Letter from Ireland

Dear Queen Lizzie and nice hair Dave,

Firstly, we have had the most wonderful time while you were on holidays. We fed the dog, put the washing on and cut the grass in the backyard. We thoroughly enjoyed being given such responsibility, and we feel like we have learned an awful lot from the experience. In short, we have most enjoyed our training programme. Although at 88 years long, it was perhaps a bit drawn out.

I suppose we have to own up to you - we had and accident while you were away. Like all good teenagers, when Mum and Dad went on holidays we had a party. I swear we only invited a few friends over for a game of cards and a few beers. However, our friends brought some of their friends, including some German bankers (and a few of our cousin bankers in the UK we didn't know) and some nut-job Americans named Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, Ken Lewis, Bob Rubin, Dick Fuld and some other people we can't remember the names of. We thought they seemed like nice folks, but it turned out that they were horrible. They came to the party with weird substances we had never heard of before - things like CDOs, CDSs, ABSs, Ponzi finance (although they preferred to call it "structured finance", as apparently Ponzi is a term only used by pushers and the police) and over-night bank credit markets. They told us it was safe to take them and that it was just a little bit fun. We all took what the American bankers brought, thinking why not "give it the 'ol college try". We didn't know how narcotic the effect would be, and ended up getting a little too 'attached' to these financial 'fixes'.

Regrettably, the party got out of control. We tried our best to calm it down, and even called the police. This didn't help and by the time the police arrived the place was thrashed. We didn't intend for this to happen and spent many hours crying about the damage we had done and how disappointed you would be with us upon your return.

We have tried to clean the place up as best as possible. Some guys called Brian really got stuck into the clean up effort and we thought it best to let them at it. We couldn't have known they would try and cover the wine stains on the nice carpets with Dulux Matt Emulsion paint. None us know what they were thinking. They also seem to have thought that the best way to deal with the broken windows, ripped furniture and smashed collectibles was to burn the west wing of the house down and try to blame it on the Lehman brothers (some of the American bankers our friends brought). While trying to clean up the mess the horrible American and German bankers made, one of our friends, Anglo, had a seizure from taking to much credit and structured finance at the party. We tried to drive him to the hospital but one of the Brian's crashed the car into a wall on the way there - we're not too sure which one yet, but we think it was Brian Lenihan. It was written off, but Brian swears we can pay for it with our pocket money.

We hope you won't be too angry with us. We made a mistake and couldn't stop the party getting out of control. We have learned our lesson. The Germans also brought us to some fruity club called "The EU" while you were away. We now owe them money for running up a serious tab with them and they are threatening to hurt us if we don't pay. But we can't pay, we spent all the pocket money you left on stuff for the party. We are really, really sorry and will cut the grass for the next year as punishment. Please don't hate us, and please take us back. We didn't mean to ruin the place. Enclosed are the keys. Sorry about the mess.

Hugs and Kisses

Ireland

P.S. When the expensive sofas got ripped open, and some nutty German bankers pulled all the horse hair stuffing out, we tried to cut their hair so as to re-stuff the sofas. However, when we tried to do this, the French bullies, who hate us because we are friends with nice American multi-nationals, held us down and the nasty German bankers left us with some funky looking mullet haircuts. They are the ones who should have stupid looking mullets, not us, but the bullies are bigger than us so we couldn't do anything about it. We are very embarrassed by our new haircuts and are afraid to go out in public looking so stupid. Please don't be shocked when you see this, we didn't mean it, and we promise we will be on our best behaviour from now on.

Lifted, in its entirety, from munkimagik's terrific post.

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