Today in poorhouse news: The big banks were restored to profitability last week, and now the M&A market is booming again! The profits will "trickle down" to the homeless squatters outside the bankers' Hamptons estates.

Oracle just bought Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. Two years ago a $7.4 billion deal was what entry-level M&A guys did before lunch, on a Sunday, but now it's a harbinger of the underlying strength of the US economy. And hey, Glaxo did a $3 billion deal, and Pepsi has a $6 billion offer on the table, and when you add all that up it's damn near a respectable day, circa 2006!

For now, of course, we must concentrate our nation's precious revenue on Wall Street. Those guys have already lost so much! The rest of the business world can suck it. Ad agencies are extending work hours, cutting salaries, and ending Summer Fridays. Well boo hoo, so is everyone else, right? Wall Street guys in particular work long hours! And to offset the brokeness, those same ad agencies are devising campaigns for all their clients saying that, hey, if you get fired—by us or by anyone else—they will help pay your cell phone bill, or refund your plane tickets, so you can sit home and moan to your friends about how you can't go on vacation because you've been laid off.

Deal!

And the biggest winners of all in this momentary return of corporate acquisitions: the unemployed Hispanic day laborers who have been forced to build themselves a hobo camp in the woods in tony Southampton, complete with a "butchered deer carcass" to roast on the campfire. As soon as those M&A fees start pouring in, it's virtually a sure thing that some asshole there in Southampton will require a new Jacuzzi or a emerald-encrusted barbecue grill installation, and bam! Work for everyone! The American dream smells like rotting deer carcass and big pharma "How will this merger affect my department?" information packets.
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