Oct. 11, 2108
WASHINGTON DC–U.S. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Ellen Greenzpan was rushed to a gated Bethesda hospital this morning after collapsing in the wake of a week of bizarre turbulence in world financial markets. The interest-rate sensitive Chair had been under close medical supervision since suffering a series of unexplained spasms and bouts of glossalalia unofficially linked to recent market turmoil. “She had been relatively stable for the past couple of days,” notes Dr. Peter One, director of Greenzpan’s medical team. “At about 10 this morning she seized, said something in Middle French, and collapsed. We immediately determined that we needed equipment available at her hospital and she was airlifted directly to Bethesda.”
Sources inside the hospital report that Greenzpan suffered from a severe “diverse, punctuated vasoconstrictive fluid extrusion” during which blood vessels throughout her body constricted simultaneously, causing a spike in blood pressure severe enough to rupture capillaries, squeezing hemofluids out through the pores. Engorged epidermal tissues wrung fluids from sweat and oil glands throughout her skin, causing “omni-dermal tissue flaccidity occasioned by hyper-acute dehydration.” “She looked like she’d been squeezed dry by a giant hand,” exclaimed an anonymous member of the hospital staff. “I mean, just all squeezed out like a tube of toothpaste. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Greenzpan experts link her collapse to the recent appearance and growth of “M8,” a controversial measure of the money supply designed to include the hypothetical “anti-capital” touted by research and financial services multinational Futurefeedforward. “Greenzpan was designed to be physically sensitive to the markets,” explains market analyst Gig Watson. “Her whole body is pretty much a wireless data hub. When markets move, she feels it. She can adjust interest rates literally by flexing her muscles. I watch her cheeks just before an FOMC meeting. If she looks a little flushed, it’s a good bet that the Fed will be changing policy. We watch her for symptoms that indicate the health of the economy. This collapse has got everybody spooked about what’s going on.”
Built on a transgendered clone chassis sired by legendary Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Greenzpan’s body receives realtime economic data through a sophisticated network of distributed, nanoscale wireless nodes tied to her nervous system through customized synapses. Economic data of different types is linked to different areas of the body, enabling Greenzpan to feel and respond to economic fluctuations through an “intuitive somatic interface.” Durable goods inventories and sales data affect the bowels and lower intestines, precipitous drops in unemployment cause constricted breathing, and interest rate and money supply data interact with her circulatory system. “Ellen was born to lead the Fed,” notes Watson. “Her pulse is the pulse of this new economy.”
Informally dubbed “deflation sickness” by pundits, Greenzpan’s symptoms over the past week are believed to be related to a phenomenon known as “time-money value inversion” discoverd by FeedBank, the banking subsidiary of Futurefeedforward. Futurefeedforward CFO Emily Efou explains: “Traditionally, present-day dollars are thought to be more valuable than future-side dollars. That’s why conventional banks pay interest. Our research shows that that is starting to change. Certain institutions, like FeedBank, are starting to operate on the principle that present-dollars should be discounted in relation to future-dollars, thus creating eddies controlled by negative interest rates. Greenzpan’s system wasn’t designed to cope with this sort of development. The spike in negative-rate trading this morning must have crushed her.”
Greenzpan’s condition is reportedly critical. Longtime friend and Objectivist Party running-mate Wayn Rand arrived in Bethesda this afternoon to join members of the Greenspan family at her bedside. The family asks that concerned members of the public keep prayers and charitable donations to themselves.