"First They Came

for the gas traders, but I said nothing, for I was not a gas trader.

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Then they came for the originators, but I said nothing, for I was not an originator.

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They then came for the power marketers, but I said nothing, for I was not a power marketer...

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and then they came for me...and there was no one left to say anything"

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Okay, okay--we're not quite at the last line yet, because while 1 in 5 employees in our front office/trade floor were liquidated yesterday, your friend Mike Pemulis remains among the living. Apparently my biggest strength is that I'm not paid that much. You know, short blade of grass.

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My friend the III*, a Wharton alum who does BD for a midstream operating and trading company (a very large private family corporation owned in large part by, believe it or not, Elaine Bennes) told me the story of how one Thursday afternoon three weeks ago, his company sent out an email to a bunch of select employees calling for a staff meeting in one of the main conference rooms. What they found when they all entered and sat down was a firing squad waiting for them...the Malmedy Massacre writ small.

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I guess these developments really shouldn't suprise us "what with the economy and all"**

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On a positive note, gas prices are down!

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(Oh wait, that's bad for me...fuck!)

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*need a better nickname for my blue-blooded friend from San Antonio

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**This seemingly ubiquitious panacea of an excuse was joked about recently by the same 'the III' referenced above. For now, I encourage all of you reader(s) to use this phrase as often as possible and as frivolously as possible, as in

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"Doesn't surprise me they overcooked my steak, what with the economy and all"

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"Look at all this traffic--what with the economy and all, I guess it moves slower"

[editor's update: you'll notice also that politcal cartoonists are basking in their own wit by utilizing the "plane crashed into the Hudson River" metaphor for the economy. If one damn person had died, they'd be unable to do this.]