The Home Depot Liberates The US Free Market From The Hands Of Private Enterprise Profit Dependency!

Swaying to the sleepy jazz guitar based sounds of NPR loosing a fight to it's current, and more Tourettes-prone rival, Fox News, I received an email that shocked myself, and the country as a whole. As I rushed immediately out of my bipartisan bed, put on my liberty boxers, and made my way to the freedom thrown where I sat occupied dropping a democracy deuce, I made the call and confirmed what seemed impossible and yet obviously inevitable. Congress had passed legislation that single-handedly allowed 'The Home Depot' to bail out the American free-market system of economics!Now, it's been a long road. For those of you that have suffered through a Fox News-like amnesia, I'll go ahead and stumble through it with you for just a moment.

It all began after the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, or as most of the American populace knows it, the 'Holy Crap Did We Just Spend 700 Billion Dollars To Bail Out A Bunch Of Rich Assholes' Act... of 2008. What this piece of legislation did was appoint the United States Department of the Treasury the authority to establish and manage the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which in turn led to the US buying up to $700 billion of troubled bank assets to avoid bankrupting the countries biggest financial institutions. Such an event would've crippled the American economy enough to compare it to a kid who can't swim well, has a large rock tied to his ankle, but decides that soggy twinkies floating in the middle of a moldy lake is worth the risk. The legislation itself was born out of response to the 2008 mortgage crisis, where millions of people were hoodwinked into buying homes they couldn't afford by banks that knew they couldn't afford them, but handed out the bad loans to make outstanding profits in the short term. It was at this point where the outcry against large government began. People immediately blamed the new President of the United States, Barack Obama, for the piece of legislation, citing his affiliation with the American Socialist Party as a problem. Still the bigger problem, and thank God for American leaders and citizens alike being intelligent enough to recognize and do something about it in a typical unbiased and productive fashion, was clearly the dependency of the American economy on private bank profits.

Austan Goolsbee, yes the man's name is actually Goolsbee, was taking a lot of heat in that time as he chaired Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. In an interview in May 2009, when asked about the governments plan to address the issue, Mr. Goolsbee replied "We have an idea we're working on that would not detriment the banks, [which we own], and holds the American people's best interest at heart." The genius economic foresight of the Obama administration, as well as the coming together of liberals and conservatives incited by these economic hardships, is arguably the single strongest hand in the power play the federal government would put on the banks that had nearly crippled the United States.

The federal government then went on what history would call the "Ghost Hand" campaign where the government instituted an 'absolute zero' in terms of regulation on the banks who had received $700 billion in relief from the American people. They did this believing that at heart the heads of these institutions were greedy bastards... and they were right. We've all heard of the massive foreclosures that ensued where literally millions of people were put out of their homes. The banks had instituted a robo-sign policy where most of the foreclosure documents were hardly reviewed before being signed off, approving the foreclosures of millions of homes and in turn millions of people were thrown on the street. The Obama plan took like a gull to the wind as our capitalist system worked it's charm. With zen-like wisdom... they did absolutely nothing.

"The greatest asset of the free market is that people have always and will always decide what's important to the market.", said Austan Goolsbee when asked his take on strengths of the market in a press conference this afternoon, after 'The Home Depot Bailout' was signed into law by President Obama. "Americans did what we've always done. We chose what was important in our market."

And that we did! As families by the millions were thrown onto the street by a rigged bank-profit based system, people took to their local Home Depots and incited what is now being called 'The Brown Box Hike'. As I'm sure you already know, Home Depot sells Large Moving Boxes (LMB's) measuring 4.5 Cubic Ft. for $1.37 each. At those prices, homeless Americans took to their local Home Depots and purchased LBMs by the millions, building shanty towns all over the country with them. The Home Depot in turn saw a rise in revenue approximated around $178 billion in the first six months of the 'robo-sign foreclosures'. In turn the Home Depot stock, (HD), soared from it's tenure at $31.40 a share up 2,140 points to $2171.40 a share. The Home Depot, in order to capitalize on this new instant demand, built and opened new sites in record time and hired three-quarters of the countries unemployed workers in 2010, dropping the national unemployment rate from 9.6% to under 3%! Still, there was a stir amongst officials about Americans being back at work. Fearful lawmakers cringed at the idea of the new work force inciting a perpetual drop and rise of the markets as they followed their materialistic American dream back to the mortgages they'd been forced out of. But Goolsbee held tight to his plan despite panic in the ranks, for he had prepared for the raw power of a previously ill-equipped weapon in American economics. The power of the American trend!

Despite people being able, via HD employment, to afford their mortgages, shanty towns had become the new substitute for city life! A more compact, reasonably spacious, and yet decently accommodating LMB from Home Depot was just as good as a flat in New York City ever was! I wouldn't have to tell you the perks, but here's a couple pleasant reminders! Less traffic, not a single person had bought a car in almost a year, (not much need for one in such tight quarters.) And the conservative battle cry rang more than ever as the people literally "LIVED WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THEIR MEANS!" People were excited to work again and no one wanted to return to the old tales of high rises and big city flats. People were all about the shanty! Here Goolsbee instituted the final part of his plan.

The banks, by September 2010, had thrown everyone out of their homes so they can resell and not loose money from defaulted mortgage payments. But now that no one wanted a mortgage, the banks were useless and broke, as were the bank's new owners the American government. So Goolsbee swept to quick action and propositioned that The Home Depot buy the American government's assets and bail out the American free market system of economics! Today, they did just that! We are no longer dependent on those greedy bankers! We can now depend on the nice orange aprons at The Home Depot! And as I awoke in my bipartisan bed of plastic Home Depot bags, and made my way to my freedom thrown, (a Medium Moving Box (MMB) measuring 3 cubic feet, (only $.47 with the employee discount!)),I did so in my liberty boxers made from white colored HD plastic bags to drop my democratic deuce when the call was made and it was confirmed. The American dream was back on track, and America can prosper as it's now rid of it's dependency on profiting private enterprises! And in every 4.5 cubic feet of moving box across the country, a truly free market and an American dream lives on!

This truth that our free market can now operate truly as a free market, where every American can fail or succeed equally depending on their private assets and talents, unlimited by a rigged system made to benefit those who can never fail, that brings us today's Less Than Modest Proposal.