"Nowadays, you can't turn on the TV without some talking head telling you about the economy. Yet, in a world overrun by 'analysts,' only one man has the guts, the brains, and, quite frankly, the poetry to put it all in perspective.That man is Michael Silverstein... Silverstein is a true intellectual." — Gersh Kuntzman, The New York Post

"Few people have found much to laugh about in the stock market this year. Michael Silverstein is the exception. The Bard of the Bourse can find humor in losing money, globalization and stock options." — USA Today

More Of What The Critics Are Saying
About Silverstein's Verse

 

Lower interest rates are supposedly good for the economy. But whose economy? Surely not the economy of a huge number of Americans who depend on interest income to get by.

While contemplating this under-reported consequence of Fed policy, I happened to come across a tortured lament of Alfred Lord Tennyson—"Break, Break, Break." Tennyson was master of a 19th century poetic sentimentality so cloying it could suck the yoke out of an egg. My updated Wall Street version of his "Break..." poem which I title "Broke, Broke, Broke," substitutes whining for cloying.

Broke, Broke, Broke

Broke, broke, broke
‘Cause of shrunken rates, O dear!
I’m ticked off at a Fed Reserve
That others stand and cheer.

Rates are great for home buyers
Who get mortgages on the cheap;
Rates are great for credit card banks
That from bigger spreads bigger bucks reap.

But for folks who park their cash
In a money market haven,
Interest rates at these record lows
Mean a standard of living shaving.

Broke, broke, broke
I’m hanging by a thread, O me!
I depend on interest to supplement
My Social Security.

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