Mr. Drysdale knew he wouldn't make it through the night. Cowering, sweating, and pissing himself in the panic room of his mansion, he watched on the monitors as what seemed like every Clampett under the redneck sun, if not the entire town of Bug Tussle, looted and wrecked his mansion where he had lived, if not quite peacefully, then at least continuously next to the proud hillbillies. Now, he wept as he saw Jethro Bodine stare straight into one of the security cameras and say, "When I find you, Mr. Drysdale, I'm gonna fuck ya like a mule." Drysdale clutched at the packet of cyanide capsules, his last resort should he face fire or fucking. Across the room, the corpse of Miss Hathaway mocked him, its slit throat like a cruel second smile.
Things were so much easier when the Glass-Steagall Act was in effect. The Commerce Bank was a wealthy entity unto itself, with Mr. Drysdale acting not just as President, but as concierge to the whims of the rich, even the piggish
nouveau riche like the Clampetts. He got Jed to trust him, so much so that, without a question, if Mr. Drysdale suggested it, Jed would invest in it. But then, in about 2000, Commerce got greedier because, well, shit, because it could, getting into mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and other multi-worded terms that Jed couldn't comprehend. On her deathbed, Granny told Jed, "Don't you listen to that bastard. He's a-gonna steal your money like a backwoods whiskey runner."
But Jed thought that this was the future and, indeed, he trusted Mr. Drysdale. That trust was repaid by the Commerce Bank of Beverly Hills, after receiving a large bailout from the government, getting
involved in putting together a deal whereby it bought an investment firm as a way of providing a front company for the fact that, indirectly, it was getting some of its clients to invest in housing market-based securities as part of a CDO while all the time working with a hedge fund to profit off the built-in failure of the CDO. It was a fixed version of the poker game "Fuck Your Buddy," where the house splits the pot.
The meeting went well where he tried to explain to Jed why he had squandered the entire Clampett fortune betting on the failing housing market. Jed didn't understand any of it. He sighed, put on his hat, and thanked Drysdale for helping them all these years.
It was that goddamn Ellie Mae, Drysdale thought, as he saw Jed use his shotgun to destroy a vase. Ellie Mae and Jane Hathaway fell in love and wanted to get married, but Drysdale had donated money to support Proposition 8, making their dreams fall apart. That was the final straw. They worked together to go to the SEC with everything they knew from their jobs at Commerce. When they told Jed about what really happened, there were only two parts of it that the Clampett patriarch understood: that Drysdale had outright lied to him and that he was making money off people losing their houses. Jed looked at Jethro and said, "Call up the kinfolk and get some buckshot for the guns. Let's show this city shithead how we treat liars and thieves back in the mountains."
Ellie Mae got away, heading to Paris to wait out the carnage, but Miss Hathaway wanted to talk one last time to Drysdale. "Turn yourself in, Milburn," she had said. This was shortly after his wife had left him and he only spoke now to lawyers. "For Christ's sake, you're not going to win." It was impetuous, cutting her throat and dragging her body to the panic room, but he had few options when he saw Jethro and a whole mob of imported backwards ass country fucks heading towards his front door.
The house was burning now. The guards were dead, their corpses stripped to their skivvies. Drysdale didn't know how much longer he could last. He didn't know if the ventilation system in the locked room would filter out the smoke. He didn't know if it would become his oven. He started to get warm, but that could be his imagination. But the cameras were going dead one by one. And the last image he saw on the monitor was a troop of shabby-dressed men in floppy hats heading into the basement, where the room was hidden.
Drysdale contemplated taking the cyanide. "No," he thought, "this is America and we're still a capitalist nation, goddamnit, and Commerce is too big to fail. I'm too big to fail. If I go, so goes the economy." Of course, when the door burst open and he tried to explain that to Jed and Jethro, they didn't care. "What are you gonna do? Are you gonna rape me, Jethro? Go ahead. Are you gonna shoot me, Jed? Then you're a murderer." He dropped the cyanide capsule and sobbed.
They stared at him for a moment, smelling his pissed pants, watching him shake. Then Jethro waved behind him. He brought out one of Ellie Mae's pets, a bear. "Looks like the markets are heading down, Mr. Drysdale," Jed said, before he put the bear into the panic room and shut the door.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
