Bankers cautious on Eurozone breakup

While some banks are calling for contingency plans in the case of the breakup of the Eurozone, a large majority of investment banks, hedge fund managers, and responsible commentators are saying "hold on a minute."

"Where am I supposed to put the money?" said Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs. "As CEO, I'm committed to maximizing corporate profits, and while Goldman Sachs will obviously make bank on this one that will make the real estate bubble look like a pinprick, I personally haven't even figured out what to do with my bonus from that yet."

Most economists agree that a breakup of the Eurozone would mean an immense realignment of riches, and complain that the term "percent" is becoming particularly unwieldy in describing the distribution of wealth. "My friends and I can't even explain how rich we are anymore. Saying 'We're the 0.00001%' is too hard to understand," lamented hedge-fund manager Peter Thiel. U.S. lawmakers are studying proposals for mandating use of a new term "permega", in which percentages would be replaced by fractions based on a million, as part of the recently introduced Division Is So Hard (DISH) Act.

Tax experts welcome the possibility of change, saying that they are running out of zeros when expressing tax liability to their clients. "You need to pay 0.0000001% of your income in tax this year" is just too hard for many of my esteemed colleagues to follow, said H&R Block CEO William Cobb. "Keep in mind, most investment bankers have graduated in the past 5-10 years from top educational institutions in the United States, and although they all got straight As and graduated at the tops of their classes, so did everyone else."

Although momentum has been significant on the DISH act, with ten co-sponsors in the Senate, opposition is growing. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is leading the charge against such a change, arguing that math isn't the problem and the tax code itself is at fault. "We can't keep applying the same logic, putting another zero in front of the tax burden of our nation's most productive workers. My smartest staffers tell me that by simply putting a minus sign in front of the tax rate we could reverse the trend and start getting those numbers under control, especially for workers in the affected brackets. We wouldn't have to invent a new symbol, either."

Notwithstanding these efforts by legislators to soften the blow, plans are proceeding apace to launch new currencies in place of the Euro. "We're still trying to work out how we can absorb all of the wealth of the Euro, as well as all of the wealth in the new currencies that will be introduced," said Mr. Blankfein. "We applaud the efforts of our friends in European governments to include us in discussions on how to build a variety of efficient banking systems that will benefit world economic growth."

However, Mr. Blankfein sounded a note of caution on current U.S. legislative efforts to ease the transition. "Of course we appreciate all of the help we can get, but right now that's up to the European Union. The U.S. government should stay focused on efforts to finance the next round of bailouts."