Poverty Mostly Unaffected by Banking Crisis

New York, NY -- Despite gloomy headlines, dire fiscal forecasts, and widespread shock and awe on Wall Street, the nation's desperately poor are unlikely to suffer ill effects from the impending stock market collapse.

In a press release issued by the U.S. Treasury Department on Friday, government economists have determined that street people, beggars, hobos, transients, bums, and unemployed economists are insulated from the roiling monetary turmoil because, according to the report, "you can't lose what you never had."

Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain embraced the news, arguing it supported his assertions that poverty's foundations are "fundamentally sound."

President George W. Bush promised to think of something really smart that would spread financial hardship fairly and equitably throughout all classes of U.S. citizens.

"If it's true the disenfranchised, homeless, and destitute have absolutely nothing, then we must find a way to take even that from them," Mr. Bush said in his weekly radio address. "If we can take nothing from the country's wealthiest people we can certainly do it with the poorest."

The president also denied that federal funding had been earmarked to facilitate research into methods of extracting blood from rocks and turnips.

Experienced urban vagrants angrily dismissed the Bush Administration's view.

"I transferred my assets from the steam grate in front of Washington Mutual all the way down to the one in front of Chase Bank," said cash-disabled New York City veteran tramp Lockjaw. "It took me all day on account of one of the wheels busted off my shopping cart."

"Sure, I got concerns," Mr. Lockjaw continued. "Afore too long there's gonna be just one big bank with one big steam grate. This scenario completely contradicts my strong belief in a vibrant, unfettered free market operating with minimal fiduciary regulation or intervention."

The Treasury Department report criticized what it labeled "financially-challenged" U.S. residents, suggesting the habitually poor should "buy footwear so that they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" to better enable them to "start competing with illegal alien Mexicans for jobs most other Americans won't do."

The report further noted that U.S. economic distress had diminished the influx of opportunistic employment-seeking Canadians over the last six months, with only the bravest, fittest, and most desperate "wetbacks" risking the long swim across Lake Erie.