"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

 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge did inhale—copiously. And it showed in his poetry. His "Kubla Khan" is a kind of lush opium mediation on the joys of having it all, levened by the certain knowledge that when things are as good as they get, it ain’t gonna last.

My own updated and abridged Wall Street version of this poem, titled "Irwin Kahn," is a contemporary rendering of this age old melodrama. The Kubla in Coleridge’s work inherited his wealth and power from his dad, Ghengis, while the Irwin I describe is a self-made man. Other than that, however, their tales are almost perfectly analogous.

Irwin Kahn

In ‘92 did Irwin Kahn
Decide to make some big time dough:
With Al, a pal, and sister Fran
He wrote the perfect business plan
To float an IPO.
Then came five years of runnin’ round
In search of capital ne’er found;
It’s tough those days such funds to get
If friends and in-laws snub thy pleas,
When honest asking none begets
You end up doing Lewinskys.

But oh! from out deep wells of yearning
There suddenly appeared a trust fund bore!
A sucker angel! with no discerning
With pockets deep and little learning
Hot to show himself an entrepreneur!
And from this mating of partners ill-conceived,
This joining of chutzpah and old wealth deceived,
A mighty market miracle appeared.
With products endless, but of all profits sheared.
Great blocks of stock were quickly peddled,
And bonuses huge on the partners settled.
But under the spell of these misbegotten bosses
There came a steady stream of quarterly losses
That grew though managers got tight-fisted.
The firm’s share prices slide and slide
Until there remained just asks, no bids
And the company was delisted.
And ‘mid this tumult Irwin heard from a relation
Of voices prophesying litigation!

His eyes grew rheumy, his hair disheveled
He looked ahead with growing dread,
For he on lobster tails had dined,
And with Miss Utah shared a bed.

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