My great thanks to the entire HumorFeed community, particularly E.F. Watley, who runs this august humor site, the judges and fellow contributors that made this possible, and all my loyal supporters and readers.

In addition to being Jewish, I guess I’m now really blackballed from Santa’s list.

While the most trying economic times since The Great Depression have created massive unemployment, a wave of home foreclosures, and forced millions of Americans to defer retirement, the images of these “fat-reindeer” elves piloting Mercedes Benz sleighs and downing thousand dollar bottles of vintage eggnog have created a backlash of epic proportions.

Indeed, there are numerous reports of carolers foregoing such traditional classics as Silent Night in favor of iconic protest songs, such as John Fogerty’s Fortunate Elf, and Edwin Starr’s Christmas, What is it Good For.

As one angry protestor put it, “these elves always wear the same clothes, and already enjoy subsidized housing from Santa, so why the hell do they need seven-figure bonuses?”

The criticism essentially stems from the unprecedented losses caused by the risky ventures undertaken by Santa and his elves the past few years, where the production and delivery of toys took a back seat to more complex products such as credit toy default swaps, sub-prime Tickle-Me-Elmos, and Dora the Explorer derivatives.

But perhaps the asset that was even more toxic than Chinese toys were highly-leveraged legos, which began to fall like dominoes once the financial crisis hit.

Stoking populist anger even more were the federal bailouts that followed, which were predicated on the belief that Christmas was too big to fail.  Moreover, according to a high-placed source at the North Pole, who was not authorized to speak on behalf of Kris Kringle, neither the President nor his Treasury Secretary wanted to be the one to tell Virginia, a key swing state, “that there is no Santa Clause.”

In response to the widespread outcry, Santa and his elves were summoned to appear before numerous Congressional committees, where they arrived via Amtrak, rather than their executive sleigh, to avoid further damage to their public image.

While snacking on milk and cookies, Santa read a statement claiming that these hefty bonuses were “necessary to prevent the defection of my elves to Wall Street, where they’re being heavily recruited to work in their true field of expertise — micro-cap stocks.”

Nevertheless, in an attempt to quell the public outrage, St. Nick promised that future elf compensation packages would entail less cash, and be more heavily weighted toward Christmas Stocking options.

[Note from Editor's Jewish Mother: 'Alright, so he's not a Doctor, but at least this post won a contest!]

“AS LONG AS THEY INSIST ON TAXING OUR BONUSES, WE’RE GONNA’ THROW THE TARP MONEY INTO THE EAST RIVER.”

Meg White at BuzzFlash strikes a similar chord with Tea Party Tantrums.

Lisa Casey on Buying Toxic Assets.

Most shockingly, the price was also the same — $24 — although given the strength of the Indian bargaining position, they did not have to pay cash, but only toxic stockpiles of  “corn derivatives,” also known as ethanol.

Perhaps fittingly, while the seller in such transactions typically springs for the celebratory lunch, in this case, the contracting parties went ”Dutch treat.”

Although the tribe indicated that the entire island of Manhattan would be turned into one giant gambling casino, most financial experts agreed that this represented an improvement in “risk management” over the business practices of the last ten years. 

Disgraced AIG executives lost no time in shifting their focus, immediately seeking hiring bonuses from the new Native-American owners of Manhattan. One former AIG trader even claimed that he had a brand new idea for “poker chip default swaps,” to insure that there would never be any losses resulting from sub-prime gamblers.

On CNBC, Jim Cramer commented that he was “sitting bullish” about the deal, and that in addition to the gaming industry,  he was optimistic that this deal would even be able to resuscitate “Running Bear Stearns.”

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BLOGWORTHIES:

P.M. Carpenter at BuzzFlash on the Deficit Bogeyman under your bed.

Norm Jenson with The Sunday Funnies and Bill Maher’s New Rules.

Pick your poison, between Congress and AIG, at All Hat No Cattle.

Madkane’s Fume About Hume.

“YEAH, THREE SQUARES AND THREE SCREWS A DAY; I CAN LIVE WITH THAT.”

“There’s nothing hotter than conjugal visit orgies.”

Story here.