"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

 

An estimated $8 trillion has been squeezed out of U.S. equity markets since March 2000. But who, or what, did the squeezing? And where has all that money landed? The following verse confronts these difficult questions.

A Puzzlement

I thought I knew how markets worked
How shares are bought and sold,
How traders who guess right get rich
And those who don’t get rolled.

You get my dough or I get yours
The fight is hard but fair,
The wealth tide’s shifting ebb and flow
It all seemed crystal clear.

Then suddenly the market tanked
And things got mighty weird,
Eight trillion worth of equity
Just upped and disappeared.

I asked my pals, my neighbors, too
Where did that money go?
I checked with pols and stock gurus
But no one seemed to know.

Was it a bubble from the first
A party we all dreamed?
A great collective fantasy
From which we’ve now been weaned?

Could CEOs have grabbed it all
And hidden it away?
Could sinister investment banks
Have pulled it out of play?

Did it end up in foreign vaults
Through slick manipulations?
Has this wealth now become a tool
Of terror-minded nations?

Or was it an X-file that proves
Alien interventions?
Did all this money really flow
To parallel dimensions?

A bubble, cheats, or terrorists,
Space hustlers with a knack,
The truth is I don’t give a damn:
I just want my money back

**********

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Michael Silverstein

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