What shall we do with the bastard bankers?

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS are collapsing. Credit has been discredited, leverage de-leveraged. Joblessness and bankruptcy are proliferating. So are proposals for dealing with the mess: bailouts, back-alley nationalizations, “bad banks” for toxic assets, “quantitative easing” to force money through the pipes. What’s an economic policy-maker to do?

Allow me to submit a modest proposal. I offer it in the spirit of an idea whose 280th anniversary we celebrate this year. I’ll identify the author later, lest you jump to his conclusions before hearing mine.

In my view, the nub of the problem is insufficient capital to keep banks in the business of lending. My solution is instead of throwing taxpayers’ money at the banks, let them raise their own by capitalizing on what is perhaps their biggest untapped asset: bankers. Yes, the very knaves and nincompoops who got us into this pickle and then gave themselves nice bonuses, redecorated their offices, took the staff to Vegas and then flew their Gulfstreams to Washington to ask for bailout money. Those guys.

They may have screwed up, but they are paying the price in tens of thousands of bank layoffs, billions in lost bonuses and the murderous anger of their fellow citizens. I say let’s put these trained professionals to work on behalf of the economy through a program of mandatory national service, with any wages beyond subsistence going to recapitalize the banks.

We would not employ our ex-bankers as bankers, of course. Instead, let us throw these geniuses at weak spots in the economy where their skills and experience could help most. The convenience store and fast-food sectors, for instance, where levels of service are notoriously low. The problem there, however, is that these jobs tend to be filled by the needier members of the workforce, and now is probably not a good time to displace them.

Indeed, there is currently an oversupply of labor in most fields – except those where a different crisis-related trend is at work. The growing tide of protectionist sentiment has prompted governments to crack down on immigrant labor. Thus, various countries face shortages of fruit pickers, toilet cleaners and, in Silicon Valley, high-level computer programmers. Alas, our busted bankers lack the chops for that latter category. But the first two are wide open, and many people would love to see former derivatives specialists reaching for kumquats in the hot sun or swabbing the stalls in a bus station.

There is, in fact, one sub-sector where government immigration raids have produced an especially acute labor shortage: the meat packing industry. Plants throughout the US have been running at partial capacity since the Feds hauled off hundreds, perhaps thousands of employees who lacked the right papers. As a result, meat supplies were squeezed and prices propelled upward. Not the kind of trend you’d like to see in a recession.

So let us send a brigade of bankers to bail out this strategic mainstay of the food chain by filling vacant posts on the slaughterhouse production line. Having slaughtered so much of our wealth, these financial assassins should have both the talent and the taste for such work. Better yet, let’s try a supply-side solution. Instead of having our ex-bankers merely fill the cattle processing jobs, why not let them replace the cattle as well? That would help ease not just the industry’s labor shortage, but the imbalance in its commodity input situation as well. Such a move would also provide satisfaction for millions of investors who have seen their savings massacred and thus seek a measure of revenge.

You may recognize this idea. Jonathan Swift, the 18th century Anglo-Irish satirist, proposed something similar in his famous “A Modest Proposal,” a pamphlet published in London in 1729. Swift suggested that the problems of poverty and overpopulation in Ireland could be solved by marketing Irish children as a delicacy for the tables of rich Englishmen. The idea was never put into practice for lack of political will.

In today’s deepening crisis, that failing should not prevent my idea from implementation. The need is there, the solution is within our grasp, and the passion to make these bastards pay is palpable. My only worry is that the proposal might eventually be extended to other unpopular job categories, like lawyers or legislators. Or, heaven forbid, journalists. But as you can see from the above, we can be utterly tasteless.