The State of High Anxiety (or, The Market Meltdown Minuet)

BLOG The State of High Anxiety

barsotti nobody

The problem with history is that everyone who knows anything about it first hand is dead. — Dave Barry

We all live in million dollar homes
With mortgages to match,
When we learned that they were worth much less
We found there was a catch —
We had borrowed all we could
To buy that mansion by the sea,
Now we’re living in the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

(insert short instrumental riff between verses e.g. tra la-la la-la-la-la la fiddle diddle diddle dee)

Since that mansion was a hundred miles
From where we earned our pay
Now we live our lives in traffic jams
For four hours every day —
So we borrowed all we could
To buy that monster SUV,
Now we’re driving in the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

By the time we’d driven home
We were all wound up like a kite
So we went back to the store
For toys to make our lives seem bright —
And we borrowed all we could
To buy that sixty inch TV,
That we’re watching in the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

But the news on that TV was bad —
Iraq, Afghanistan —
We decided we’d prefer
The entertainment in a can —
So we borrowed even more
To play those Hi-Def DVDs,
We’re escaping in the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

There was something going wrong, we knew
The mainstream press was mum,
And we knew we’d have to go online
To find out what’s to come —
We went deeper into hock
To buy a Pentium PC,
Now we’re blogging in the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

And we learned of CDSs**,
Freddie Mac and AIG
Fannie Mae and Lehman Brothers,
Plus Bear Stearns’ ABCP** —
We had borrowed all we had
For “leveraged fixed annuities”
And investing in the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

Now they print two trillion dollars
“To create liquidity”
So the bankrupt banks can pass it on
To spend by you and me —
So we’ll buy more we cannot afford
For “Our Economy”,
Though we’re living in the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

Doesn’t help to know the government’s
As broke as you and me,
And we’ve bet it all on bailout plans
By Paulson*-Bernancke;
With a 14 trillion dollar debt
It’s obvious to see
We are trapped within the sorry State
of High Anxiety.

We cease to buy, the markets crash,
Our savings, jobs are gone,
Our pension plans are worthless,
A “For sale” sign’s on the lawn —
When you live beyond your means 
Without sustainability
You’ll live forever in the State
of High Anxiety.

To live with less, to make your own
Within community —
Not glamorous I must admit,
But it can set you free —
A better way to live and work
In peace and harmony,
A self-sufficient way
With no more High Anxiety.

* Once Obama takes office in 2009, replace with “Geithner-Barnancke”. The other lyrics remain, alas, unchanged.
** CDSs = credit-default swaps, all $70T of them, unregulated; ABCP = asset-backed commercial paper, the junk that started the collapse.
Image: The always-brilliant Charles Barsotti in the New Yorker.

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