In times of crises, the humour mills keep churning

Dubai, Oct 21 (IANS) There are two sides to an investment bank - left and right.

On the left are investments and on the right are assets.

'As of now nothing is right in the left and nothing is left in the right,' V.P. Nagarajan, chairman of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), said citing jokes doing the rounds at the time of the global financial crisis.

As a group of chartered accountants in Dubai settled down to a serious seminar to discuss the crisis sparked by the credit crunch in the West, Nagarajan regaled everyone with jokes on the crisis that have come to him.

'Another one came to me the other day. A friend got a cheque returned to him from the bank with the message, 'Insufficient funds'. He was wondering who had insufficient funds - he or the bank!'

Harking back to the time of the Great Depression in the US, he narrated an anecdote related to former US president Franklin Roosevelt.

'When President Roosevelt was asked about the difference between recession and depression, he replied: 'When your neighbour loses his job, it is recession. When you lose your job, it is depression.''

When the current crisis has its roots in the US, can a Bushism be far behind?

And, India's former ambassador to the United Nations T.P. Sreenivasan, who was also present at the seminar, added one.

'When an aide asked President Bush what he thought of the demise of the Lehman Brothers, he said: 'My heartfelt sympathy to their mother. Losing one son is bad enough. But both dying together....''