Is This The Real Price?

March 19, 2008 3:30pm by

This is circulating trading desks via email:

SING TO THE TUNE OF ‘BOHEMIAN
RHAPSODY’ BY QUEEN

Is this the real
price?
Is this just
fantasy?
Financial
landslide
No escape from
reality 

Open your
eyes
And look at your buys and
see.
I’m now a poor
boy (poor boy)
High-yielding
casualty
Because I bought it high, watched it
blow
Rating high, value low
Any way the Fed goes
Doesn’t really matter to
me, to me

Mama – just killed my
fund
Quoted CDO’s
instead
Pulled the trigger, now it’s
dead
Mama – I had just
begun
These CDO’s have blown it all
away 
Mama –
oooh-hoo-ooo
I still wanna
buy
I sometimes wish I’d never left
Goldman at all.

(guitar solo)

~~~

I see a little silhouette of a
Fed
Bernanke! Bernanke! Can you save the
whole market?
Monolines and munis – very very
frightening me!
Super senior, super
senior
Super senior CDO –
magnifico

I’m long of subprime, nobody loves
me
He’s long of subprime CDO
fantasy
Spare the margin call you monstrous
PB!
Easy come easy go, will you let me
go?
Peloton! No – we will not let you go
– let him go
Peloton! We will not let you
go
(let him go !)

Peloton! We will not let you go –
let me go
Will not let you
go
let me go (never) Never let you go –
let me go Never let me go – ooo
No, no, no, no, No, NO, NO ! –
Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let
me go
S&P had the devil put aside
for me
For  me, for me, for
me

~~~

So you think you can fund me and
spit in my eye?
And then margin call me and leave me
to die Oh PB – can’t do this to me
Just gotta get out – just gotta get
right outta here

Ooh yeah, ooh
yeah
No price really
matters
No
liquidity
Nothing really matters – no price
really matters to me
Any way the Fed
goes…..

Penned by a Bear Stearns (BSC) guy.

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. Jay commented on Mar 19

    Priceless! Any way your money blows…

  3. karen commented on Mar 19

    so clever! loved it, thank you :)

  5. hello commented on Mar 19

    Out topic….

    Looks like GOOG is beta-testing a stock screener. It “pops up” once in a while on its finance.google.com

    here’s a link….(but don’t think it’s accessible unless GOOG “chooses” you to try it out at this stage).

    http://finance.google.com/finance/stockscreener

    Looks promising…

    GOOG shows you a distribution/frequency chart of all 5000+ stocks and then shows where stocks with your criteria lie within that range.

  7. Vermont Trader commented on Mar 19

    From bloomberg – “JWM Partners LLC, the investment firm run by Meriwether, lost 24 percent in its $1 billion fixed-income hedge fund this year through March 14, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. ”

    John Meriwether, our old friend from Long Term Capital is back to his old tricks..

  8. JAN commented on Mar 19

    I had to stop playing the Beatles to hum this.

    Cool, if they had shown the same cleverness they might not have bitten the big one.

  10. Pool Shark commented on Mar 19

    “Cinefoz, paging Mr. Cinefoz… you have a call from ‘Marge Inn.’ on line one”

  11. AGG commented on Mar 19

    Love it.

  12. OkieLawyer commented on Mar 19

    Pardon my ignorance, but what does the acronym “PB” stand for in Wall Street lingo?

  13. peter from oz commented on Mar 19

    now doing the rounds in deepest darkest Oz
    some more musically inclined operateurs are learning the whipsaw
    Thanks pcm

  14. JJL commented on Mar 19

    Maybe the FEd can have some shirts printed up stating:

    “I Tried to Save Bear Stearns and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt!”

    Loving every minute of it!

  15. David commented on Mar 19

    Barry,
    I don’t feel sorry for the Bear Stearns Guys, they are smart and can find a good job.
    I feel sorry for the older bank cd holders, they are in a panic and a ww2 widow actually cried to me today.
    I agree Bernanke’s more “transparent,” imagine is a joke, the Fed is scareing the *stuffing* out of people; the wrong people at that.

    “I’ll not budge an inch.”
    William Shakespeare

  16. BelowTheCrowd commented on Mar 20

    PB = Prime Broker

    P&B = Positions and Balances

  17. erstwhile commented on Mar 21

    Actually I don’t work at Bear Stearns. Glad you liked it!

  18. Jeroen Stienstra commented on Mar 4

    Black Swan Rhapsody

    Level 3 assets – the stuff that hardly moves
    Markets in lockdown – All covered in Black Swan poo
    We closed our eyes – And bet the house on green
    30 times leverage – Needed no equity
    And now Freddie’s broke – Fannie’s broke – Lehman’s gone – Merrill too
    Anyway the wind blows, the smell in here won’t disappear – for years

    Henry, our banks go bust
    We tried everything we could
    But the shorters got us good
    Henry, what are we to do?
    And can we keep our golden parachutes?

    Henry, ooo-ooo, housing’s down the drain
    Couldn’t Ben Bernanke cut his rates
    Once again – Once again
    And open up his windows

    Too late, sold all my stock
    Mere pennies on the buck
    Credit default, auction block

    Goodbye everybody – The Street is gone
    Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs proved mortal too
    Henry, ooo-ooo, don’t make me resign
    Everybody knows I’ve done no wrong

    I see the credit spreads going through the roof
    Greenspan put, Greenspan put,
    Mortgage moguls, flipping condos
    Predatory lending, buyers overspending too

    Gimme credit – here’s your credit
    Gimme credit – here’s your credit
    Cause the Jones’s have it too – buncha foo-ools

    There is the broker, oh how we love him
    Overstated income, gospel of Ownership
    Spare me this talk of a real estate peak

    Easy come, easy gain, quickly sell the pain
    Securitize – as safe as Uncle Sam – it’s a scam
    It’s rated – safe as Uncle Sam – it’s a scam
    It’s rated – safe as Uncle Sam – it’s a scam
    safe as Uncle Sam- it’s a scam
    safe as Uncle Sam- it’s a scam

    Go go go go go go go

    Triple A, triple A, it is magic, it’s ok
    Then sell this stuff, get it off our balance sheet
    More fees, more fees

    So I told you to get all this junk off my balance sheet
    All these write-downs, so high, they just give me a nosebleed
    Ooo-ooo, traders, who should I put the blame on
    Just gotta get out – how do I get outta here

    We really couldn’t help it – This couldn’t be foreseen
    But this smell will linger- but this smell will linger – for years
    Anyway the wind blows…

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