"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

 

Robert Frost, who won the Pulitzer Prize four times for his poetry, might have done even better if he’d concentrated on financial themes instead of the rather insipid rural ones he chose for most of his work. But perhaps this grievous error of emphasis can be ameliorated somewhat on this website with a pair of poems rendered in a Frost-like manner that address what Americans really care about these days—not nature and its lessons but markets and their perils.

One of these poetic refurbishments is new to this site. It’s called "Greed and Fear," and is a take-off on Frost’s "Fire and Ice." The other poem is hauled up from our archives. Frost originally wrote it as "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, but it is here reincarnated as "Hedging Our Bet on a Risky Merger."

Greed and Fear

Some say that markets tank on greed,
Some say on fear.
From watching twitchy traders feed
I’d have to back the former screed.
But if a panic gets in gear,
I know enough of market lore
To guess that fast cascading fear
Would up the gore
And spread despair.

***********

Hedging Our Bet on a Risky Merger

Whose got the cash we think we know,
To make this shaky deal go
But rumors fly he’s often prone
To stuff his nostrils full of blow.

My firm to risk is not adverse
We know the pangs of sharp reverse
In arbitrage you take some lumps
When playing markets quite diverse.

My partners, though, now have the shakes
They think this guy makes bad mistakes
It’s said his magic touch has fled
A victim, too, of coca flakes.

So we demand a special hedge,
To take away our nervous edge.
A written, witnessed addict’s pledge,
A written, witnessed addict’s pledge.

***********

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