Message to Stanley Fisher

PROLOGUE: The press conference was canceled. I think that it may have been a strategic semi-bluff by Fisher, who continues to impress me. Even so, my letter stands. I am disgusted by the likes of the workers of the Electric Company, who, though state employees, receive average salaries which are 400% higher than teachers; and teachers don’t get unlimited free electricity. And they still have the audacity to strike and demand more. Just like you get free electricity if you work for the Electric Company and free phone calls if you work for Bezeq, you get free money if you work for the Bank of Israel, at the taxpayer’s expense. And they still have the audacity to strike and demand more!

Dear Professor Fisher,

I found out recently that the worker’s committee of the Bank of Israel has decided to go on strike for an indefinite period, and that as a result, you will be giving a press conference this evening at 8:00 PM. Your announcement has caused the press to speculate that you intend on tendering your resignation as a result of the intolerable working conditions posed by your intransigent subordinates at the Bank of Israel.

I sincerely hope that it is not your intention to leave, and that, in reality, you will announce at the press conference that every striking worker is to be summarily terminated with no compensation. Plenty of talented workers in this country could fill the coveted positions at the bank; and due to their merits, not their connections.

If you do announce that you will be tendering your early resignation, then you will have confirmed for me what I have feared all along:

1. That socialism still pervades even in what should be the bastion of Israeli capitalism, The Bank of Israel;
2. That Israel, despite its renown for high-tech, is still a third world country, with more control exerted by racketeering labor unions than the government;
3. That even the idealism which would lead an economist and executive of your caliber to leave behind the prestige of Citigroup could not overcome the stifling bureaucracy inherent in every Israeli institution.

I hope that you prove me wrong this evening.

Yours truly,
Lonely Man of Cake

The Ambassador is Naked…

…and bound, and gagged.  But it doesn’t appear that Israel’s ambassador to El Salvador was robbed, when he was found lying in his backyard, described as above.  (Story here).