Ringling Bros. Acquires Lehman Bros.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus has acquired Lehman Brothers and will be integrating the former investment bank into a whole new three-ring act.

The new entity, known as Ringling and Lehman Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, will feature aerial performers balancing on a high-wire, while offering risky, adjustable rate mortgages to average homeowners without the benefits of a net or qualifying documentation.

“With the Lehman Brothers takeover,” explained a Ringling spokesperson, “we are preserving the history of risk taking, death-defying acts in the great tradition of the trapeze artist, the lion tamer and the human cannonball.  We now add to that glorious heritage, the subprime loan underwriter.”

P.T. Barnum once wrote:  “There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt.”  So, would the “World’s Greatest Showman” approve of adding one of the largest failed investment banks in the world to his circus?

“Most definitely,” answered the Ringling spokesperson. “When Barnum’s famed elephant, Jumbo, was killed in a train wreck, he had him stuffed and put on display.  He made more money off the animal dead, than alive.  This is kind of the same thing.”

As Barnum would say, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”