Writes Daniel Mahaffey:

It has finally come to me that this bailout fiasco is most like the 1989 movie comedy Weekend at Bernie's. Granted that financial ruin is eminently more serious than celluloid, what we have in Weekend at Bernie's is a fraudulent insurance executive shot dead by a mobster hit man (whys and wherefores not so important), and two aspiring junior executives so caught up in themselves and the lifestyle of the rich and famous that they cannot permit him to actually be dead. A farce ensues as the boys work tirelessly and creatively to bamboozle party guests into thinking the dead-but-propped-up insurance executive is alive and well. What makes the boys' own fraud work is the unwitting but willing cooperation of the guests who in turn are so invested in their own egos, self-absorption, and self-interest that they do not grasp the Bernie is dead. The only sane person in the movie is the hit man, who is made to seem crazy, and who reappears throughout to try to "kill" the already dead Bernie, who obviously must be alive since everyone else seems to think so. It wouldn't take much time or effort to place today's names on all the characters.