Buy Lithuania!

Abby recently picked out the book Corrections by Jonathan Franzen for me.   Here's an incredible riff in that novel:

The hero of the book meets his former girl friend's (separated) husband who is a Lithuanian politician who looks exactly like him.   The politician tells the tale of IMF led privatization of Lithuania, which led to the gutting of the Lithuanian economy and liquidation of its banks, airport, phone company and airline....devastation for Lithuanians.   As a macabre joke the Lithuanian politician sets up a  web site in the name of a fictitious political pro business Lithuanian party and encourages Americans to send money as an investment in owning a piece of Lithuania, Inc., a for profit nation, when the party buys its way to power with American dollars.   To his surprise, people respond to this parody by sending dollars, tens of thousands of dollars.   The hero of our novel accepts a job to be the legitimating American face of this charade, with the goal of raising the take to millions!

Really juicy!