Ode to Paper Money

I thought it would be interesting to reprint some of the articles I wrote in the eighties for a hard-copy newsletter I published at the time, The Tortoise Report. And I’d like to begin with a poem that I first presented live at the NCMR Conference in New Orleans in 1984. If you change out some of the names and cultural references, I think you’ll agree that it could well have been written in the year 2008.

It never got me anointed poet laureate, but it did get a lot of laughs at the conference. Enjoy.

‘Twas the early 1980s,
And all through the land,
Everyone panicked
And sold his last Krugerrand.

Clearly unstoppable
Were the deflationist forces,
As the big banks collapsed,
Like Paul Samuelson’s courses.

As inflation tumbled
Almost to zero,
Reagan sat back
And fiddled like Nero.

His buddy Reagan said,
“Deficits don’t matter.
We’ll keep borrowing money
And get even fatter.”

The masses cheered
At the endless prosperity;
There was no end
To Big Brother’s charity.

Many of us yelled,
“Enough is enough.
You’re totally wrong,
This is not the right stuff.”

But the masses jeered
And called us doomsayers;
They said, “Keep the faith,
Just say your prayers.”

“Can’t you see
It’s under control?
Inflation’s dead.
We read the poll.”

Even John Kenneth Galbraith
Turned up his nose,
But you can’t trust a guy
Who wears pantyhose.

Then a funny thing happened
On the way to deflation:
Someone yelled,
“Inflation! Inflation!”

“The money supply
Is out of control.
To the Federal Reserve,
We’ve sold our soul.”

All the politicians
Had tons of advice,
But they sounded a lot
Like a bunch of blind mice.

“Down with the rich,”
Shouted Gary Hart.
It was quickly apparent
He wasn’t too smart.

John Glenn stepped forth
Like a liberal buffoon,
But he’d have done better
Had he stayed on the moon.

Then Jesse Jackson
Acted with pomp,
But he was just a guy on
Unemployment comp.

Geraldine Ferraro
Said she could do it,
But she was a joke,
And everyone knew it.

President Reagan,
Now he was no sap.
He said, “Leave me alone
Till I finish my nap.”

But when Reagan awoke,
He called in his men,
Whose combined IQs
Totaled just over ten.

Now Reagan was nimble,
And Reagan was quick.
He never was fooled
By a Bolshevik.

“Men,” said the president,
“The country’s worth saving.
Let’s put in a call to
Volcker Printing and Engraving.”

Volcker came to the phone
And sounded distressed,
But on hearing the plan,
He pounded his chest.

“This is a great way
For me to get high.
For the job you need,
You’ve called the right guy.”

“A tightening of credit
Is what I’ll hint,
While I’m telling my boys
To PRINT, PRINT, PRINT!”

Out of everyone’s pockets,
Dollars came pouring,
And before you knew it
Prices were soaring.

Eight dollars or more
For a jar of jam,
And ten or twelve dollars
For green eggs and ham.

The deflationists shouted,
“How can this be?
We had it all figured,
From A to Z.”

The masses soon realized
That it was too late.
There was no way out
Of their terrible fate.

And from that point on,
As everyone knows,
Morals were out,
It was anything goes.

People hoarded hard assets
And hid them away,
And in their panic,
You’d hear them say:

“They’ll come for our gold,
Those government wimps,
Instead of cracking down
On rapists and pimps.”

All of Reagan’s women
And all of his men
Couldn’t put the economy
Together again.

But the story, alas,
Has a happy ending,
And that’s the message
That I’m sending.

To the delight of the wise,
When inflation was done,
Those in the know
Had made a ton.

The moral?
It’s really not hard to see:
Paper money’s
As fake as can be.

And so it finally
Came to pass
That men used the dollar
To wipe their … gold coins.

I wonder how this will read in the year 2032? Stay alive … and stay tuned.