The transactional law

I set out below an entry from this week's obituries recording the passing of a young practioner whom I seem to recall from when he was a clerk at Judge Guttefelch's chambers. He could read well and was widely known to be His Honour's favoured tipstaff. However, rather than choosing the honourable life at the bar, he instead took a position at one of those leviathan firms where it is now learned that he has perished.

Mike Kasminsky (6/6/1980 - 11/9/2007)

Our departed brother would be the first to admit that there was nothing noteworthy about his life except for perhaps the nature of its expiry, it coming to somewhat represent the grim state of affairs now in the city brought on by the sub-prime crisis. Michael J. Kasminsky was hired by Pappas & Pappas to assist in structured products, an area of the law which, despite the claims he would sometimes make, he understood not even a bit. However he soon learned much about the subject by virtue of the 'central' role he would play in these kinds of transactions.

For before the liquidity crunch, lawyers and bankers were still furiously trying to create more and more complex products to feed the seemingly insatiable risk appetite of investors. Inevitably, the search for tighter spreads would lead them to the sphincter of a young lawyer. The transactions that Kasminsky worked on were structured in this way: he was placed into a gimp suit and handcuffed to boiling water pipes in the basement of Pappas & Pappas. Homeless men were introduced to him in the early hours of the morning whereupon he was made to perform various favours of the throat unto them. After they had dropped their bad egg down his throat they would place a few small coins on his tongue by way of consideration. Kasminsky was directed to swallow them thus producing an identifiable cash flow through his rectal tract. Investors would then purchase an interest in those gutty assets, each ranking 'pari passu' (a legal term which means, 'each fist to rank equally').

Life was quite tough for Kasminsky during these times and I am afraid to report that his only sustenance during that period was a merdivore's supper donated to him nightly by his clients. This was not all together a bad thing, the cryptosporidium therein usually triggering explosive bouts of diarrohea making the painful passing of the coins through his stomach far quicker. As some consolation, the product was becoming very popular and Mr. Pappas assured him that he had a good pay cheque coming to him when the transaction was complete.

Unfortunately, his pay day would never come. One night some of his clients attempted to make love to both his eye sockets, thereby blinding him and giving him terrible brain damage. Later that evening, a client became so upset when the motionless vegetable did not attend to his request for a teabag that he gave him a Chelsea grin and administered it himself. Poor Kasminsky's face looked like it had been the subject of an honour killing and the rating agencies promptly issued a downgrade warning. There was immediately a frenzied run on the assets by the investors, which involved nine fists buried deep into his bowels foraging for their cash. His arse suffered an event of default, spilling hot innards all over the cold basement floor and issuing a putrid steam all through the basement. An administrator was duly appointed and, although Kasminsky may still have been alive somewhere behind that eyeless stare and gruesome smile, it was decided in the interests of the creditors to sell his body to the glue factory.

R.I.P.