Some of the greatest journalists and analysts in America also happen to be comedians. Watching The Last Laugh with John Bird (in the guise of investment banker, George Parr) and John Fortune (together known as the Long Johns), the same can certainly be said of British comedians as well.
The following is a transcript of this insightful comedian team who brilliantly and accurately describe the mindset of the bailed-out bankers.
John Fortune: George Parr, you are an investment banker.
John Bird: Well, I don’t think there is any call for insults or name calling.
Fortune: Sorry, I was just…
Bird: We have after all just been through a very difficult situation.
Well, but let’s face it, you are an investment banker, and I just wanted to get your view of the turmoil that is now engulfing the financial world.
Well, I’m of a certain age, there aren’t many of us left from my generation, and I can look back at a time when the world seemed a simpler place, with some sense of certainty and order. I think this is a golden age of banking.
You’re thinking of the 60′s perhaps or even the 50′s.
No, I was thinking more of June last year. Why can’t we go back to the time when people took the word of a banker as gospel. Now we get suspicion, finger pointing, people arguing, and all sorts of difficult questions.
What sort of questions?
Nit-picking pointless sorts of things like, I don’t know… Where’s the money gone? As if I’m supposed to know.
The comedy team of John Bird and John Fortune (in the guise of George Parr) describes the current War on Terror as a war for oil and why America is waging that battle quite well.
John Bird:George Parr, you are a Councilor of the British Embassy in Washington.
John Fortune: Yes, I am.
Bird:And you’ve been working very closely with the Americans on Iraq.
Fortune: Yes — but it’s not my fault!
Sorry? What isn’t your fault?
Anything.
Well, I didn’t suggest that anything was.
I’m sorry. I’ve been under a lot of strain.
I’m sorry to hear that. Just very recently, the former head of the American central bank, the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, just published his memoirs in which he said, and I quote, “I’m saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: that the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Well, I think I should point out, although it gives me no pleasure to do so, that Alan Greenspan is 81 years old.
