Whew! What a day! It's been such a whirlwind we hardly know where to begin! Suffice it to say that Team W is moving into spiffy new headquarters. In Washington, DC!
 
Exciting!
 
And the best part is -- it won't cost us a cent!
 
Frugal!
 
Here's how it happened. Yesterday we decided to spruce up our digs, which lately have been looking a bit down-in-the-mouth. The wallpaper (mostly tech stocks) was starting to peel, and the rugs had gotten damp from all the crying.
 
We estimated it would take about $500 to make the repairs, and decided to apply for the necessary loan at our local investment bank, Purloiners' Trust.
 
Upon our arrival we were shown to the offices of bank President A. B. Ghaneff, a round and jovial man with gold glasses (frames AND lenses ) who greeted us warmly "How can I help you today?" He said, stroking his gold cufflinks.
 
We told him we needed a business loan.
 
"Done!" he said, picking up a gold pen, "And how much will you need?"
 
We told him 500, perhaps 550 to be safe.
 
"Well," he said, thoughtfully, "Better make it 750, to be really safe," and he wrote "$750,000" on a gilt-edged note pad.
 
No, no -- we said, anxious to correct his mistake.
 
"Now," he continued, "what is your commodity -- oil, gas, coal...?"
 
We explained that we published a newsletter that portrayed the President as a stalwart Defender of Freedom and Virtue.
 
"Ah!" He said, with a knowing smile, "Barnyard by-products! You've certainly come to the right place. We've plenty of experience in that line! Why, in guano alone we --"
 
No, no, we said again, and told him we were actually on-line journalists.
 
This seemed to stop him for a moment. "On-line, heh?" He looked pensive for a moment, then appeared to have had an inspiration, "Then you must have something to do with bandwidth."
 
Yes, we said.
 
"Well then," he said, beaming and picking up his pen again, "You're bandwidth traders!
That was easy," he said, writing furiously, then paused. "Now under what name shall our legal and accounting teams register the offshore entity?
 
Offshore? We said. Entity? We said..
 
Our surprise seemed to clarify his mind. He laid down his golden pen on his golden desk, took off his golden glasses and bestowed on us a golden smile of avuncular tenderness. "I see," he said, "You're new to this." Then he explained how the proposed loan, small as it was, might yet be viewed by some as a significant and indefensible encumbrance upon so small an organization as ours.
 
Such cases, he explained, were not infrequently causative of unwonted authoritative scrutiny and curiosity that was not always easily satisfied. Thus for reasons having to do with efficiency and long prison terms, the bank had found it prudent to create foreign entities to facilitate the loan process.
 
Thus the bank routinely created -- for a nominal fee, of course - an offshore corporation through which the loan proceeds were funneled. The corporation would then buy our "commodity" and later sell it back to us at a price that covered the bank's expenses and the interest that would otherwise accrue. In this way the loan was masked as revenue and there was no hint of debt.
 
And yet they say American ingenuity is dead.
 
"It's perfect," he enthused, "everyone gains, no one loses -- at least no one in this room," he said with a roguish wink.
 
But, we observed, you can't sell our kind of bandwidth.
 
He looked stunned. "Nonsense," he said, "This is America. You can sell anything you want -- someone out there will buy it."
 
It seems the market for such transactions expands by approximately 60 customers an hour -- varying, of course, by the local birth rate.
 
But, we asked, how could he be sure we could repay the loan? He hadn't even mentioned collateral.
 
Ghaneff's brow creased and he put down his gold pen. "By God," he said with quiet passion, "the day I can't take my customers' word is the day I leave this business!" By now his eyes were misty and so were ours.
 
Still, we asked, what if we can't repay it?
 
"Oh," he said, dismissively, "by then the bank will have been sold several times over, and the paperwork long since lost. Or...," he said, absent-mindedly flicking his gold Zippo, "...there could be a fire..." He straightened in his chair. "But why worry about such things? 'Seize the day,' heh? 'Seize the day'!"
 
"Besides, you needn't worry about us," he brushed a speck of lint from the gold telephone, "we get by."
 
But, we continued, isn't there something at least a little illegal about all this?
 
His smile disappeared utterly , "The only 'I' word we use here," he said, a little offended, "is 'innovative'." He glowered at us reproachfully, but then brightened. "Now," he said, "as to the IPO--"
 
"I," we said, "PO?" we said.
 
"Certainly. Once word gets out about the great business you're doing with the offshore corporation, everyone will want to invest in you. Unless I miss my guess, you'll be billionaires by suppertime. One bit of advice, though," he said, lowering his voice and leaning closer, "when you tip the IPO to family and friends? Be sure to use cell phones, and don't, for God's sake, put anything in an email. I can't tell you how much trouble we've had with email."
 
But what about the IRS? We asked.
 
He looked over the rim of his golden glasses, once again disappointed in us, "That is another 'I' word we don't use."
 
Then he busied himself writing up our account while we looked over a portfolio of business check styles. We chose the one with Mr. Monopoly strangling an eagle.

So, as of this afternoon Team W is worth approximately 20 Billion dollars, on paper -- flash paper, actually. To suit our changed circumstances, and to accommodate our rapidly expanding (though inventory-free) bandwidth business, we've made a successful bid on a fabulous property in the fashionable part of Pennsylvania Avenue -- a lovely, though quite enormous, old gated Palladian-style mansion with huge lawns and around-the-clock security.
 
We were lucky to find it. We hadn't even known it was for sale.
 
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See you next week, campers, when we'll have more "s'mores" and ghost stories galore!
 
Toodles,
 
Hank
 
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PLUG! The folks at LIBERAL SLANT, having obviously abandoned any hope of ever receiving anything good from me, have elected to publish a short piece I call "NIMBY!" -- the latest word on homeland security.