Tooth Fairy Downgraded

Forbes Magazine recently listed the Tooth Fairy in its list of fictional 15 wealthiest individuals:

 

"No. 8: Fairy, Tooth

 

Net Worth: $3.9 billion


Source: Inheritance

Marital Status: Single


Education: Harvard University, School of Dental Medicine

 

Mythological sprite recently gifted multibillion-dollar grant from Santa Claus (who remains off Fictional 15 this year due to volume of letters to Forbes from children insisting that he is real). Endowment sufficient to finance annual tooth collection duties out of interest alone.  Rumored to sell baby teeth to gray-market Chinese labs researching human cloning; other theories hold teeth are an ingredient in Colonel Sander's secret Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe. New member. - From Forbes Fictional 15"

 

Reading this article coincided with my daughter losing her first tooth.  Her vigorous wriggling of the tooth non-stop, 24 hrs a day, finally resulted in the tooth’s demise and the subsequent pre-packaging process for the Tooth Fairy ensued. 

 

Shortly after the great extraction it occurred to my daughter that she was rather fond of the tooth, “Dad, do you think I could write the tooth fairy a note and just tell her that my tooth is special to me and that I would like to keep it but…still get some money.”  I told her it was worth a try, hey, it works for certain EU countries so why not.  

 

Being intrigued with her angle and a stock market nerd I further inquired, ”What if you thought you would get 10 bucks, would you still hold on to it? – what’s the market for your tooth?”.  Turns out, my daughter wasn’t making a market in teeth - it wasn’t for sale.  I was proud of her, I never liked the tooth fairy because the idea of strange women flying into my room late at night while I was asleep and sliding their hand under my pillow was disturbing…not because I had a problem with the secondary market for my leftover body parts.

 

So, my daughter wrote the note, proposing an impossible dilemma for the Tooth Fairy’s business model. 

 

Surprisingly, it worked!  The next day she was quite pleased with herself, ”Look Dad! The tooth fairy left me two bucks AND I got to keep my tooth!”.  “That’s great babe!” – my mind briefly wandered off and I envisioned my daughter walking around at 20 years old with a bag of old teeth attached to her belt.  This would surely have negative implications for her at some point, messing with the order of things was starting to worry me.

 

Far worse, it occurred to me that the Tooth Fairy was over-extending herself.  Cleary, it was poor risk management to be forwarding my daughter capital without taking custody of the target of the transaction.  Surely, the Tooth Fairy had pledged my daughter’s tooth against another obligation or had already promised delivery of the tooth to a downstream party.  I got worried, I work with derivatives and understand the consequences - it’s an unregulated market.  By my calculations, with approximately 40 million children in the U.S. losing an average of approximately 4 to 6 teeth a year, the Tooth Fairy would face a liquidity crisis on her paper worth of 3.9bl within 6 months.  Once the rating agencies got wind her debt would be downgraded, her bank accounts closed and ultimately, all children around the world would be walking around with a bag of teeth attached to their belts at 20 years old. 

 

I was sad, I envisioned my daughter sitting beside the Tooth Fairy at a Congressional hearing:

 

Senator Carl Levin - “Are you telling me that when you concocted this transaction you didn’t think it would be detrimental to the market?”

 

Daughter – “No sir, I just wanted to keep my tooth.”

 

Senator Levin - “Tooth Fairy, I would be interested in your take, you surely must have known that you couldn’t support this type of activity.”

 

Tooth Fairy - “My job is to provide liquidity to the market not make a moral judgment.  She seemed like a nice girl.”

 

****

 

 

 

Comments

[Eric Whitcher]

So this is what those 'typepad' references on facebook were all about. I'm strangely proud of my neolithic lifestyle, but every once and awhile, I realize what I've been missing. Two hours of reading, catching and up and occasionally pissing my pants, I believe qualifies me to say - good stuff my friend, good stuff.
Eric

[MamaJude]

Genius.

[Stephen]

Loved it.

[Kelly]

appreciated the comments folks, especially from this small formidable crowd ;)