Fall-Out On Wall Street

October 3, 2008 at 5:31 pm (Short stories)

 Fall-Out on Wall Street

Mr. Philos de Mammon was an investment banker on 
Wall Street.

The last few weeks on Wall Street had been catastrophic.

Lehman Brothers had failed. Merrill Lynch had been absorbed by the
Bank of America. It was still doubtful whether the House of Representatives
would pass U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion 
bail-out bill. Although the U.S. Senate had just done so.

Philos de Mammon was eating lunch on the top floor cafeteria of
the building where he worked.

He had forgotten his cell phone in his office on the 21st floor-
a fact for which he cursed himself.

As Philos de Mammon sat there eating the last of his submarine
sandwich, he noticed a bunch of people who usually spent
their lunches yacking on their cell phones were busy 
jumping out the window.

“Fools,” Philos de Mammon thought to himself.

By breaking the glass after jumping straight through the window,
all these fools were letting quite a draft in at this altitude.

When Philos de Mammon walked over to empty his garbage, he 
took a quick look out the huge broken window from which several
hundred people had jumped during the course of the noon hour.

He looked down.

A whole bunch of people were jumping out the windows
from lower floors as well.

God, no wonder it felt chilly in here, Mammon thought to
himself.

Philos de Mammon took the empty elevator down to
the 21st floor where he worked.

As he got off the elevator, the office was deadly quiet.

No chitter chatter about last night’s Dancing With The Stars
performance on TV or some secretary whispering to a colleague
that she had failed her pregnancy test.

Just the occasional loud-piercing scream before some poor falling
snook hit the pavement on Wall Street below.

Philos de Mammon picked up his cell phone.

He had gotten over 36,000 text messages over the course

of the noon hour but after going through the first 10, he
deduced that they would all probably pretty much say the same 
thing.

Apparently the Dow Jones had dropped 10,000 points-
a record in history.

This was worse than the bust that started the Great Depression of
the 1930s.

“It’s 1929 all over again,” Philos de Mammon thought to himself.

He looked out the window. Coincidentally, exactly 1,929 people were 
passing his floor at that moment when he looked out as they were
on their way down to the street below.

Fortunately for Philos de Mammon, he had wisely invested all of
his money in a private Swiss bank account.

So unless the Large Hadron Collidor (LHC) had wiped out all his
money in that bank (as well as his 10-year supply of Swiss cheese
that he had hoarded in the Swiss Alps), he should be okay.

Well no need to work for the rest of the day, he thought.
As his company had probably just gone bankrupt anyway.

Philos de Mammon took the elevator down to the street.

He walked out the front door of the office building
for the last time.

Good thing that he had brought his umbrella today
he thought as he opened it up and walked and whistled
his way down the street.

The umbrella protected him from falling bodies as he 
walked.