Federal Reserve Not So Reserved Anymore
Washington, D.C. (SatireWire.com) – Proving the Federal Reserve is anything but reserved, U.S. central bank governors this week announced they had dropped interest rates, their pants, and 162 tabs of acid and Ecstasy during what turned out to be a two-day “policy rave” that ended Thursday.
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| What Fed Governor Bradley Muer looked like to Fed Governor Nathan Gladstone. |
According to those present, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan did not ingest any hallucinogens, although he was affected. “Alan didn’t drop, which was probably a good thing, because for about two hours there he barked like a chicken and had laser beams shooting from all 12 of his eyes,” said committee staffer Julie Lindstrom. “But his gossamer wings were soooo beautiful.”
“Everyone was soooo beautiful,” she added.
The closed-door session of the Federal Open Market Committee reportedly began with Greenspan discussing his upcoming Congressional testimony. However, it quickly raved-up after an unidentified staffer, frustrated at not being able to understand the opaque chairman, passed around tabs of Ecstasy and LSD, which he identified only as “Greenspan Decoders.”
“About 45 minutes later, (Fed Governor) Nathan Gladstone says to me, ‘Julie, can you bring us the reports on monetary interventions, bond yields, and three dozen pacifiers?'” recalled Lindstrom. “Then we ordered some glowsticks and Jurassic-5 CDs, and the Open Market meeting got really, really open.”
For the next 36 hours, the committee’s dignified board room was transformed into a trance room, with the heads of the New York and Dallas central banks banging out jungle-drum rhythms on the massive oval table, and the head of the Detroit bank insisting consumer confidence tastes like candy-coated clouds. Toward daybreak, male committee members and staff reportedly took off their trousers after their zippers began to emit radio signals which they feared could be picked up by passing spaceships.
While the rave was “definitely a dope groove,” Fed Governor Bradley Muer said members did exhibit restraint. “Some people were going to candyflip (combine Ecstasy with acid), but most of us are Old Economy, and acid just seemed more traditional,” he said.
The rave fizzled about 7 a.m., and was about to adjourn when a staffer reportedly noticed the committee hadn’t covered every item on the agenda. “We just hit re-entry, and were going to watch the sun come up over the Treasury Building, when somebody said, ‘Oh shit, we forgot to drop the fed fund rates,'” explained FOMC member Gerald F. Cohen. “Then everybody just started calling out whatever numbers they saw floating in front of their eyes.”
Hours later, the board finally agreed to cut rates half a percentage point. Initially, said Cohen, committee members decided to lower rates by 8 million basis points, from 2.00 to minus 7,999,998, but were talked out of it by an art deco wall sconce that claimed it was Cary Grant.
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