Derivatives: a tradable financial product whose value depends on the value of some other asset or combination of assets).

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit. She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Heidi keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers’ loans).

Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit.

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.

At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS. These securities then are bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds really are debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices still are climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Heidi’s 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers. Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from their cronies in government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi’s bar.

Now do you understand?

A woman finds Aladdin’s magic lamp.

She starts rubbing it and a Genie comes out as usual.

The woman looks at the Genie and asks him to grant her the following wishes:
– I want my husband to have eyes only for me.
– I want to be the only one in his life.
– I want that when he gets up in the morning I’m the first thing he grabs and takes me everywhere he goes.

The Genie turned the lady into an iPhone 6.

A funeral procession pulled into a cemetery. Several carloads of family members
followed a black truck towing a boat with a coffin in it.

A passer-by remarked, “That guy must have been a very avid fisherman.”

“Oh, he still is,” remarked one of the mourners. As a matter of fact, he’s headed off to the lake as soon as we bury his wife.”

In a criminal justice system based on 12 individuals not smart enough to get out of jury duty, here is a jury to be proud of: A defendant was on trial for murder.

There was strong evidence indicating guilt, but there was no corpse.

In the defence’s closing statement, the lawyer, knowing that his client would probably be convicted, resorted to a trick.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have a surprise for you all,”

The lawyer said as he looked at his watch.

“Within one minute, the person presumed dead in this case will walk into this courtroom.”

He looked toward the courtroom door. The jurors, somewhat stunned, all looked on eagerly. A minute passed. Nothing happened.

Finally the lawyer said, “Actually, I made up the previous statement. But you all looked on with anticipation. I, therefore, put it to you that you have a reasonable doubt in this case as to whether anyone was killed, and I insist that you return a verdict of not guilty.”

The jury retired to deliberate.

A few minutes later, the jury returned and pronounced a verdict of guilty.

“But how?” inquired the lawyer. “You must have had some doubt; I saw all of you stare at the door.”

The jury foreman replied: “Yes, we did look, but your client didn’t.”

After a tiring day, a commuter settled down in his seat and closed his eyes. As the train rolled out of the station, a woman sitting next to him pulled out her mobile phone.

She started talking in a loud voice, “Hi sweetheart. It’s Sue. I’m on the train.” “Yes, I know it’s the six thirty and not the four thirty, but I had a long meeting. No, honey, not with that Kevin from the accounting office. It was with the boss. No sweetheart, you’re the only one in my life. Yes, I’m sure, cross my heart!”

Fifteen minutes later, she was still talking loudly. When the man sitting next to her had enough, he leaned over and said into the phone, “Sue, hang up the phone and come back to bed ……”

Sue doesn’t use her mobile phone in public any longer.