I am a TARP wife.
In keeping with the unwritten code of this new sisterhood, I have taken a vow of financial abstinence. I returned the presents my husband gave me for Christmas (but didn’t tell him, since he’s already awash in gloom) and am using my credit balances at all the major department stores for important gifts and other necessities.
I haven’t even looked at spring clothes; God forbid someone catches me out in something new. Keeping up with fashion seems somehow decadent in this new era, like getting Botox injections or catered dinners. Like so many others, I’m shopping in my closet. I’ve bought exactly two things this year—makeup and panty hose. If I buy a present for someone, I have the package sent to their home. I don’t want to be spotted climbing into a taxi, laden with Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags.
As you can see, being a TARP wife means, in short, making decisions according to a complex algorithm: balancing the need to look like your world hasn’t crumbled beneath you—let’s not alarm the investors!—with the need to appear duly repentant for your subprime sins. It also means we’re part of the community of more than 400 companies that have received government bailout funds, whose fall from grace has been swifter and harsher than any since Mao frog-marched intellectuals into China’s countryside.
And it goes on and on. You really should read this whole article, it’s guaranteed to break your heart. *sniff*
How about the related status of the action to take ALL of Mrs Madoff’s property? And his sons?
How pathetic our culture is that these crooks continue to skate.
I’m waiting for the usual “Every dollar I spend keeps you little people employeed” excuse for excess.
I’m waiting for the usual “Every dollar I spend keeps you little people employed” excuse for excess.
“whose fall from grace has been swifter and harsher than any since Mao frog-marched intellectuals into China’s countryside.”
Why Yes, those poor poor billionaires having to go down from 12 ferraris in their drive way from 15 is just heart breaking. It’s most DEFINITELY just like rounding up people and taking them to the countryside for mass executions. I can’t see any other more accurate analogy for their heartbreaking suffering.
IMBECILE!
Call me when she’s living under and wearing a tarp. Then I might have some sympathy.
She should encourage her husband to commit suicide, like Freddie Mac CFO. Restore honor by suicide, that is the way of the samurai! this way she could stop to live in shame!
(Gotta help those helpless women!)
#4 tcc3
“Call me when she’s living under and wearing a tarp. Then I might have some sympathy.”
Then may you could throw her a few bucks for a quickie to help her buy new shoes or something.
A socioeconomic phenomena – an entire adult generation unfamiliar with hard times.
She should have hocked off a couple of xmas gifts and bought him a nice little pistola with a single bullet and a cleaning kit. Accidental death while cleaning his new gun and she gets all the insurance!
One step closer to reality, bitch.
I will say this much for TARP. A lot of fat cats aren’t going to be nearly as eager to get goverment help in the future because when push comes to shove the lender owns them and what it says goes. It they don’t like it they can…leave.
This column is satirical, right? Ummm…right?
I just read the entire article. This is just so sad. So very sad. She has to SNEAK into BLACK TIE events….How fucking sad. How many of us have to sneak into OUR black tie events? Hmmm? How many?
Bitch.
A lot of those wives need a tarp over them.
I feel for her — a little. To help her and her family cheer up, I recommend The Grapes of Wrath, either the book or the movie, or both.
On a side note, another indication of relative levels of poverty: when the movie version of The Grapes of Wrath showed in Europe, viewers were scornful — how can they think of themselves as poverty-stricken? They have a car!