Cayman

n. a place like Switzerland, only warmer, where drug dealers, investment bankers, and other low-life can squirrel away ill gotten gains without having to worry about things like disclosure or taxes.

As in:

Way back in the 16 or 17 hundreds, before Disney started making records, the Governor of the BWI (British West Indies) looked at the Cayman Islands. "Man, you can't grow crap here, not even Ganja like in Jamaica. How about if we build banks -- the tax free kind? We can hide all kinds of stuff from the King and then in the future, when the Americans have 401(k) plans, we can take a cut when our cousins swindle them away."

n. an entry-level German car.

As in:

The bonus Eddie got for screwing 100 people out of the money in their 1031 accounts wasn't enough for a Carrera 4, so he bought the aqua blue metallic Cayman.

v. to bundle large quantities of U.S. $100 bills in shrink-wrapped bails and transport them via private jet to the Cayman Islands for tax-free deposits.

As in:

When the second assistant to the head guy at Banco de Puerco heard that the SEC and Federal Reserve were breathing down his neck, he decided to Cayman the $112 million in cash he had been keeping in a vault in his Connecticut basement.

Why They Have Good Chinese Food in Austria

OK, so this isn't exactly financial, but Austria is next to Switzerland so it is sort of pertinent.

I just figured out that they probably have pretty good Chinese food in Austria -- in addition to the beer and strudel, of course.

How did I come to this conclusion?

Well first, you know of course that Austria isn't really Austria in Austria. Austria is only Austria outside of Austria. Inside of Austria, Austria is Osterreich! And you know that that means.

Oh, you don't?

Well then--let's take a look. We're going to loosely (Duckie does everything loosely) translate Osterreich into American (as in San Jose, not Gonads, Oklahoma) English:

Ost = East
Reich = Empire (think Third Reich, Thousand Year Reich) - OK, it really means reach, but we're going to say Empire.
Just throw away the "er" in between.

So now you've got East Empire. Well, then. The Soviet Union is no more (just ex-generals selling nukes and trading satellite access codes to NFWTV™ for a Mercedes S Class, a condo in Hollywood, Florida and a case of Johnny Walker Black™.) The middle east is, well, the middle east. Not really East and not much of an empire if you know what I mean. That leaves freakin' China.

In other words, Austria is the China of the EU. Ergo -- good Chinese food.

(Although I am thinking that the Chinese food on the south end of Manhattan is probably better than anything in China. Oh well, at least the rice doesn't have rocks in it like it does in North Korea.)

Put that in your Poo-Poo Platter.

Duckie
(filed under A for Austria)

Swiss

n. a little guy with a mustache who used to make watches or cheese and has a reputation for never getting conquered -- so figured his place (called Switzerland instead of Swissland for some reason) would be a good place to store other people's money -- for a fee of course -- and keep it secret -- for a bigger fee of course

As in:
In the 1930s and 1940s, Hermann Goering and other Nazi thugs (excuse me, National Socialist heroes of the Fatherland) shipped trains full of confiscated fine art, precious metals, and other treasures to Swiss banks for safekeeping until the eventual glorious victory of the Thousand Year Reich.

or as in:

In the early 21st century, leaders of Banco de Puerco and other banking scum (excuse me, financial wizards who truly understood the monetary 'games' that were far to complex for the 'flyover people') transferred billions in assets to personal Swiss accounts in the midst of a nearly trillion dollar government bailout. The Swiss government, in turn, threatened criminal action against any Swiss bank that divulged deposit information regarding these billions to the SEC, Federal Reserve, or other investigative or regulatory bodies.