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The Town of Politics is a town with a community of a few dozen large extended families.
The main families in the town are the Americans, affectionately called Yanks or Gringos, the Chinese affectionately called the Chinks, the Euros, the Arabs, the Swiss, the Africans and the Churches.
- The Euros, like the Arabs, are distant relatives who like to fight among themselves.
- The Swiss are very well liked and always invited by the others. They are very punctual always arriving on time.
- The Africans are not very well liked and are never invited by the others. But they come just the same unannounced.
- The Churches always invite themselves and never leave. Because of that the Churches are homeless and are in the real estate business living in everyone else`s homes.
- The Americans were immigrants who did very well.
The Bank brothers had a money store they called the bank. At one time they used pieces of gold for money, but then they ran out of gold and instead printed IOU notes called ”Dollars“ on paper. They printed on the paper “In God we trust” which actually meant “You must pay cash”.
The Americas were once the owners of the biggest retail store in the town. Until they sold it to the Chinese, who developed it into a shopping center. The Americans became the wealthiest and the most powerful family in Politics. They lived extravagantly in an enclosed and fenced-in estate. Many accused them of having links to the Mafia. They had a reputation of fighting too much with their neighbors.
Three brothers made most the decisions for the Americans. They were called the Wing brothers, Right Wing, Left Wing, and Center Wing.
- Righty was too afraid to try anything new and closed his eyes shut at the first sign of danger.
- Lefty was daring and tried everything there was to try, refusing to listen to any warnings.
- Center Wing was very fat and weighed more than Righty and Lefty together. He was very unsure of himself and just followed whoever was the loudest.
The Bank brothers got very closely tied with the Church family who were trusted and left alone to do whatever they wanted to do. So the Banks also did whatever they wanted to do, which was to make more money. So they printed more IOUs.
The Euros next door had a reputation of fighting among themselves. The family owned a series of stores and offices. The kids were very clever and excelled in music, but tended to fight with each other and with everyone else. No wonder, as the parents Mr. German and Mrs. France violently argued a lot, especially about their children, and about Mr. Jew and his family who moved in a long time ago. Mr. German pressured Mr. Jew to move out, while Mrs. France was more accommodating.
The Arabs across the street were owners of the gas station. The Yanks were by far their best customer and were allowed to pay with credit.
The Chinks next to them were owners of the shopping center. The Japanese, distant cousins of the Chinks, lived next door and had a garage selling cars. The Yanks were by far the best customers of the Chinks and Japs, as the Japanese were affectionately called. The Yanks bought everything they needed and wanted on credit.
The Swiss up the hill ran the schools, the pharmacies, and the ATM machines owned by the Americans. They also have a very popular hotel resort business.
They were experts in the communication field, having invented the Alp Horn that can send messages from mountain top to mountain top at the speed of sound and without having to use batteries.
They also discovered that by squeezing their balls they could make funny sounds called Yodeling that attracted tourists.
The Africans down in the gully mined the mines and were mostly on social welfare, or trying to get into the Swiss house hold.
The Churches were in the business of real estate. They had their hand in everything, including the death industry, running the funeral parlors and in charge of the cemeteries.
They had a psychotherapy practice and claimed to be very professional. They claimed to offer the most complete program at getting clients ready to die. “From cradle to grave … and beyond” was their logo.
There were 3 sisters who ran the business,
Ms. Jew.
Miss Catholic specialized in repentance and self-punishment, Mrs. Muslim was the specialist in submission, and Ms. Jew was the specialist in survival. They didn’t much like each other because they were vain and very sensitive to criticism and each could not help but criticize the others.
One day Mr. Jew was accused by Mr. German of being a good for nothing thief and was forcibly evicted from his apartment. Threatened if he stayed, he returned to his childhood house he was born and raised up in.
He was saddened and surprised to see that it had been taken over by his cousin Palestine and that Palestine had allowed the house to go to ruin. The house had broken windows and leaky roofs.
The Palastines were at first happy to see Mr. Jew move in, especially that he fixed the windows and roof and renovated the entire house. But when Mr. Jew invited the rest of his family to move in, Mr. Palestine reminded Mr. Jew that he had bought the house from Jew’s father when Jew was still a child.
Jew and Palestine continuously fought trying to evict each other. Because the Jews had very good connections with the Americans, Mr. Jew successfully managed to push the Palestines out into the back yard. The Jews built a wall around themselves just like the Euros did before and the Chinese before them.
Palestine set up his tent and vowed to stay and fight till he gets his house back.
The next door neighbor Arab was so appalled by how unfairly the Americans were helping the Jews treat their Palatine cousins. The Arab threw a stone and broke the biggest window of America’s bank.
America with a reputation of being violent promptly retaliated. All this fighting cost so much money that Mr Bank ran out of paper and ink to print more. When the Chinese and the Arabs realized that America had no more money, they immediately canceled and froze America’s credit card.
To make the situation worse, America came down with what was diagnosed as CBD, also known as Compulsive Buying Disorder.
Like the Native Indians who were evicted by the Americans, the Americans now found themselves evicted by the Chinese. The Americans were forced to gradually sell their estate and their mansion. They first sold their garden shed, then their garage then came the car. Before they knew it they had sold their entire mansion.
The Chinese and Asians remembered the abuse and unfair treatment they received from the Americans when working for them to build their railroads and being nuked by them 2 times in the last war. But they never the less showed compassion to their new tenants.
For most members of the American family, their situation improved. For the Bank brothers, who ran the money making machines, they lost their job. The lucrative money making business of printing money quietly changed to Chinese hands.
One day America’s mansion started to leak. At first it was just an inconvenience, but it got worse and worse until the roof fell in. And the landlord Mr China had no money to repair it as his own villa needed renovation.
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The families in the Town of Politics all had products and services they wanted to sell to each other. They also wanted products and services from the other families. Each family had its own money and each wanted to be paid in their own money. So before they bought a product and service from a family, first they had to buy the family’s money in order to be able to pay for it.
They went to money dealers who bought and sold any kind of money. They traded money just like apple traders traded apples. Each family had some gambler who was a money trader. They made a lot of money. They were called Speculators.
Each family had a printing press called National Bank responsible for issuing money for and on behalf of the entire family.
- The Swiss family was trusted by everyone.
- The Euros were known for their entrepreneur spirit.
- The Yanks were distant relatives of the Euros and were the new rich kids in town. They were aggressive and were hooked on toys and oil. You either liked them and were friends, or you hated them and were enemies.
- Mr China was America’s main toy dealer.
- Mr Arab was America’s main oil dealer.
- The African family was not trusted by anyone.
Speculators made money by trading money. They hoarded money and tried to buy cheap and sell expensive. They gambled on who would buy what from whom, and who would sell what to whom, and for how much. Gambling was a game few could afford, so all the speculators were rich and had a lot of money to play with. For every winner, there was a loser. Money for them was not a measure of value for a product or service but rather a commodity much like apples to be traded or like lottery tickets to be gambled on. The speculators caused prices to fluctuate and the National Banks of the families had a hard time keeping up to issue the right amount of money at the right time to keep prices stable.
Africa stubbornly refused to allow the value of their money to be decided by the speculators. Because nobody wanted their money, they kept on printing more and more until a sheet of toilet paper cost more then a million trillion African Dollars.
China also refused to allow the value of their money to be decided by the speculators. They chose an exchange rate that reflected the role they played as the toy dealer for America.
America was very addicted to her toys and China was in dire need of the business. So China lent lots of money to America so that she could buy as many toys as she wanted. China traded toys for American bonds which promised very high interest rates.
When America was fighting the Arabs for oil, she found herself short of cash. So China traded toys for stocks from companies that made her part owner of them. It was like marrying into the family. China slowly became part of the American family owning part of their business and part of the family estate.
America was also addicted to oil and the Arabs were the oil dealers. Instead of lending America money to support her oil habit, they traded their oil for entertainment companies and other luxury items.
They also bought America’s most feared product that was so expensive, only the richest could buy it. That was the toys America used to fight with; her weapons. The biggest ships, the fastest planes and the strongest tanks, all with the most powerful bombs.
In order to protect their good friend Mr. Jew and his family from threats from the Arabs, America employed Mr. Jew as the product field trial engineer, and was able to sell the weapons to the Arabs at a higher price as “Tested and Proven”.
The National Banks of the Yanks, the Euros and the Swiss thought it would be cool to be free and democratic. They believed and had strong faith in anything called “free”. So they traded their money on the free market of the speculators.
People lost faith and trust in the money from the Euros and from the Americans. Everyone wanted Swiss Franks and the Swiss Franks became too expensive to buy Swiss products and services. It became too expensive to stay in the Swiss family hotel. It was as if an earthquake pushed the Swiss so high up the mountain that they became inaccessible.
The Swiss immediately called a family meeting and decided that they would send volunteer mountain climbers to help the tourists get up to the hotel.
Then the entire fleet of hot air balloons were called into patriotic service. Because the balloons were very wind dependent and did not meet the stringent Swiss self-imposed rules of “being on time”, a funicular was quickly built.
The Swiss National Bank printed as much money as the speculators demanded and with all this extra money, the Swiss celebrated with a shopping spree. They bought railways, one of the favorite toys the Swiss liked to collect. They bought the Eiffel tower from Mr. Paris at a discount with bottled mineral water.
They strung the longest and fastest cable chairlift guaranteeing that the Euros could be skiing within 1 hour, without having to wait in line. Having a fetish for building tunnels, the Swiss built one from their hotel on top of the mountain right down to the Euros front porch. In addition they bought a container ship just to ship home all the “Made in China” bargains from American garage sales.
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