Nightmare on Wall Street

Idea for a terrifying new movie:

Guy has it all -- big house, big car, big spouse (but not that big). He's got two nice kids who go to a big private school. He has a big dog, even. Every day he gets in his big car and goes to his big, big office, where he trades in derivatives and brunches, lunches and dines with friends at ratings agencies who love him big-time and give triple-A ratings to everything he does.

But all that's about to change.

One day he wakes up and things feel different. The sky outside is crazy black, like the space over the building on Central Park West that Zool visited in "Ghostbusters." There are no birds in the trees. He gets in his car and wends his way to his office, from where through the windows he can see the whole world. But things are strange. Scary. People are jumpy. The downtown streets are suddenly deserted. The floor of the exchange is quiet. Something is coming. And it can't be stopped.

His assistant comes into his personal space. She is trembling. A tiny rivulet of perspiration makes its careful way down her usually untroubled brow. "It's here," she says.

And so it is. The Monster has arrived and is beginning to take its grim harvest. First it kills the derivatives business, snapping its spine as you would a breadstick in a trendy boite. "Aieee!" says the derivatives business, which had the feeling it was being stalked but didn't take preventive measures to protect itself until it was too late.

Next, without warning, the Monster swoops in from Washington and strangles the credit card business, limiting the places it may feed until it keels over, a shadow of its former self.

Then it scares a whole bunch of banks to death. You know banks. All you have to do is say, "Boo." And so it does.

One dark night as the wind howls outside, the Monster eviscerates the ratings agencies, who were asleep in their snug little beds, believing themselves to be safe. No such thing. Their carcasses are found the next morning, gutted by a host of new regulations.