Credit crunch humour

The following was recently posted to the internet news group alt.usage.english

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s.

This transaction is 100% safe. This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in
the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbail...@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond
with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

To which a subsequent poster added - (to the Tune of Galway Bay)

If you ever go across the sea to Wall Street
Then maybe at the closing of the day
You will see a banker jumping from a window
As you watch the sun go down on Fannie Mae

Just to hear again the riffle of the dollars
And the brokers in the exchange making hay,
Just to sit and count your bonus by the million
And listen to the taxpayers as they pay.

For the cold wind that is blowing over Wall Street
Is all icy from frozen bank accounts
And ex-bankers, now are digging praties
for to creditors they all owe large amounts.

If you ever go across the sea to Wall Street
Then maybe at the closing of the day
You will see an evicted mortgage holder
As you watch the sun go down on Fannie Mae

[Pedant point on the original song - Galway Bay - the first verse is

If you ever go across the sea to Ireland
Then maybe at the closing of the day
You may sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh
As you see the sun go down on Galway Bay.

But in summer, when the song is set, there is nowhere on land where you can both watch the moon rise (at about 12 degrees north of east) over Claddagh (a suburb of Galway) and the sun set (at about 12 degrees north of west) over Galway Bay.]