Posted: December 24, 2008, 6:00 PM by Jonathan Ratner

You've surely heard a few already, but here are some of the best jokes that hit our e-mail in-boxes this year:

"Get my broker, Miss Jones."
"Yes sir. Stock, or Pawn?"

The market may be bad, but I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every hour and cried.

The problem with investment bank balance sheets is that on the left side nothing is right and on the right side nothing is left.

How do you find a good small-cap fund manager?
Find a good large-cap fund manager, and wait

The credit crunch has helped me get back on my feet. The car's been repossessed.

There's a surgeon, an architect and an economist. The surgeon said, 'Look, we're the most important. God's a surgeon because the very first thing God did was to extract Eve from Adam's rib.' The architect said, 'No, wait a minute, God is an architect. God made the world in seven days out of chaos.' The economist smiled, 'And who made the chaos?'

There are two types of economists: those who cannot forecast interest rates and those who do not know that they cannot forecast interest rates.

The United States has developed a new weapon that destroys people but it leaves buildings standing. It's called the stock market.

President Bush said clients shouldn’t be concerned by all the bank closings. If the bank is closed, you just use the ATM, he said.

President Bush said that he is saddened to hear about the demise of Lehman Brothers. His thoughts at this time go out to their mother as losing one son is hard but losing two is a tragedy.

Two Lehman employees get into an elevator to go home.
One pushes the button but it doesn’t move. “What’s going on?” he asks, “why doesn’t it move”?
The other pulls out his laptop and says “Well of course, according to my model, nothing can go down further.”

A new teacher was getting to know the kids by asking them their name and what their father did for a living.
The first little girl said: “My name is Mary and my Daddy is a postman.”
The next child, a little boy said: “I’m Andy and my Dad is a mechanic.”
And so it went until one little boy said: “My name is Johnny and my father is a striptease artist.”
The teacher gasped and quickly changed the subject. Later, in the school yard, the teacher approached Little Johnny privately and asked if it was really true that his dad danced nude.
Little Johnny blushed and said, “No, he’s really a Business Development Director at Lehman Brothers, but I’m just too embarrassed to tell anyone.”

AIG, you know the insurance company who’s getting over $11-billion of our dollars in bailout money?
Well, they announced they’re giving 130 of their executives cash awards of up to $3-million. These are cash awards, not bonuses. They say they are payments to guarantee that their top executives stay with the company. Oh, yeah, God forbid AIG should lose any of these business geniuses. Imagine what kind of shape they’d be in without these people. Again, these are cash awards, not bonuses. So we should send them to jail, not prison, see? – Jay Leno

Why have estate agents stopped looking out the window in the morning?
Because otherwise they'd have nothing to do in the afternoon.

Because of the ongoing market turmoil, several companies are merging in order to survive. Some results of these mergers:
Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R. Grace Co. will merge and become – Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace
3M and Goodyear will merge and become – MMMGood
FedEx is expected to join its competitor UPS to become – FedUP
Honeywell and Dewey Electronics – Honey Dew

P/E RATIO – The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing

BROKER – What my broker has made me

What’s the definition of optimism?
An Investment Banker ironing five shirts on a Sunday evening.

Even when you put Bernanke on “mute”, the market still goes down.

The government is going to be handing out rebate checks. We’re like a bad car dealership now in this country, handing out the
rebate checks. They’re trying to restore confidence in the U.S. economy. The bad news – half the people want the money in
euros, the other half want it in pesos. – Jay Leno

A plan to bail out the Big Three automakers stalled in Congress today. Yeah. As a result, Congress plans to buy a better-built Japanese bailout plan. – Conan O'Brien

General Motors versus Toyota
A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (General Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.
On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.
Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.
Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.
The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was outsourced to India.

Should you trust a stockbroker who's married to a travel agent?

Jonathan Ratner