Diogenes and the banker buddy are hashing over old times while wondering if The Man has finally lost his marbles.
Getting into bed with the government is like supping with the Devil with a short spoon, says Diogenes, and The Man’s spoon is very short indeed!
Quite, says the banker buddy, so this likely won’t end well for either of us if it’s allowed to continue. We both have too much to lose—but the question is, what can we do about it?
That was Friday. This is Monday, and they’ve had time to think it over. Well, says Diogenes, I’m sadly in no position to do anything of any consequence, which means it will have to be down to you.
Agreed, says the banker buddy, and the old adage “if you can’t beat them, join them” springs to mind. So while The Man is busy covering his arse by spying for the government on his CatCryptTrophe clients, we will cover our arses by spying for the government on him!
Brilliant, says Diogenes, but I can think of a few problems just off the top of my head. Chief among them being, won’t that put us in the same boat? Holed below the waterline and up the creek without a paddle?
Not if I play my cards right, says the banker buddy. We bankers hold a royal flush when it comes to nursing the country’s fragile economic recovery, and that means the futures of most senior government ministers. So it’s a hand they can’t beat unless they cheat, which is admittedly not out of the question. But that said, what can they actually do?
Diogenes throws his arms in the air. You’re right of course, but how has it come to this? From paddling in the shallows to swimming with the deep-state sharks in just a few short months?
Remember how this all started, with CatAstrophe? The Man, you and me, Uncle Testosterone, Aunts Harmonium and Euphonium, and a bit of lucrative but dodgy asset relocation that profited so many people in high places?
Meanwhile The Man, and by association us, is now into even dodgier cryptocurrency dealing, plus money laundering and life-threatening espionage, and God alone knows what else. Where will it all end if it’s not nipped firmly in the bud..?
Fast forward to today, and the banker buddy is reporting back on his encounter with the same would-be-hot shot government legal eagle who strongarmed The Man into bending the knee.
The good news, he says, is that he’s fine with us turning the tables on The Man, in fact he’s all for it. But the bad new—and this is him speaking—is that we also run the same risk, ie, ending up dead in a ditch if this leaks.
Diogenes collects his thoughts. Well, he says, being damned by association means we are already running that risk, and at least this means we will have government get-out-of-jail-free cards up our sleeves.
So I say to hell with the consequences! Onwards and upwards, and let the Devil take the hindmost!