Bashing vs. Banking
After watching hotties Priety Zinta (Dimples) and Raveena Tandon( Musth Cheez) in a forum discussion on NDTV last night on what should be done now to our ailing, corrupt and inept politicians/Pakistan/bureaucrats et al, I went to bed thoroughly baffled that no one, NOT ONE person mentioned the gratuitous price reduction of a litre of auto fuel (petrol Rs.5.00 or 20 cents American and diesel Rs.2.00 all of 8 U.S. cents.)
Disappointed I went to bed. I woke up this morning experiencing several anxieties which I would like to share with my five and a half readers here in the hope that they will add up to enough for two whole chapters so that I can go back to sleep.
Anxiety A: Shri.Marathi Manoos, Jr.
As you probably know, Shri.Manoos Jr. is this person who started his own political party and wishes to take over the country.
This worries many people because his views are somewhat unorthodox. ( What I mean of course is that he is crazy as a loon.Where normal people have a brain, Marathi Manoos,Jr., has a Bash-a-Bihari video game.But I’d better not state this in public, as I do not wish to have his ardent followers beat me up with hockey sticks and steal my i-pod.)
Those of you who are frequent railway travelers are no doubt familiar with Shri.Manoos’s views.
Some time ago the Manoos people were not able to get their hands on a leaked copy of the railway entrance examination paper. So they sneaked up behind the applicants arriving from outside the state and bashed them with their own foot rulers and compass boxes and stabbed them with their ballpoint pens, in full view of the examiners, who of course did not object. Many of them probably helped out by bashing the out-of-towners with their own luggage.
The railway incident caused massive nationwide concern and anxiety because of the unorthodoxy of their views, which, as far as I can tell involved an item number by Monica Bedi of Abu Salem fame. Not that I personally see anything wrong with these views! No sir! I don’t even have an i-pod!
But then, two of Shri. Manoos’s closest friends were ex-Chief Minister Shri.Deshmurkh and the then Home Minister Shri.Shi*raj Patel, who has a soft corner for Manoos since they both have “Raj” in their names, which means “to rule”.
But we have to ask ourselves if we, as a nation can continue to ignore crazy people like Party Leader Manoos, with responsibilities which involve giving inflammatory speeches, driving an Audi and phoning his uncle every day to see if he's dead. Because if these people are allowed to win, they’ll go after more and more power, until someday instead of just blaming our neighbours our top national leaders will be going around babbling about laser beams from outer space.
So I call on you Mumbai Citizens to come to your senses before the general election and take responsible action in the form of building a guillotine or moving to a more intelligent state…. Arunachal. This is the perfect time to do so, thanks to the grand reduction in fuel prices.
Anxiety B: The Global Meltdown and Declining oil prices.
Like many Indians I viewed declining oil prices as the first real positive side-effect of the Global Meltdown, the next being P.Chidambaram (motto: there are lapses) who was mercifully shifted from Finance to Home.
But then I started reading articles by leading nervous investment bankers saying that dropping oil prices in the global market is a very bad sign, because it causes severe hardship to the following large organisations:
a) Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich nations in the Gulf.
b) The large oil-tanker manufacturers.
c) Indian-Oil and Hindustan Petroleum which of course are Public Sector “Undertakings”
d) The tax collection department.
e) The American oil cartels.
When I read this naturally my reaction as a concerned citizen, was hahahahahahahaha.
But I am going to explain to you why we really need to be worried about the detoriating oil prices. Thus far the international economy was based on the U.S. dollar, which was trusted and respected throughout the world because the Euro had not solidified as yet, and any Third World oil-rich nation who bartered their oil for anything other than the petro-dollar was invaded and their oil scavenged off to American companies. To be fair, the value of the dollar was dependent on the investment expertise of large U.S. banks, which gave huge sums to the Arabs to lose on goat fights, rooster fights and camel races.
This system worked well till recently when U.S. banks got cocky and also began doling out huge sums of money called sub-prime mortgages, to American homeowners who DID NOT not own oil-wells.
So now the banks are stuck with unpaid mortages and a lot of oil, which they are trying to get rid of by converting to credit cards which they offer to me. I get about five credit card offers from desperate banks every day. They even offer to send someone out to deliver it and wash my car.
I don’t know about you but I am not comfortable with the global economy being dependent on my credit card purchases.
So I think we need to rework the world economy but getting banks to start selling real estate and opening car-washes, and shopping malls- which accept credit cards, to take over the banking functions, such as lending money to fund sub-prime mortages and subsequently declaring bankruptcy.
Then we can buy petrol and diesel over the counter at the pharmacy, which will be sold to wealthy Chinese investors.
And Shri.Manoos will oversee this and control it by using laser beams from outer space.
