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts.



Since Helga cannot fulfil her loan obligations she is forced into

bankruptcy. The bar closes and Helga's 11 employees lose their jobs.



Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value

destroys the bank's liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus

freezing credit and economic activity in the community.



The suppliers of Helga's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and

had invested their firms' pension funds in the BOND securities. They find

they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing

over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.



Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family

business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken

over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off

150 workers. Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their

respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar

no-strings attached cash infusion from the government.



The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on

employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Helga’s bar.



Now do you understand?

wiltshire builders
22-10-11, 11:49 AM
Do they have a pool table?

R1chie
22-10-11, 12:39 PM
Worst bar joke ever!

NoYou
22-10-11, 03:12 PM
Worst bar joke ever!
Not sure its the worst but its defo up there with em...

Jon_W
23-10-11, 08:24 PM
Worst bar joke ever!
Not sure its the worst but its defo up there with em...

+1..... :o

redken1
24-10-11, 06:50 PM
'Many a true word spoken in jest' ;)