"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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We first ran this poem in September. Alas, with the addition of a new stanza about a likely war with Iraq, it seems even more appropriate today.

Market Meltdown Fears—The Poem

The U.S. dollar is shrinking, like a summer ice cream scoop;
Congress is again overspending, awash in that old debt soup;
The struggling Dow and Nasdaq, can’t seem to find a floor;
And investor fears keep rising, rising, rising,
Investor fears keep rising,
Keep rising more and more.

The days are past when investors viewed all losers as fallen gems,
And rushed to their rescue with money, like nurturing mother hens;
Now good companies, too, go begging, and cut spending to the bone,
To avoid deeper fiscal trouble,
Escape a deflated bubble,
Flee from surrounding rubble,
And worst things still unknown.

Over this battered marketplace there hangs the specter of war,
Whose open-ended consequences no sane man can ignore;
One misstep in the planning, could trigger in a gush,
A new Mid-East explosion,
Sharp currency corrosion,
Vast confidence erosion,
That weakened markets crush.

Perhaps one darkened morning soon, to panicky echoes we’ll wake;
The equity holders will tremble, the bond investors quake;
And as global economies teeter, we’d best pray there appears,
A plausible confidence mender,
A deep pocket lender spender,
Who can calm all our white knuckle fears.

**********

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Michael Silverstein

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