House of Gourds: The august upper chamber has given treasury and exchequer officials a reason for cheer: from now on they can forget about money. From now on they’re in charge of college basketball. “We realize how depressed these people were becoming,” said First Gourd Graf Rafferty. “We thought, let’s throw some new people into the financial crisis, people who are fresh and probably broke.”
Kansas Suffers: The Jayhawks men’s team suffered a first round loss in the Big 12 tourney. Part of the blame falls on the officiating crew who only days earlier worked for Treasury. “Well, we warned the point guards that we’d modify the three point line but only if a reasonable alternative presented itself, a blend of private initiative and public policy that might insure some consistency,” said referee JM Keynes. “In the end we will all die and these scores won’t matter all that much,” he added.
Atlantic Ten powerhouse Xavier fared better as the officiating crew replaced the scoreboard with the Philadelphia SOX Index. “We carefully weighted the performance of each player on each team and concluded that LaSalle, Duquesne, and Fordham had no chance of winning the tournament,” a Treasury official commented. “Forget St, Joe’s and GW.”
Syracuse Faces Sanctions: TARP officials may sanction Syracuse because of their six overtime win over UCONN. “That game took too long,” said an unnamed source. As noted in the FOMC minutes “Basketball games shall remain within the confines of their allotted duration, that is to say during regulation.” Clearly the unregulated Orange missed opportunities to put the Huskies away but opted instead to prolong the agony.
March Madness: In a related decision the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that Niagara University will play Canisius for the national championship April 1st. All twelve fed governors will referee the contest. “This will save a lot of energy,” Speaker Pelosi said. She’s privately rooting for the Purple Eagles.
Sports and Finance Editor Al “Boom-Boom” Greenspan reporting.