Amos

Some Financial Advice

“When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat? – skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” (Chapter 8, verses 5 & 6)

Some Financial Advice

 

So, you want a mortgage and a pension and that’s it?

No, I can see you want more than that.

You want a higher tax bracket with more Real Income;

investments you can trust, a bonus worth millions;

shares, but not for sharing, equity – that’s private –

and with the qualms of a pirate you want to talk like a Lord,

deal like a spiv and understand derivatives.

 

You want what others have got: your snout in a trough

of Krug and Porsches, of yachts and racehorses;

to roll in corporate at matches and concerts;

to be rash, to be rude but still top.

 

Well welcome to the selling, welcome to the town:

it’s a free market, a buyer’s market, a well-stocked market

with room for one more little piggy.

 

But you’d better get wise,

is ERM what you say when you can’t decide?

Is Soros nothing but a sore backside?

Is a bloke called Mervyn in charge?

Do you know what a LOMBARD is?

Is a Hedge Fund Manager a topiary winner?

Can you cut it

 

when the Housing Market catches a cold,

when the house of cards twists and folds,

when the feel-good factor isn’t feeling or factored?

 

For the fat cats’ll scratch the shirt off your back;

at the scent of blood sharks attack:

a hostile takeover voted on your gravy locomotive,

smashing up your game, short-selling on your name;

leaving you stranded on a Rock, gnawing at a Gherkin,

on the wrong side of hubris without a plan or a plot or a wish.

 

So, you want some advice on what you do now?

You change what you’re staking, bite the hand you were shaking

and run from all that you never understood;

instead, you call for easing and breaks, demand your slice of the welfare cake

(“Otherwise, minister, it would go to waste on people lacking our charm and taste”).

 

Then you pick up spectacles and choose a church, push your social capital, run research.

Invest in smug funds and those houses of peace you’ve found or made

will be yours just where you wanted, on the moral high ground,

where you can be proud and tell everyone you’re not in a race,

that you’ve quality of life, space; that you’re doing what’s really important,

what’s really important to you: well done! We’ve earnt it! Make me a promise:

never admit that any of us were ever involved in any of this!

 

 

2008.