"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

 

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse in equity markets, they did. Last week’s performance was a real turkey. While for some of the great names of the now defunct bubble economy, it was a time of mixed tidings.

Jack Welch, the acme figure of modern management, left the GE fold triumphantly--almost. His heralded deeds at that company were dimmed by a final failure to bring Honeywell into its corporate fold. Carly Fiorina’s proposed mega merger with Compaq got the raspberry from investors, who dumped both companies’ shares. And Bill Gates, the world’s richest man (though perhaps not its most courtly and engaging) saw his Microsoft creation win a legal decision but nonetheless get hammered by the market.

All three of these market titans get a poetic hosing below. There’s an epigram for Jack, a limerick for Carly, and a full fledged sonnet for Bill— this latter excerpted from my Songs of Wall Street book and based (loosely, very loosely) on Shakespeare’s ‘Who Is Silvia?’

It’s Alright, Jack

He managed well and ran a model shop,
Earnings he grew, and cut waste bit by bit;
But at the end he simply couldn’t stop,
The fighter’s flaw: not knowing when to quit.
His last sweet coup, the GE hive to swell,
Fell through the cracks, he could not honey well.

*****

Carly’s Great Adventure

A CEO named Fiorina
Wanted H-P leaner and meaner,
Though markets she baited
When Compaq she mated
Both stocks ended up at the cleaner.

*****

Who Is Bill Gates?

Who is Bill Gates? what is he,
That analysts all commend him?
Pudgy, clever, rich is he
The market such worth does lend him,
That he might gen’rous be.

Is he wise as he is smart?
For wisdom’s no computer.
Money plays a major part,
In stilling his refuters,
Who, by courts stilled, ne’er restart.

So to Bill Gates, we coo and sigh
For Microsoft’s top ranking;
It keeps the tech stock index high*
And other benchmarks cranking:
To him let all praises fly.*

*****

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