Very funny :)

And here is some music for the weekend: Melodies derived from
Stock Charts, arranged with Microsoft`s Music Composition Software
"Songsmith":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-BZfFakpzc

This is oooooold. I believe I first encountered it in the 1990s. I
don't think the securitization bit was as well developed at that
point though.

POLISH CORPORATION

You have two bulls.

Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

PALESTINIAN FARMER
You had two cows. But one night, they, and your farmland, dissappeared. One cow wandered back eventually, sickly.

ZIONISM
You have a God given right to two cows, so you take them.
You steal some Palestinian farmland to graze one of the cows, and feed the milk to your children. You infect the other cow with Hoof and Mouth Disease, and give the cow back to the Palestinians, telling the media it is an act of charity.

"You have two bulls"

"Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them"

They musta done it wrong. My neighbor milked a bull, and it followed him around for a month after that.

Hey! Not Fair.

What about the Dutch Cows? One redesigned to produce cheese and the other to produce tomatoes?

Republican cow business.

Let Ken Lay buy the cow with tax kickbacks, sell milk to another state until it drives the world's 5th largest economy into a recession.
Subsidize the purchase of several pro sports franchises with the profit. Charter company jets to Dade County to throw a brooks bros. riot and hijack democracy.

Start a war on lies to get market entry to the places you gamed future stock pricings on as part of the fraud.

Tell Americans that Democrats want to take your cows away.

Shorter Republican Business

You have two cows
You blame Clinton

One more thing canm be said about the stimulus package:

IT NEEDS MORE COWBELL!

Obama is not being ambitious enough. Resurrect the campaign itinerary(spell?). Crosslink that with the overlying historical precedent of Roosevelt.

Go on the same train track drive across country. Even if he just meets the train at points along the way. Use the stops across the heartland to emphasize the extra things in the stimulus for said area.

Take the fight to them. Show no quarter. Explain in GOP and DEM districts why someone is fighting your effort to bring progress there. Compare your bill to the Bush budgets in per capita terms. In comparison to the budget, value reflected, etc. Any way you can present it for said stop to put it in best light and remind people of the GOP's own track record of graft under Bushco.

Highlight it every time. There's volumes of historical info to unplug. Use a an Executive Directive if need be and make the previous time in office's own inside talk part of the record.

This is something you've waited to do. Get out there in Florsheims looking like a million and deliver an argument for the people. You're the man, you're the one. Show folks what they voted for!

Interesting that there is an entry for an American Corporation, but no entry for the system of American Capitalism. I have added one below, along some other amendments and corrections:

AMERICAN CAPITALISM

You have 2 cows.
Bill Gates has 2,222,222,222,222 cows.

JAPANESE ECONOMY

You have 2 cows.
Despite singing spirited cow milking songs each morning during calisthenics with your co-workers, your cows' milk production drops by 20% and stays depressed for ten years. You kill yourself.

CENTRAL AMERICAN ECONOMY

You have 2 cows.
You give some free milk to the local orphanage, and your cows are then deposed by the Washington. You still have 2 cows, which are now milked by the orphans, working 18 hours a day for five cents a day. But one cow looks suspiciously like Elliot Abrams. The other now kicks you frequently and demands you call him "Commandante Jefe Vaca".

SCANDINAVIAN ECONOMY

You have 2 cows.
Your cows give birth to a calf and are granted 18 months of family leave. When the cows come back to the dairy farm, the government takes 40% of their milk, but sends extra state milk to the calf.

AFRICAN ECONOMY

You have 2 cows.
You're rich; you are elected president.

IRAQI ECONOMY

You have 2 cows.
America invades. You now have one cow with a purple hoof, and one photo of an American soldier doing a "thumbs up" next to your other cow's severed head.

COLOMBIAN ECONOMY

You have 2 cows.
Your neighbor exports cocaine to America, and has 2 Ferraris and 2 sons studying at Berkeley.

AMERICAN CAPITALISM (again)

You have 2 cows.
The milk industry was deregulated and outsourced, so while your cows have a job, you don't.

GLOBALIZED THOMAS FRIEDMAN ECONOMY

You have 2 cows.
You send an email to a band saw manufacturer in Singapore, a text message to a wagon dealer in Mumbai and a faxed franchise application to a building in San Diego. The next day you have 560 Big Macs in a new wagon. The world is flat, so you are able to roll the wagon to Guangzhou and sell the Big Macs on the street as McDimSum.

Following up on Willem van Oraje:

American Capitalism

You have two cows.
The cows die of neglect, because you're in NY celebrating the
naming right to Two Cows Stadium
You borrow money to bribe I mean lobby a Republican Senator
to declare the economy will fail if the government doesn't buy
you three new cows.
The Democratic Senate caucus declares the purchase of your
three cows to be fundamental to the survival of the Republic.
Somebody who pays taxes to chew on grass for hydration asks if
he can have some milk from the cows he helped pay for.
Republican Senator calls grass-chewer a socialist crypto-muslim
terrorist.
David Broder declares Democrats must compromise with
Republican Senator if they wish to be seen as Reasonable.

You can guess the rest.

COW Derivative Swaps (CDS)

Cows are the latest investment bubble (no bull!). Cow futures have doubled in the past year. You take a mortgage to buy them. Your bank securitizes them. Depending on the tranche, an investor gets shares of prime rib, sirloin, bellies, or ox tails. To guarantee the loan, the bank takes out insurance. So do hundreds of other investors. Banks book record profits on fees. Insurance companies book record profits on new policies.

Then one day, you realize that you have to feed your cows. But corn prices have been skyrocketing. You can't afford to pay the mortgage and feed the cows. So you try to sell your cows.

So does everyone else. Cattle prices tumble. Investors stampede. Banks are threatened. Insurance companies are threatened. The entire cow finance system is threatened.

Long Tall Paulson rides to the rescue. He proposes the Cow Recovery Asset Program (CRAP) to buy up all the bad loans. Unfortunately, cow dung futures are now selling for more than cows. So he proposes just to print money and give it to lenders. More importantly, he lets banks report the value of cow mortgage any way they want. Most important of all, he knows it will be someone else's problem soon.

Then the cows start dying. This solves the problem, since a "mort gage" is nothing more than an agreement until death. And the cows are dead.

Now you would think that this would be the end of the lenders and insurers, too. However, they have just noticed that cow cemetaries are now hot properties...

I find the clever cow metaphors offensive. Maybe because I and many of my close associates who happen to be human beings, and their families who also happen to be human beings are suffering greiviously from eight long years of robbing the poor and middle class to feed the predator class. Though, I am holding to a gossamer thread of hope in Obama, - there is no one truly giving voice to the voiceless in our government. The Senate is a dispicable pack of money grubbing, backstabbing, predator class favoring, obdurate punks, who have no IDEA IN HELL just how desperate their fellow Americans who happen to be human beings, and not superrich are suffering now, or how much pain and uncertainty we are experiencing. They don't care. The Senate only cares about the predator class, the superrich.

Tax cuts only favor the superrich, the predator class. Unless tax cuts are specifically targeted to assist poor and middle class Americans - there should not be ANY MORE TAX CUTS!!! It is an approach that is proven an economic failure. For example the car and housing tax cuts again only benefit the superrich, the predator class who are the only constituency that can even imagine a car purchase, and certainly a home purchase in this environment. How does that policy help existing homeowners struggling to make their mortgages? It's impossible most Americans to even imagine buying a car or a home if you are unemployed, or grotesquely underuemployed, or working at slave wages, with no benefits, and no hope of meeting the most basic cost of living requirements. The 15 thousand dollar tax break for home purchases in an insidious and pernicious gift to the predator class exclusively who will then ghoulishly plunder foreclosure properties and get an additional 15 thousand dimes from the government, and then ultimately manipulate the prices of both rentals and the sale of residential properties. It's a disgusting joke. It's immoral. It's unethical, and it is going to fail to stimulate the economy. In fact, this policy will worsen the housing crisis, by the government subsidizing the predator class alone to further erode and speculate on both rental and housing prices.

Democrats caved yet again. Tax cuts overtly favoring the superrich, the predator class are one of the primary elements that caused this financial crisis. Tax cuts for the superrich, the predator class have been proven a catastrophic failure.

Why would democrats and the Obama administration bow to republicans (who own lock stock and barrel the responsibility for the economic crisis)(who have no credibility)and (who the American people have rejected in the last two elections) on tax cuts for the predator class?!!!!

The end result of this socalled stimulus package will be twofold. One side, is measured by those who will profit, and like the TARP program (which the gop was totally silent in questioning) it will NOT be poor and middle class Americans, but the predator class alone that reaps the benefits of this republican concocted package. The otherside will involve the fact and reality of the program actually succeeding in stimulating the macro economy. It's never going to happen. The heart and engine of America is the a healthy prosperous middle class. The last eight years have proven that the predator class which has increased it's wealth, and had more government largess in the last eight years than any other time in history of America abused their illgotten gains, overt favortism and largess from the government, and still - the hard brutal reality and truth is that America after all this predator class favortism is teetering on the brink of economic collapse.

Feeding the predator class, and heaping all the debt, pain, suffering, and burdens on poor and middle class Americans will not stimulate the economy.

In a the coming months when the people recognize that they again have been ruthlessly decieved and abused - maybe then the people will recognize that the only way out of this crisis is a real horrorshow revolution, and REAL CHANGE, and blood, and a reckoning, and a balancing.

Until that day, - bend over poor and middle class Americans - the predator class, their dutiful operators in the gop, - and the cowards in the democratic party have stuck it to us hard once again and heaped imponderable debts upon the shoulders of our children, and offererd us nothing but trinkets and crumbs off the richmans table.

So many predators, - so few bullets.

When the U.S. media stops propping up conservatism, we might start moving towards actual capitalism and the real benefits of democracy.

Conservatism is antithetical to true capitalism.

There has been too much attempted humor here. Our world is
collapsing. I am a contractor. There is no work. I laid my
employees off. By cutting my hourly rate in half, and working
alone, I am barely paying my rent. I am 62. In the Bay Area. I
know no one who is not on the verge of going under. People
who have worked 30 or 40 years doing the finest work. And this
crisis has barely started. Those people you party with are
responsible for this. My very hard working former employees,
and my skilled and conscientious colleagues are not.

At Sic Semper Tyrannis Col. Patrick Lang speculates:
"Would Israel try to "bull" its way past the US Air Force and
across Iraq relying on a US "failure of will" to make the thing
work? This would be a crazy thing to do, but many crazy things
have been seen lately."

Those people you party with are responsible for letting things
get to this point - the devastation in Iraq, the destruction and
corruption in Afghanistan, the devastation in Gaza, and a very
well connected former intelligence official speculating about
Israel giving us this choice.

My employees and colleagues didn't give us this. No one else I
know gave us this.

And you give us cows.

Not good enough, Steve.

Please update the list to get all 21 from the
linked post. You left out 3 on the list when you
copied it. Here they are from the original link.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb you and invade
your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are
part of Democracy….
AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to
celebrate.
A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive

hey steve!
Any insight into what really happened that made
Zinni have a cow with regard to the Iraq
ambassadorship?

PETA version
You have two cows?? You can't HAVE cows, so we're going to burn your barn down and release them.

Vegan version
You have two cows who hang out in a field with you. They eat alfalfa, you eat alfalfa.

There has been too much attempted humor here. Our world is collapsing. I am a contractor. There is no work. I laid my employees off. By cutting my hourly rate in half, and working alone, I am barely paying my rent. I am 62. In the Bay Area. I know no one who is not on the edge of going under.  People who have worked 30 or 40 years doing the finest work. And this crisis has barely started. Those people you party with are responsible for this. My very hard working former employees, and my skilled and conscientious colleagues are not.

At Sic Semper Tyrannis Col. Patrick Lang speculates:
"Would Israel try to "bull" its way past the US Air Force and across Iraq relying on a US "failure of will" to make the thing work?  This would be a crazy thing to do, but many crazy things have been seen lately."

Those people you party with are responsible for letting things get to this point - the devastation in Iraq, the destruction and corruption in Afghanistan, the devastation in Gaza, and a very well connected former intelligence official speculating about Israel giving us this choice.

My employees and colleagues didn't give us this. Or anyone else I know.

And you give us cows. 

Not good enough, Steve.

Anonymous2,

Agree with you but will retain with the metaphor. This thread is beginning to sound too much like, "Let them eat steak!"

Our masters of the universe thought that they could process and package manure as derivative swaps, etc., remove the smell, and sell them to the world. But that counted on fooling all the noses all the time or on a process that only worked for a couple of decades.

I wasn't sure if manure was the right word (dung perhaps?), so I looked it up and found it has just the right derivation:

"1350–1400; ME manouren to till, cultivate < MF manouvrer to do manual work. See maneuver"

McCain cows: You brand any cattle that stray from the herd as unAmerican, and then call yourself a maverick.

THE WASHINGTON NOTE
You have two cows.
One is a neocon and the other is a liberal internationalist.
TWN rents a realist bull which impregnates both cows.
The calves both come out as "progressive realists".
TWN then sells the cows to the Council on Foreign Relations and builds a new think tank with the next generation.

Military Version:

You start with two cows along the Afghan/Pakistan Border. One cow has routinely crossed back and forth across the borderline in search of "food". The other cow, jealous of Cow #1's free spirit whispers to a US Military patrol that Cow #2 is moving resources across the border... Cow #2 ends up grazing in a 6x6 holding cell in Gitmo.

"AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead."

You left out the final line:

Timothy Geithner (with funds borrowed from China (to be repayed by taxpayers)) buys the carcasses off you for more than they originally cost. He calls this "protecting capitalism and private ownership".

LMAO - My favorite is the Italian Corporation. But how about this:

A REPUBLICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You want tax cuts instead.

In other news, Kyrgyzstan is closing our support bases for Afghanistan, which has to be good news for those who support the troops, as in Bringing Them Home.

Russia says they will allow non-lethal items to pass through their country. Can't be too much of a non-lethal aspect about our glorious Land War in Asia.

Anonomous2.....

I'm in the south end of central cal, and things are dire here as well. I still have work, because the builder I'm hooked up with only does extreme high end residential, and most of it is for oil and agri-business folks. In fact, we just build a garage for an attorney that specializes in representing the interests of oil companies. The garage is seven double garage doors long, and houses one of the most eclectic auto collections I have ever seen. Everything from a Saleen to old A-Gas Willys coupes. The guy even has a couple of original cobras, a 428 and a 289. There is easily four or five million dollars worth of cars crammed in this garage, and it is my understanding that he could fill it once again with cars that are in storage. Talk about the gap between the classes, eh?

But on the medium end and low end as far as the trades go, I am seeing more people out of work than I have ever seen. The companies doing new construction mechanical, such as electric and plumbing, are really getting hit hard. And the old established tile guy we use just took a two month hiatus, laying off his crew to try and build a backlog. I doubt he'll pull it off. The cabinet shop we use for our cookie cutter stuff, such as laundry room and garage cabinetry is running a skeleton crew. And they're a third generation shop.

The contractor I work with has never been out of work since 1974, so I feel somewhat secure. He always kicks into remodel mode when building slows down, and so far he has managed to backlog us well into a couple of years. But the three large scale house projects that were on the horizon, one a ten thousand footer, seem to be in a state of limbo. I imagine the clients are holding back to see what the economy does.

One good thing about this, if it doesn't fall apart all together, is that it will weed out the fly by nighters, the unskilled, and the unscrupulous. As I'm sure you're aware, there are a multitude of shitty contractors out there, spawned by the boom we experienced.

I wish you luck, man. Hang in there.

I just laughed myself off the chair I was in.

cowbunga!

good stuff folks... it is fun to laugh! thanks-

LOL

That was really Funny and in some ways very much true

REPUBLICAN PARTY ECONOMICS

You lose your job in a major recession, but at least the GOP gives you a tax break on cows. Too bad you don't own any cows.

Meanwhile, the provision in the stimulus package for the government to make direct purchases of dairy products is removed because "government spending has never created a job."

Ha ha!

Obamnomics: You have two cows, he takes one
(because it is fair) he borrows another $1.8
trillion dollars, gives three cows to the UAW,
claims he has saved 600,000 cows and gives a great
speech.