A central banker's Christmas Carol

It was the night before Christmas, and a dark shadowy figure sulked away from the festive crowd to his home (recently assessed in negative equity by the lender). The man was Ebernanke Screwed, the Fed Chairman.

After supping over a tepid bowl of gruel, he fuelled his measly log fire with copies of his recent testimony to Congress. “Best use for it!” Screwed chuckled.

All of a sudden, he heard a slithering sound and a rasping tone. “Eeeebernanke….” said the voice. Screwed turned, and to his horror was faced with a ghastly apparition. A gaunt man was standing beside him, wrapped in a heavy chain of rare unsigned copies of the Age of Turbulence. Those horrible, fashion-tragic glasses…

“Greenspan!” shrieked Screwed.

“Helloooo Ebernanke. I have come to intercede on your behalf, for you are currently on the path of doom and eternal despair…”

“You mean my policymaking?”

“No, I was thinking of your interior decorating. But now that you mention it, perhaps we need to discuss your recent statements.”

“Oh, I remember this part. Three spirits will come to show me the path to redemption.”

“Err, actually 2 and a half. We need to watch our expenses, so the third is part-time. Now I must go….”

“Back to the underworld?”

“Worse. An interview on Fox news. Farewell Ebernankeee….”

With that, Greenspan faded out of sight after turning a whiter shade of greenback. Screwed gulped a glass of his favourite wine, a vintage Two Buck Chuck. As he put the glass down, the first spirit appeared before him. To Screwed’s surprise, he was standing before a shadowy ghost of Bill Clinton.

“Are you Mr. Ebernanke Screwed?” it asked.

“Former President Clinton? You are the ghost of Christmas past?”

You betcha!”

“But you’re not dead yet!”

“Hey, since when have rules stopped me? Hillary can attest to that! Anyway, I’m here to show you the past, so here we go…”

They found themselves in a cheerful conference room at the US Treasury. A smiling Greenspan was at the head of the table. “Things are going brilliantly” he mused.

“But what about the risk of an asset price bubble?” quipped someone at the back of the room.

“Lighten up Shiller, sometimes you’re just tragically intense. All those numbers of yours make no sense. Quit worrying!”

The troublesome Shiller was bundled out of the meeting room to be given a cold shower at the Fed. In a quiet corner, a young Screwed was taking careful notes and nodding to all Greenspan’s platitudes.

The scene then faded away.

“What Greenspan said made so much sense. All those intelligent sounding words…” sighed Screwed.

“And look where you are now” laughed Clinton. “By the way, have you seen my cigar anywhere…?”

“Get away from me Clinton!” jumped Screwed.

“OK, OK, you’re not my type anyway. Hey, gotta go! You’ll be seeing my colleague soon…” With that, Clinton faded away.

Screwed shook his head. No sooner had the ring of Clinton’s voice gone from his ears than a trio of businessmen popped out of the garbage can.

He stood up and confidently introduced himself “I am Screwed.”

“Yeah, that sums it up!” quipped the first.

“Mind you, we should now!” laughed the second.

“Takes one to know one!” roared the third.

“Hold on…I know you. Nardelli, Wagoner and Mulally. The Detroit Three”

“Ho ho ho! Yes, or better known as the three Stooges!” they chorused.

“You can’t teach me anything - you’re the heads of bankrupt companies.”

“And you’re the head of a bankrupt central bank. Hahaha! Now that’s an achievement!”

“You’re idiots. You can’t even count. There’s only supposed to be one of you, not three. I read books, you know.”

“And you can’t read financial statements! We’ve been written down so much that it takes three of us to make one spirit!” they laughed.

All of a sudden Screwed found himself in a grubby tavern. A group of bedraggled central bankers were huddled around a table. To his amazement, he recognised his business partners: Mr. King of England, the snooty Baron de Trichet of France, the sneering Hank Paulson and the Financial Shogun Shirkawa.

“We’re doomed…what the hell is Ebernanke doing? Parachuting bailouts…” groaned King.

“It is tres bizarre. He’s crashing straight into le zero interest rate world” mused Trichet.

“For once we’re ahead of everyone else!” laughed Shirakawa.

“I tell you boys, that Ebernanke wouldn’t know finance if he tripped on it. Fiddling with the Fed Balance sheet whilst corporate America burns” snarled Paulson.

“Still, no one will miss him when he’s gone” whispered King.

“He’ll be the first Fed Chairman to have worse book sales after his time in office!” mused Trichet.

“Back to academia for Ebernanke then” added Shirakawa.

“Yeah, I hear Detroit Business School is hiring” laughed Paulson.

The tavern then faded into the mist. Screwed felt crushed by what he had witnessed.

“Woe is me! I thought they were my friends! Yet they laugh at me with contempt. I even gave them signed copies of my last book” he wailed.

“So that’s how they send themselves to sleep at night!” quipped Nardelli.

“OK Screwed, we hope you’re starting to get the picture” added Mulally.

“Your next visitor will be here shortly. We’ve got private jets to catch!” said Wagoner.

“But you promised Congress you’d drive from now on” wailed Screwed.

“Nah! We’re just using the hybrid SUVs to ship our books of excuses to Washington. After all, we’d have to hire a cargo plane otherwise. Time for us bail out…Hahaha!”

With that, the jovial executives disappeared in a cloud of airplane kerosene. Screwed was still reeling from the shock when another ghastly apparition materialised. The faint sound of news jingles seemed to surf around him.

“Nouriel Roubini!” gasped Screwed.

“Yes, it is me, the great Roubini! After years of predicting the credit crisis, and seeing stocks fly through the roof, I have finally been proved right! I can see the future…”

“Houdini has nothing on you. Wait a minute…you’ve been wrong before then?”

“Details, details. Yes, but at I least I’ve been proved right now! Unlike that turnip Anatole Kaletsky, and the ghastly Irwin Stelzer! Haha! They won’t be getting invites to CNBC anytime soon! Unlike me, the Great Roubini…”

“Can we get to the point?”

“Ah yes. Well, let me show you the future…”

Screwed suddenly found himself in a huge factory. Sullen individuals of all ages and creeds surrounded him, toiling away on a tractor assembly plant.

“What is this place? Communist Russia?” asked Screwed

“No, Washington DC. With your reckless policy actions, the United States became a basket case country, and the state had to takeover all commercial enterprises.”

“NOOO! I must stop this” screamed Ebernanke.

“The solution is simple, Ebernanke. “

“And it is…?”

“Sorry, I only work part-time. Got to go – I have another party in my uber-trendy New York apartment to go to. Gloomy macroeconomics is the new rock and roll, you know. Ciao”

With those parting words, Roubini vanished and the news jingles faded. Screwed looked around his empty house in total panic.

“We’re doomed! We’re as dead as corduroy!” he yelped. He rushed around the house, and crashed into a long object rapped in a tarpaulin. Curious, he took the cover off, and beheld…a printing press!

The next day, the town was awash with currency. Screwed was a changed man, smiling to all as he tossed bundles of fresh banknotes into mailboxes. All seemed to be well again, and Screwed felt he had learnt the true meaning of central banking Christmas: bailouts and banknotes for all.

Perched on a rooftop, the Detroit three were watching the newly pressed currency floating in the breeze.

“Haha! There’s a spelling mistake on your banknotes Ebernanke!” they laughed.

Unfortunately their voices were lost to Screwed, who was wrapped in the praise of his many, many bailout recipients.

“God bless the printing presses, every one and all!” sung Screwed.