Blunt Wit

For those of you who don’t know the man …

The visagely intense Neel Kashkari is the wunderkind that Treasury Secretary Paulson appointed Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability. In this role, he heads the Office of Financial Stability, the office set up to buy troubled financial assets from U.S. financial firms under the $700 billion U.S. Government Troubled Assets Relief Program. He’s the man with the plan. The grand pooh-bah for dubya. The dude who’s going to single handedly rescue Capitalism from the clutches of evil and save the world as we know it.

Anyway, I thought given the overwhelming magnitude of his task I would write him an open letter and offer some sage yet practical advice …

Dear Interim Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability Kashkari,

Felicitations on being named head of the Office of Financial Stability. Couldn’t have happened to a more stand up guy. If anyone can save the capitalist system from collapse, it is a hot-shot 35 year old rocket scientist turned Goldman Sachs money wizard from Akron, Ohio. I am reminded of the saying, “It takes a thief to catch a thief.”

After feeding Bear Sterns to the bears at JPMorgan, proffering up an $85 billion liquidity facility for AIG, taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and letting the Brothers Lehman go bankrupt, your boss finally got his chicken little on and cried the sky was falling. The subsequent passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 put a cool $700B of taxpayer funmuny into your lap.

Your boss told congress that you would come up with a comprehensive strategy that is both immediate and specific and would have broad impact to stabilize the economy and improve liquidity. His buddy, Bernanke, further said your plan would pump up investor confidence and have positive impact on the broader economy and GDP.

So I know you’re trying to figure the best way to spend that money and save the world (economy). At first you proposed using your monopoly money to buy up illiquid mortgage backed securities (MBS) with the intent to reduce potential losses encountered by those same financial institutions you used to work with. You do realize in any other universe, the whole financial instrument ponzi scheme these institutions ginned up would be illegal. Hell, it goes without saying it was unethical. Now you’ve abandoned even that idea and are looking at cash infusions into the top banks (who also happen to be the top offenders).

So before you go a givin all that money to the idiots who got us into this fine mess in the first place, I’ve got an even spiffier idea, one that better aligns with aforementioned stated criteria for the bailout plan.

Given your high-falutin Wharton education you know that $700B works out to be a little over $2000 per taxpayer. So just think, for $2000 you could outfit each and every man, woman and child in America their very own virtual reality iglasses.

These award-winning Head Mounted Display Image Monitors are used by the United States Navy, NASA and porn aficionados alike. They give their users a delicious 70 inch HDTV experience.

Just think of the possibilities. Joe six pack, Joe the plumber, hell, even Joe the investment banker no longer need angst about our deteriorating economic conditions. They can just veg out to the latest movies or escapist TV. Hell, who needs reality when they can have virtual reality!

This, of course, will also create incredible economic activity in Hollywood as they drum up newer, stupider, happier pap for their virtually real audience. Everyone can star in his or her own reality TV series. Everyone can be the center of his or her own virtual universe. Everyone can do his or her part to help bailout the financial system by simply wishing the mortgage crisis never happened.

My proposal is both immediate and specific and would have broad impact to stabilize the economy and improve liquidity. It would clearly pump up virtual investor confidence and have seemingly positive impact on the broader economy and GDP. It would restore the hegemony of capitalism while simultaneously exploiting America’s greatest national treasure: Hollywood!

So do you have any bright ideas to solve the financial crisis and rescue capitalism?

Disclosure: author holds 45% ownership stake in Ultimate3DHeaven, makers of iglasses, but this fact in no shape or fashion colors his analysis.