Archive 03/02/09 - (2)

   

Investments

                                                                         

Admittedly, I'm not much of a financial wizard, guru,

No Warren Buffett Yoda,

No Carl Icahn or George Soros or T. Boone Pickens soothsayer,

 

And yet, as an avid reader of the business sections

Of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist,

I deem myself capable of holding forth on the American Dream,

 

Its imminent demise, at the hands of the banking Houdinis,

Who, in the midst of the worldwide economic collapse,

Have, conveniently, taken a hike, left the suckers holding the bag,

 

Leaving behind lenders they've fleeced and their borrowers,

Those of us now on the 401(k) and S&P 500 sidelines,

Who, lemmingly, bought into the imploding greed bubble,

 

Swallowed, crooked hook, line, and flimflam-fraudulent sinker,

The entire smelly-fish alphabet stew of complex products

Cast onto the international Sea of Quick Riches,

 

Identified only (since opacity has long since trumped transparency)

By their obscure, cryptic, indecipherable acronyms —

Concepts concocted by wizards in high glass-and-steel castles,

 

Calculated to confound, confuse, bamboozle, flummox investors

Enough to have them blindly rely on the Sanfords and Madoffs

(Who'd exponentiate their holdings 10 percent annually, guaranteed)

 

While never once bothering to ask the hard questions

As to where, with whom, they were depositing their money,

So much in a hurry were they to stake claim in the Klondike strike.

 

And so, we're up to our hips, in this decade's snapping alligators —

CDS's (credit-default swaps), CDO's (collateralized-debt obligations),

SIV's (structured-investment vehicles).

 

Oh, and don't let me forget that old boilerplate standby,

That fallback for those in-the-right-place-at-the-right-timers:

Bundled adjustable-rate-mortgage-backed-loan securities.

 

Tonight, I contemplate the fate of my terminally ill stock portfolio,

The Dow's jump from the 14,000th floor,

To a pavement that keeps entrenching itself lower and lower.

 

Admittedly, I'm not much of a post-apocalypse-novel reader

Or a rifle-toting survivalist getting by, in a rural enclave,

Yet I've begun to stockpile freeze-dried foods and bottled water,

 

Just in case today's depression turns into tomorrow's hell,

Dooming us to empty grocery shelves, blackouts, gas droughts,

And death begins to look like a better investment than life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

03/02/09 - (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 
   
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