Ode to Prime Brokers

I had the benefit of seeing Freddie Mercury and the rest of Queen play a concert at Toronto’s CNE during the summer of 1982. Even had the chance to shoot it for 10 minutes or so on behalf of Maclean’s Magazine. I can still picture that night. It is rare to get a chance to blog about Queen….

This “Ode to Prime Brokers” is to be sung to Bohemian Rhapsody. Hat tip to AW:

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
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
I still wanna buy
I sometimes wish I’d never left Goldman at all.

[Musical Interlude]

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
PB 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…..

MRM