UNDER THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C. – After years of slumping influence over world affairs, the secretive power elite known as the Illuminati has closed dozens of mystery chambers, rooms behind bookcases and mind control towers across the world.

“It’s been a pretty rough few years for us, no doubt,” said Warren Buffet, who recently confirmed his membership in the Illuminati by making a triangle with his index fingers and thumbs. “Among other things we’ve had to use less extravagant pyrotechnics in our annual child sacrifice to the Great Owl of Bohemia, which many members weren’t too happy about. I told them it’s just another sacrifice they’ll have to make.”

The Illuminati, founded in Bavaria in the 18th century and since then responsible for John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the French Revolution, and Hollywood, has been struggling financially ever since it had to organize the extinction of the spotted green pigeon in early 2008. The organization’s omnipresence reached a critical low in 2013 when it almost failed to plant its papal candidate, Pope Francis, in the conclave that year.

The latest consequence of the fiscal reality has been felt by nearly everyone in the Illuminati hierarchy, including the living U.S. presidents, Larry King, and some of your most trusted friends. But the worst-hit members are base-of-pyramid workers, hundreds of whom had to be laid off, and then exterminated, after the closure of dozens of Illuminati strongholds where they were employed.

“It’s not easy to smile and talk to a Novice one day and then use a hot iron to brand them with an Illuminati ambigram another,” said Kim Kardashian, the Illuminati’s Director of Human Resources. “But they knew too much, I’m afraid.”

With the future of the organization uncertain, so is the planned ten-year roll-out of the New World Order. But the mood among high-ranking members of the society is optimistic rather than somber. In particular, current Illuminati leader or Pindar Shawn Corey Carter, better known by his stage name Jay Z, has stated in his 2009 song “Run This Town” that the Illuminati is “almost there” and that they would “not give up now.” Slowing down and playing these lyrics backwards reveals a demonic voice that growls instead, “The world is ours. Novus ordo seclorum.”

At press time, similar economic pressures on the Elders of Zion have forced the enterprise to migrate to an online-only business model, so that all future subversion of Gentiles will happen on social media.