Watching Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke in a mad scramble to find the off switch on this financial crisis and seeing them produce a hair-brained scheme for an answer in the form of three-page plan of action, you can't help but wonder if you're watching a sequel to Ghostbusters. Three misfit pseudo-psycho-economists from New York band together with a self-described "free-market guy" from Washington in an unlikely union to propose to build a machine that will suck up all the toxic phantoms haunting Wall Street into a global panic threatening to destroy the world, with suspiciously unscientific methods. As the headlines of major newspapers cry out: "Ghost Fever Grips New York,"  the feted captains of industry are yelling at the top of their lungs from the rooftops even as they deploy their golden parachutes and leap off the commanding heights of the City on the Hill - "Help, help, they're everywhere." Cue the music:

If there's somethin' strange, in your neighborhood
Who ya gonna call...?

Funny how the very high priests of deregulation and government hate-mongering are now falling over each other to be saved by this Antichrist of capitalism. And how appropriate that Bush's father should have called the very same trickle down Reaganomic principle behind his son's rescue plan "voodoo economics." This crisis is not about "liquidity" as much as it is about Wall Street being spooked. And just how did all these evil ghosts get unleashed into the machine?

If it's somethin' weird, and it won't look good
Who ya gonna call...?

Dr. Egon Spengler (played with egghead naiveté by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke) apparently discovered a long lost sacred text, which, when dusted of the dirt of the ages, revealed a strange lettering from a dead language.  Once decoded it spelled out the title U.S. History, Vol. III, The Great Depression.

If you're seein' things, runnin' thru your head
Who ya gonna call...?

Spengler at once showed his discovery to Dr. Ray Stantz (played with Oscar-worthy American Psycho-esque gravitas by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson), who couldn't believe his eyes. According to the book, this event had occurred before in the far past, in The Long, Long Ago. The primitive people of that time had realized a market driven by blind greed and left unregulated eventually imploded and passed a thing called a "regulation" by the name of the Glass-Steagall Act (The New York Times) that was to prevent such a horrible plague from being unleashed again on the good people of Babylonia. On hearing this, Dr. Stantz slapped his forehead in tortured epiphany. "My God! What have we done? We repealed that law in 1999, and even the national Hero and maverick Reformer John McCain voted for it."

An invisible man sleepin' in your bed
Oh who ya gonna call...?

They at once ran to report their findings to the President (played by a convincingly clueless George W. Bush, last seen in the religious-action-political-thriller 9.11), who emerged from the meeting a changed man. A senior administrative official, acting on condition of anonymity, leaked a transcript of the top secret meeting.

Spengler: "Sir, what you have here is what we refer to as a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a class 5 full roaming vapor."

President: "What in hell does that mean?"

Apprantley at this point Stantz pulled a Twinkie from his briefcase and dangled it in front of the President's face.

Stants: "Let's say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychopanic energy in the New York Stock Exchange. Well, sir, what we're looking at is a Twinkie that's 35 feet long and approximately weighing 600 pounds."

President: "That's a big Twinkie."

Venkman: "This country is headed toward a disaster of biblical proportions."

President: "Now you're talking a language I speak. What do you mean biblical?"

Stantz: "What he means is Old Testament."

President: "There's an ‘Old' Testament?"

Stantz: "Yes, sir. It's real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling."

Spengler: "40 years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes."

Random black guy: "The dead rising from the grave."

Venkman: "Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. MASS HYSTERIA."

The President called a press conference at once in the Rose Garden of the White House. "It turns out," the President said without the slightest bit of irony, "the financial system had a lot of...um...inter..links. It has grown to the point where a lot of people had, um, depended upon each other." (Actual quote) (AP)

Drs. Spengler and Stantz urged the President to act at once. "Okay," the President said, "let's do one of ‘em ‘regulayshuns."

"It's too late for that," Dr. Spengler fired back impatiently.

The situation was much worse than anyone had realized. Spengler and Stantz had been blasting the ghoulish creatures of No Income, No Asset (NINA) loans and the vile toxic slime ghosts of Collateralized Debt Obligations since August 2007, discharging nearly a trillion dollars of liquid into the mouth of the demigod Zuul.

"Our proton-packs are nearly exhausted Mr. President," Dr. Spengler barked breathlessly.

"Proton-packs?"

"It gets worse," Stantz broke in. "The ghost-containment grid is nearing maximum capacity, Mr. President."

"Ghost containment grid?"

"Yes, sir."

"What are we going to do?"

So the plan is to build an even bigger ghost-containment grid in the basement of the firehouse, "as outlined in our comprehensive three-page plan of action."

"What do I need to do?," asked the President. "Who am I gonna call?"

Ghostbusters.

Story by Arturo Bandini.

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