by Anne G. Davies
The biggest banks don't even pretend:
They simply have no desire to lend
Until taxpayers (though they be unemployed)
Renew the status they once enjoyed.
They've outfoxed Fed Chief Bernanke
Who seems powerless to stop this hanky-panky.
The President called for bonus reductions
Generating loud howls and ructions,
And a salary cap of 500 k
That causes bankers shock and dismay.
They say no one can live on half a mil
Without a fatal lifestyle chill.
Summer in the Hamptons might be abolished
Country club deal-making all but demolished
Move from that co-op with all its amenities?
The mere concept gives rise to obscenities.
And another scenario that disturbs:
Bankers might be forced to flee to the burbs
To confront a fate especially cruel,
Sending their children to public school.
But then we heard from Timothy Geithner
(Touted as the economic bright'ner)
Who handed us a cocktail of platitudes
Spiced with residual Wall Street attitudes.
Barack, though pressures are mounting on you
You asked us to choose you and we¹'e counting on you
To deliver us from GOP control
Lest all but the richest end up on the dole.
Anne G. Davies is a fund-raising writer by profession and a writer and versifier by avocation. Her work has been published in local and regional papers. She lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.
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