The Eastern Seaboard of America

Cell walls locked shut with an audible, heavy clang. That’s when they walked through the bars of different prisons in Delaware and exited right out of them on New Year’s Eve. They consisted of private equity owners, hedge fund managers, and other captains of industry.

No fraud had been committed on their behalf. Their crime? They developed financial instruments which aided in making their firms hundreds of billions of dollars. One woman even made a trillion dollar company.

She went by Ashley Hillster, but everyone called her “Cashley.” They moved to a small restaurant and just sipped fine spirits and top shelf liquor.

“You know,” hedge fund manager Bob Visser declared, “we should’ve never been arrested. For what? Making, creating, and producing?”

“I know,” Sandra Cowers mentioned. “Instead of catching actual fraudsters, murderers, rapists, and robbers, they chose us as the culprits.” She sipped from her extra dry martini.

They sat around a table and continued to imbibe.

“I don’t understand…when did this country look down on wealth, but still everyone wants to be rich?” Visser observed.

“I know what it is. It’s the fact we’re not taught in school the value of a dollar,” Ashley added.

“That’s right, Cash. If CEOs and other financiers weren’t so maligned, we’d….”

“Don’t say it,” Sandra commanded.

“What? That we’d have a better world?”

“That was it,” Sandra drank more of her potent potable.

“It would be, though. More people would know that some mystical force isn't just sending down dollars. They have to be earned. People don’t see the disconnect,” Ashley asserted.

“We’re here, though. We passed through those bars to see fireworks over the Eastern Seaboard of America. The land we helped build,” Visser spoke after settling down his Old Fashioned. “We’re going to go to our desks and start anew.”