March Productivity Madness

Economists show the proclivity
Toward lamenting the lost productivity
When Americans cling,
From the first day of Spring,
To basketball bracket activity. 

At work we may go to extremes
Of collegiate basketball dreams,
And glance in our laps 
At websites and apps
With brackets and video streams. 

Consultants engaged by the boss
To reckon the March Madness cost
Deduce from the gauges
Of hours and wages
That 1.2 billion are lost.

But a national payroll statistic
As a measure is much too simplistic,
As workers are apt
In March to adapt
In a manner that's deft and holistic.

Despite how the experts may warn
That brackets are worthy of scorn,
It's easy to see
For office esprit,
They're better than downloading porn. 

Guinness Taps Out

Guinness could not find a way

Of sponsoring St. Patrick's Day,

Having failed to have swayed

Those who run the parade

To authorize floats that are gay. 

It's a green of a diff'rent complexion

That causes the brewer's objection,

As the times, they have changed

And hence rearranged

The sponsorship fiscal projection. 

It's not that they don't see the profit

In St. Paddy's, and what they make off it;

It's how they appraise

The changing mores

Of the many straight drinkers who quaff it. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day to those who wear the green, as well as all the other colors of the rainbow. 

Financial Fraud Trilogy

There once was a fellow named Chubley

Who mortgaged collateral doubly.

"It's a trick," he confessed,

"I effectuate best

When markets are frothy and bubbly."

_____________

It's fruitless to place one's reliance

On oneself in defrauding one's clients;

Much better to work

With the back-office clerk

And ideally, the head of compliance. 

_______________________

A credit swap trader named Moore

Keeps tickets of trades in his drawer.

Though transactions all post

By an e-trading host,

It's a throwback to dealing room lore. 

________________________________

Today's idle limerick musings, unlike most of the verses in this space, do not describe any particular incident or people.  However, I was prompted to reflect on financial fraud by events at the Citigroup subsidiary Banamex, which has just suffered a $400 million loss from nefarious goings-on at one of its customers. The Mexican oil field services company Oceanografía, a supplier to the national oil company Pemex, had been selling their Pemex receivables to Banamex to raise funds - a routine trade finance transaction - and apparently were so pleased at their funding success that they decided to sell another $400 million of receivables that they didn't have. 

It's another reminder that financial fraud may be detectable and even, in our too-big-to-jail era, punishable; in the hands of a determined practitioner, however, it is rarely preventable. 

Here is a link to the latest background on this case from the Wall Street Journal:

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304585004579419371032316620

Ukraine & Putin's Reign, Explained

Said Putin, regarding Crimea:
"Don't get the mistaken idea.
I may not contain
The western Ukraine,
But the east is a part of my spheah."