Lehman Launches the Gonzo Card
by Michele Serra for L’espresso, 24 sept. 2009 (see original article here)
translated by Chris Bradley and reprinted without permission
Genoa—The financial crisis officially ended in Italy yesterday at 11:23 a.m. when laid-off worker Mario Rossi purchased a Multiplex Photonic Hg400 cell phone. The phone, which has a six-row keypad, is capable of making calls by itself, connecting with NASA, conducting stock-market trades and roasting peanuts.
Thanks to the €450 Mario Rossi deposited in the register of Genoese hotspot Solo Belinate, an end-of-crisis bash broke out across the nation. Rossi, incredulous but happy, found himself surrounded by hundreds of television cameras and an applauding crowd. Finance minister Giulio Tremonti tried to call Rossi in person, but the latter was too busy pushing the peanut-roasting button to pick up. Rossi will be decorated with the Gold Medal of Civil Valor and, when the moment comes, will receive a state funeral.
Other Heroes
Other obscure heroes have refused to surrender to economic defeatism, and these, too, will be decorated and received with every honor at the Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian government. One such hero was temp worker Puccio Mazzaruotolo, who despite having his car seized drank a liter of gas every morning upon waking. Another was homemaker Elvira Strafogacci of Emilia Romagna, inventor of the über-popular crisis-tortellini: with meat filling too expensive, Elvira filled her pasta instead with positive thoughts from President Silvio Berlusconi.
Other Signs of Recovery
Other economic parameters also seem to indicate the official end of the crisis and the return to the happy times of yesteryear. The legendary Lehman Brothers, whose rupture swept the entire world into financial catastrophe, has finally reopened. For now they have only one location, a shop in the Bronx behind a lap-dance parlour tailored to Puerto Ricans. It is a deliberately humble start that nonetheless guarantees its clients a valuable service. Investors’ money will go toward bonds in the state of Atlantis, and each account holder will receive the prestigious Gonzo Card. Huge lines have already formed.
In Italy, many are placing hope in the recent surge in the prostitution market, although none can explain the irregular distribution across the country: strong spikes in consumption have been seen in Rome and Bari, primary sites of the Italian government and shipping industry, while elsewhere the prostitution industry has been in stasis.
Real-Estate Market
Things are getting better. Stateside the elegant neo-colonial wooden villas seen in so many TV movies are the protagonists in a sensational relaunching of the sawmill industry, which has sputtered in past years. There is also a glimmer of hope for unemployed real-estate agents: many have found work in the circus, where they exhibit to the public how to sell 500,000 square-meter houses to unemployed porters.
Culture
So-called “cultural consumption,” in crisis in all over the world, is seeing a strong rise in only one country, Italy, thanks to intervention by the government. It has offered incentives for the purchase of book bindings without the book inside, easy to dust and convenient to read: there’s only the title. The government has also accepted an amendment from the opposition party that the title not be identical for every book. The State Bindery has withdrawn from circulation 300 million covers of Furious Horse of the West: Behind the Scenes, promising to substitute them with at least two other titles of greater cultural substance: Furious Horse of the West in The Freudian Journey and Furious Horse of the West and the Equine Transport of the Early 1900s.