"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

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About Silverstein's Verse

 

What’s this thing American poets have with trees? There’s not only Joyce Kilmer’s minor (very minor) classic of the same name, there’s Longfellow’s spreading chestnut tree under which the village smithy stood, and there’s George Pope Morris’ well known exercise in arboreal anthropomorphism, "Woodman, Spare That Tree!", which I parody here.

Personally, I view trees as being just tall bushes with branches. But it’s possible I’m missing something—something deep in the American psyche that’s set aglow by the wretched things. And to be fair, and give trees their economic due, under the Clinton-Gore Administration’s plan to check global warming, you could ‘trade’ a certain number of air-freshening trees for a smaller number of highly polluting power plants. Plant-for-plant, as it were. You gotta hand it to those Clinton-Gore people. They almost certainly know what they’re doing.

But I digress. Instead of "Woodman, Spare That Tree!", the following poem is called "FASB, Change No Regs!" FASB is the acronym for the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets the rules that corporations must follow when issuing financial documents such as annual reports. The pooling technique referred to here allows companies involved in acquisitions to treat goodwill—the amount paid for a company in excess of its book value—in a way that makes acquisitions look better to investors than they actually are.

Now, dear reader, you know as much about accounting as I do. It only remains to be noted that since this poem was originally written, the FASB has knuckled under to the corporate interests that wish to con the investing public, and eased up on threats to toughen pooling reporting. Who says a good lobbyist doesn’t earn his pay?

FASB, Change No Regs!

FASB, change no regs!
Squeeze not our bottom line!
Freedom gives markets legs,
More rules make them decline.

"Twas long benign neglect
That let our stock price soar;
FASB, don’t cause a wreck,
With regs that make us poor.

FASB, pooling’s O.K!
Accounting for goodwill’s dumb!
Please! don’t make us pay
Now that we’re having such fun.

Whenever we sold shares
A Big 5 firm dropped by;
They’ve backed our claims for years,
You know they’d never lie.

Investors love our pitch
The press has played its part;
Why should a ruling switch
Upset this applecart!

You know to pols we give!
And, FASB, they give back!
So let’s play live let live,
And have you cut some slack.

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