[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')ASHINGTON—A panel of top business leaders testified before Congress about the worsening recession Monday, demanding the government provide Americans with a new irresponsible and largely illusory economic bubble in which to invest.

"What America needs right now is not more talk and long-term strategy, but a concrete way to create more imaginary wealth in the very immediate future," said Thomas Jenkins, CFO of the Boston-area Jenkins Financial Group, a bubble-based investment firm. "We are in a crisis, and that crisis demands an unviable short-term solution."

The current economic woes, brought on by the collapse of the so-called "housing bubble," are considered the worst to hit investors since the equally untenable dot-com bubble burst in 2001. According to investment experts, now that the option of making millions of dollars in a short time with imaginary profits from bad real-estate deals has disappeared, the need for another spontaneous make-believe source of wealth has never been more urgent.

"Perhaps the new bubble could have something to do with watching movies on cell phones," said investment banker Greg Carlisle of the New York firm Carlisle, Shaloe & Graves. "Or, say, medicine, or shipping. Or clouds. The manner of bubble isn't important—just as long as it creates a hugely overvalued market based on nothing more than whimsical fantasy and saddled with the potential for a long-term accrual of debts that will never be paid back, thereby unleashing a ripple effect that will take nearly a decade to correct."

"The U.S. economy cannot survive on sound investments alone," Carlisle added.

Congress is currently considering an emergency economic-stimulus measure, tentatively called the Bubble Act, which would order the Federal Reserve to† begin encouraging massive private investment in some fantastical financial scheme in order to get the nation's false economy back on track.

Current bubbles being considered include the handheld electronics bubble, the undersea-mining-rights bubble, and the decorative office-plant bubble. Additional options include speculative trading in fairy dust—which lobbyists point out has the advantage of being an entirely imaginary commodity to begin with—and a bubble based around a hypothetical, to-be-determined product called "widgets."

The most support thus far has gone toward the so-called paper bubble. In this appealing scenario, various privately issued pieces of paper, backed by government tax incentives but entirely worthless, would temporarily be given grossly inflated artificial values and sold to unsuspecting stockholders by greedy and unscrupulous entrepreneurs.

[Novus]

I could tell as soon as I read the first paragraph that is had to be written by the Onion.

[Kylon]

I bet somebody actually thinks this way...

[jasonraymondson]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kylon', 'I') bet somebody actually thinks this way...

[Peleg]

That was some needed levity. Although a strict negation of all the obvious jabs still leaves you seeing things as they really are, possibly even more clearly.

lol

[kpeavey]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', 'I') may be wrong, but I thought our government actually worked this way already.

[CarlosFerreira]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kylon', 'I') bet somebody actually thinks this way...

[burtonridr]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jasonraymondson', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Kylon', 'I') bet somebody actually thinks this way...

[PeakingAroundtheCorner]

My eyes were tearing up before I finished the first paragraph.