"THE SILVER BULLET LIVES ON"

It was a chilly Arizona night as The Lone Ranger and Tonto were sitting with their back to the fire  - ponchos covering their shoulders - discussing their respective potty habits .

(This part intrigued me because, as a kid listening to their show while lying on the floor in front of our huge Philco radio, I was puzzled and convinced they must never have had to go to the bathroom. Like, you never heard the Lone Ranger say to Tonto before they rode off to chase bad guys, "Hold it Tonto, I've got to take a whiz".)

Apparently, I had "B.R". problems of my own back then, which many claim have still not abated. I digress. Lets get back to our story:

Suddenly, our heroes heard a rustling sound in the woods behind them.

The guy with the white hat went into a panic. His first thought was that the notorious Butch Cavendish gang had snuck up on the two of them and was now seeking to fulfill their vow to wipe out both he and Tonto - without whose help he wouldn't have been around anyway.

In his panic, the Ranger rushed to pull down the black mask protecting his true identity. Tonto was caught off guard as well, and hurriedly reached into the back of his poncho in a vain attempt to reach an arrow from his quiver.

The revered "mask of identity protection" ended up under one ear and over the Ranger's nose but still offered some discreet protection.

Tonto, on the other hand, just stood there looking puzzled as he forgot he had no arrows in his quiver - partially due to the fact he had no quiver and used a rusted gun instead. Old habits die hard.

It mattered not. The noise they heard actually came from someone seeking their help - not their demise.

Hands held high, an Irish guy by the name of Denny Kelleher from the nearby town of "Rim Shot" appeared and began to explain how he and his fellow  residents were seeking relief from the dastardly behavior of the sole town bankers, Sydney and Grope (known simply as Sydney/Grope) and sought the help of the two "good guys"  .

He related to them how the bankers had combined both their assets and their name in order to build the largest and most luxurious bank existing that side of the Mississippi - wiping out all the decent smaller bankers in the process.

He then explained that recently the towns people discovered how Sydney/Grope s had been stealing them blind.

It seemed the two "supposedly" accomplished this by lying to the town folk about the safety of their investments, failing to disclose termite infestation in the store fronts they offered for sale or lease, were salting gold mines, alleging to the citizens that their "premier" mines were loaded with gold (which turned out to be iron pyrites), and had hired bad guys to over-water their sick cattle to inflate both their weight and sale price, and which also appeared to have had the banks brand superimposed on a previous brand.

In short, it was a typical plot for most of the Lone Ranger story lines with which we first became familiar as kids who were fans of both the Lone Ranger and Fran Stryker, his creator.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto acted quickly. But first, fearing the exaggeration of the town folk's allegations, the Ranger wanted to see for himself.

Disdaining his usual choice of "town" disguise as "the old prospecter", the Lone Ranger instead went into "Rim Shot" seeking information while appropriately dressed as an itinerant drummer, a purveyor of womens unmentionables.

Immediately after confirming the suspicions of Kelleher and his neighbors, the two crime fighters confronted the bankers who, not unexpectedly, denied all of their accusations.

Our heroes then engaged the bankers Sydney and Grope in a ferocious gunfight outside the bank that lasted nearly all weekend (without the need to reload their guns). It ended successfully only when Tonto's gun misfired and struck a container of coal oil inside the bank where the bankers had fled from the hail of bullets.

The huge bank burned to the ground - leaving the citizens no place to pursue their banking needs . Miraculously the bankers had survived, as the Lone Ranger never killed anybody, choosing to wound them instead.

The already outraged town citizens demanded that the bankers be hanged immediately and their bodies left on the scaffold "for all the world to see".

The Lone Ranger refused their demands stating, "I think these heartless villains have suffered enough", and he sent them packing out of town.

Unbeknownst to the citizens, after the bankers gratuitously turned over all of their holdings to "Rim Shot" allegedly to make amends, the two secretly wired their insurance company in New York and had the huge insurance proceeds from the fire forwarded to them at a secretly established branch office there.

Then the two whooped it up and celebrated their freedom and ill gained profits during their train ride East as they began their plans to form what turned out to be a very successful investment business in New York City.

However, even after receiving all of the worthless bank assets, the real "kick in the head" for the Rim Shot citizens, was never disclosed to them.

After making his usual pronouncement after a successful mission , "Tonto, it looks like our work is done here!", the soft hearted (and apparently soft headed) Lone Ranger surreptitiously reached into his poke and, unseen by the townies, privately gave the bankers (not the citizens) several of his priceless silver bullets - presumably for train fare .

He and Tonto then "Hi-Ho'd" it off into the sunset followed by several members of the Rim Shot symphony who were struggling to reproduce the William Tell overture on their dust covered instruments.

Weird story, right? I mean, if you've read this far, you can't be blamed for wondering what the moral to this sad tale could possibly be.

Ah so! You're in luck. We're about to tell you.

It's two centuries later now, and in keeping with the repeated Department Of Justice (DOJ) promise to us citizens to turn around the corruption in our financial system via the use of more stringent punishment of the miscreants, Attorney General Eric Holder, in his infinite wisdom, recently made an announcement:

He slammed the banking and investment firm Citigroup (not to be confused with Sydney/Grope) about a week ago. He accused them of hiding information about toxic mortgages after Citi, the worlds largest bank, agreed to pay $7 billion to settle charges tied to the global financial crisis that rocked the world six years ago."

Perhaps, most of us now dutifully shaking our collective heads in the affirmative, like the poor folks of "Rim Shot" - last seen in the town square muttering  about bankers Sydney/Grope, "that'll learn em!" -  the irony of the DOJ's actions hadn't really settled in for us yet.

Perhaps that's just as well.

You see, unlike our old time Westerns story above, there really is a guy named Dennis Kelleher today, and he has made some more relevent comments about Citigroup, the D.O.J. and the now infamous settlement. Denny is the CEO of an interest advocacy group, entitled "Better Markets" and, who loudly "bashed" the deal.
 
Kelleher did this despite the widely and presumably grateful publicized reaction to the words of our "A.G" Holder, and his revelatory statements regarding Citigroup's knowledge of the serious and widespread defects of the risky loans that the lender and it's employees concealed.

In his speech Holder also acknowledged: "Citigroup increased it's profits at the expense of millions of ordinary Americans and investors of all types. Then he confided to us, "Ultimately these investors suffered billions of dollars in losses when Citi's false and fraudulent claims came crashing down!"

He must have been right because, in reaction to the gigundous penalty handed down from the D.O.J, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbe said, "The settlement allows us to move forward and focus on the future - NOT the past"

Okay, enough already. But, what did Dennis Kelleher, the only guy who seems to have a grasp on what really just went down, have to say?

"DOJ brags about and wants everyone to focus on the $7 billion settlement dollar amount, but that amount is meaningless without disclosure of the key information about:

How many hundreds of billions of dollars Citigroup made.
How many tens of billions investors lost.
How many billions in bonuses were pocketed.
Which investors were involved, and,
What positions they now have with the bank."

It is truly interesting to note A.G Holder also didn't relate which Citigroup folks ended up in the "hoosegow" - or what they were planning to do with their "silver bullets", either!



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