The Great Bank-Vault Raid, or How to Pluck the Golden Goose for the Sake of the Cradle

Pray, imagine the scene in the corridors of power! A gentleman of the political sort, one Mr. Mironov, has looked upon the shimmering mountains of gold amassed by our state-aligned banking houses and felt a sudden, stirring impulse of charity—not for himself, heaven forbid, but for the infant children of the realm.

Our dear Mr. Mironov has dispatched a missive to the Prime Minister, suggesting that the Ministry of Finance should play the part of a polite highwayman. The plan is as simple as a street urchin's gamble: why should the banking sector sleep soundly upon trillions of roubles when there are cradles to be filled? He proposes a 'targeted payment'—a delightful euphemism for shaking the pockets of the financiers—or perhaps diverting those plump dividends from the banks' Joint-Stock societies directly into the pockets of mothers.

'The banks are earning sums that would make a Midas blush!' one can almost hear him cry. Indeed, the Central Bank predicts profits reaching some 3.9 trillion roubles. To a common man, such a figure is mere fantasy, but to the commercialist, it is simply a Tuesday's ledger.

Mr. Mironov observes, with a touch of righteous indignation, that while the budget is said to be as dry as a bone, the banks are swimming in a sea of gold, thanks to those 'exorbitant credits' and mortgages that keep the honest tradesman in a state of perpetual anxiety.

His proposal is a masterpiece of ambition: leave the first child’s pittance alone, but elevate the bounty for the second child to 1.4 million and the third to a staggering 1.9 million roubles! He further suggests that this gold should not be locked away in some dusty vault but spent on domestic carriages—or, in the modern parlance, automobiles—and the patching up of leaky roofs, lest the families be forced into the clutches of a mortgage-mongering shark.

Furthermore, he demands that this generosity be made perpetual. No more deadlinesC extensions until 2030; let the fountain of bank-gold flow eternally!

One cannot help but smile at the irony. The banker, that most cautious of creatures, who counts every farthing and treats a lost kopek as a national tragedy, is now being asked to fund the nation's nurseries. It is a delicious comedy! One can almost see the face of the typical bank director—a man who loves his ledger more than his own mother—turning the color of a spoiled oyster at the prospect of his precious profits being spirited away for the sake of a few more screaming infants.