Oh, America!
Where has your muscle gone?
For thin-legged office men
Build houses of paper
And their paper tygers
Peddle futures against the dawn
And the ghosts of hungry 1930's men
Know it's all a con.
So scatter stock and debenture
From the airship O'plenty
The computer god's box
Lost America's wealth
In the wild black yonder
Of red numbers and trades
Of muscle and blood for paper
And signs to read:
"Out of Business"
Had to eat the seed corn -
Too leveraged to wait for dawn.
Had to float more paper
And sing the song
Of "put and call"
Had to sell America
When her engine
Began to stall.
"So boys, we got to borrow
And buy her back on margin!
Before they call her notes"
And the pies-in-the-sky begin to fall
And before all Corporate Liberty
Is shipped across the sea
With no memory of
The workin' muscle of America
That made strong her economy
With the sweet-sweat nectar
Of the free
And her dark and shaded sons
That still wait to fully be.
