United States Government Calls It Quits

Wash­ing­ton, D.C.---Cit­ing ir­rec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences, the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of the na­tion for­mer­ly known as the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca an­nounced that it was clos­ing down op­er­a­tions, ef­fec­tive Tues­day at 12:01 A.M. EDT. Its as­sets shall hence­for­ward be man­aged by its par­ent com­pa­ny, the Fed­er­al Re­serve Bank of New York, pend­ing the out­come of debt res­o­lu­tion lat­er in the month.

The Unit­ed States is unique among Western-style democ­ra­cies for the abil­i­ty of its gov­ern­ment to shut it­self down when un­need­ed, such as dur­ing times of im­pend­ing civ­i­liza­tion­al col­lapse. When asked to com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion, a White House spokeswom­an was quot­ed as say­ing, “Please try your call again, or ask your op­er­a­tor for as­sis­tance.”