WASHINGTON, D.C. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke today announced that pizza magnate Chuck E. Cheese has joined forces with the world’s central banks to calm financial markets in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Bernanke: “For only fifty tickets you can get a glow-in-the-dark Chinese back-scratcher.”
“Mr. Cheese has agreed to provide a standby credit facility under which commercial banks can draw down tokens that can be used to access the coolest selection of games and rides anywhere,” Bernanke said in testimony before Congress. “If you have tokens left over after you’ve finished your pizza, they can be lent to hedge fund managers facing capital calls.”
“The entire Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve? Welcome to Chuck E. Cheese!”
The additional liquidity is expected to ease turmoil in financial markets caused by high-yield “subprime” mortgage loans to couples like Verne and Lee Ann Gomes of Chillicothe, Missouri, who have refinanced their double-wide mobile home with seventeen loans totalling $86 million in the past two years.
Home Sweet Over-Leveraged Home
“We told ‘em we was gonna take the money to Vegas, but they didn’t want to hear it,” says Mr. Gomes. “As long as we let them sit in our hot tub and drink their cabernet, they didn’t require no income verification.”
“Can I trade these in for euros or something?”
Chuck E. Cheese has over 500 restaurants in 48 states and five foreign countries. Tokens issued by the company are traded on world currency markets, and are a highly-prized medium of exchange among Nigerian princes seeking to transfer funds out of that African nation for which you will receive 20% of any prizes if you will simply give us your bank account number!
Alan Greenspan: “I got all five Power Ranger action figures!”
Critics of the Federal Reserve have sought to blame the loose-money policies of Alan Greenspan, Bernanke’s predecessor, for a real-estate bubble that is now bursting, spraying borrowers and lenders alike. “In times of asset deflation additional liquidity is essential to the creation of the soapy suds that kids love,” Greenspan said in his annual report to Congress in 2005. “We cannot allow rubber duckies to sit idle on the bottoms of America’s tubs while the rest of the world cleans up.”
