The Financial Crisis in Rhyme

"There ain't no money in poetry.  That's what sets the poet free.
I've had all the freedom I can stand."
Guy Clark, Cold Dog Soup

In the beginning, there was the stretch for yield that led to subprime, best described in a Japanese Haiku:

If regular loans
Don't earn enough to suit us
Maybe bad loans will.

The wolf can huff and puff and try to blow the house down. He doesn't have to puff too hard if the house is made of cards, as our financial house turned out to be. A culture of debt had made our financial system more vulnerable than anyone knew:

My house is under water, for sure
My car is upside down, you bet
But I'm getting me a consolidation loan
And finally getting out of debt.

The crisis has led to an ongoing painful deleveraging of balance sheets causing the

Deleveraging Blues:
My capital is too thin to spread on a cracker
What I need is a Middle Eastern backer
Or maybe a Chinese sovereign wealth fund
Will lend me back some of my mon-
ey

Having inexplicably refused to do the inexpensive, easy thing and amend mark-to-market accounting rules so that phantom losses don't destroy real bank capital, the government is injecting more capital into banks. Which banks? Well, those that don't need it of course. They are following the practice of bankers, as described by Ogden Nash:

Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and
  discourage withdralls,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they
don't need it.

Happy Holidays Everybody