Guantanamo Redux

OK, here’s the plan. With President Obama’s welcome announcement that those currently detained at Guantanamo will be moved out in the foreseeable future, we’re stuck with the question of what to do with the place.

Leased in perpetuity over a hundred years ago as a base for naval operations in the then-dangerous Caribbean, it has long provided a convenient thorn in Cuba’s side as we await the demise of the First Secretary of the Communist Party. Not to mention the party. More recently, the treatment of Gitmo's involuntary residents has surely been a glowing example to Cubans of our government’s abiding respect for the law and due process. Then again, perhaps not.

But we digress. Having been transformed at who knows what expense – presumably little local labor was involved – into a facility for the extended confinement of those too dangerous to be allowed their freedom, why not put it to use as a long term residence for the financial masters of the universe recently responsible for the devastation of Wall Street, Main Street, and every avenue in between?

Certainly if some poor soul scooped up in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan and for all anyone knows for sure guilty of nothing more than bad luck can languish there for years, a sojourn at Guantanamo should be just the thing for the likes of Richard Fuld, who earned every penny of his $45 million salary presiding over the Lehman Brothers train wreck. Or John Thain, who as CEO of Merrill Lynch just before its fire sale at the end of a quarter when it chalked up a $15.3 billion loss made sure he and some 700 other swells divvied up $3.6 billion in bonuses. (While Mr. Thain might have some difficulty adjusting to the use of standard government facilities after having, if only briefly, use of his famous $1.2 million re-decorated office, surely the balmy temperature and tropical breezes would more than redress the balance.)

While we’re at it, a newly christened Guantanamo Club Fed would be just the place for Bernie Madoff. And how about the wizards of finance who developed and promoted like free pizza a mind-numbing array of financial instruments so arcane and far removed from anything with any tangible characteristics that for the most part they didn’t understand themselves what they were selling? Or the putative regulators and rating agency employees whose lack of attention or comprehension or both allowed the game to continue far beyond the departure of the last solvent player? Or the brokers only too eager to stuff unfortunates into houses with wildly inappropriate mortgages they had no hope of maintaining let alone ever paying off, even under the most pie-in-the-sky circumstances?

Wait a minute. That’s a lot of people. Maybe we should see if Fidel and Raul are open to expanding the lease.