Once upon a time there was a big bank called Westpac. One day the beautiful fairy princess who ran the bank - her name was Goldilocks - called all her gnomes and elves to a meeting.

"How can we increase our profits?" cried Goldilocks. "We made only $4.627 billion last year, a slump of 8 per cent on the year before. We need more, much more, if I am to justify my $10 million salary package!"

The gnomes and elves furrowed their brows, scrolled through their spreadsheets, and sipped the banana smoothies that Goldilocks had thoughtfully provided.

"We could put up our fees and charges again," grinned one elf. Or we could target multi-silo synergies by iterating a suite of cross-platform, solution-focused, client-based deliverables going forward," said the marketing gnome, who always talked like that. Nobody ever knew what he meant, but it always sounded important.

"Or we could put up our mortgage rates by 45 basis points to 6.76 per cent," cried another elf.

Goldilocks laughed her tinkling laugh.

"I like the sound of that one," she said.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/and-they-all-drank-banana-smoothies-sadly-ever-after-20091211-kofy.html