A modest proposal

The EPA says that a generic human life is worth $7,220,000 (recently devalued).

I heard a figure last week on the radio that something like 40,000 Wall Street bankers and brokers could lose their jobs in this economic chaos, which was brought on in part by silliness like mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps.

Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that there are perhaps 10 percent of those soon-to-be-jobless bankers and brokers who are considered to be upper management, and who are also directly responsible for the current shambles of the credit markets and the collapse of the financial house of cards. (We're excluding the people in the government, like Democrat Representative and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) and Democrat Senator and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, and ex-government people like former President Jimmy Carter, whose administration helped create the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which forced banks to make loans to uncreditworthy customers and which spawned the subprime mortage. We can get to those people later.)

So. Four thousand high-powered management types who created this mess. Let's just say.

Four thousand times $7.22 million dollars equals $28,880,000,000, or almost $29 billion dollars. That's the sum of the estimated value of the lives of those four thousand people. That's only slightly more than the pork that was included with the bailout bill.

That's a small amount of money to exchange for the lives of the people who caused this crisis. As taxpayers, I think we're entitled to buy them outright. And then liquidate them, so to speak. Not so much as an object lesson to others, but merely to set an example, to make a statement. To indicate that failure on a scale of this magnitude is not acceptable. And, of course, to keep them from making the same mistakes again. It just wouldn't do, you see, to let them do it again. We bailed them out. It doesn't mean that they can keep breathing.

Using tactics developed under Attorney General Janet Reno, squads of heavily-armed Reconciliation Auditors would fan out across the cities and towns of New York and New Jersey, kicking in the doors of the guilty bankers and brokers, and summarily executing them on the spot with a well-aimed bullet between the eyes from a silenced .45 automatic pistol. (If the workload proves to be too great, the government will subcontract the job to the local Mafia, but only if the required paperwork is turned in, and the bodies are supplied as proof of services performed.)

"Here's your receipt, ma'am." The lead Auditor pulls a pink carbonless form from the breast pocket of his black body armor. It is signed in triplicate by the local Resolution Trust Corporation assistant deputy regional manager. The Auditor proffers it to the grieving wife who is standing over the slumped body of her husband in the front hallway of their mansion.

"Your husband's life was bought and paid for by the taxpayers. We're here to collect." She stares at him, but she cannot see his eyes through the black night-vision goggles he wears over his balaclava. Gently, he takes her hand, presses the folded receipt into it, and closes her fingers over it.

Wordlessly she watches as the other Auditors zip up the banker's cooling body in a bag, lug it down the garden path and dump it into the back of the shiny black Step-Van, which is already laden with 20 other bodies collected from the same neighborhood.

"Have a nice day," calls the Auditor, as the rest of the squad climbs into the back of the Step-Van and it purrs away from the curb, off to make another collection.

The taxpayers have paid for the lives of these people already. It's time to collect.