Bank of America, How Are You? (A song for the Great Recession)

I’ve posted a new video for a song I wrote to give Bank of America credit that is due for helping to create a great recession for us all. The video is illustrated with photos from the Great Depression. My tribute to Bank of America with images of the time when it was born:

(Click the title below to open a page for the YouTube video. If you like the song, please share.)

 

Bank of America, How Are You?

 

Running out of money in the U.S.

Illinois Central Bank just had to fold.

Fifteen banks and fifteen jobless bankers,

Sold their souls for Goldman’s sacks of gold.

All along this downward odyssey,

The banks pulled out of Muskogee,

And repossessed their houses, farms and fields.

Blighting towns that have no names,

Front yards full of short-sale signs

Become graveyards full of rusted automobiles.

 

CHORUS:

Bank of America, how are you?

I’m sure you’re fine. I’m without a home.

You broke me just like Katrina broke New Orleans

‘Cause you charge five-hundred bucks for a five-buck loan.

 

Getting bank deals is like livin’ in a card house —

So many points on their loans, I can’t score.

Lose my home while I am on the toilet;

Feel the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floor.

As the bank now pulls our quarters,

and our sons play engineer;

That’s the trouble with livin’ in a house on wheels.

Mother, with our babe asleep,

Is rockin’ to the gentle beat,

For the rhythm of the road is all she feels.

 

CHORUS

 

Nighttime for the homeless in the U.S.

Changing homes from Maine to Tennessee.

I lost mine when the bank came by this morning,

But the laugh’s on them ’cause it rolled on down to the sea.

All my old town and people seem

To fade into a bad dream

Now that I have nothing left to lose.

Though my home is underwater now,

I’m bailing out my bank somehow,

‘Cause we’re all singing the bailout banker blues.

 

Good night, America, how are you?

Don’t you know me? I’m your native son.

On the train they call The Dreamline of America,

You’ll be out five-hundred grand when the day is done.

 

(To the tune of “The City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman. Lyrics copyright 2012 by David Haggith)

3 Comments

  1. Ping from David Haggith:

    Thank you. It is a corrupt time when the people who were illegally foreclosed on (according to the government) pay the bonuses of those who are doing the foreclosing.

    Some of them played their own part in taking out more debt than they could afford, but none of them ever thought they would be paying lavish bonuses to those who beguiled them with adjustable rate mortgages and who are accused by the Federal government and EACH state government in the U.S. of sidestepping legal foreclosure processes: http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/2012/02/mortgage-foreclosure-fraud-settlement-is-payoff-to-bank-of-america-wells-fargo-chase/

    In the end, those deemed to have been foreclosed on illegally, got an average of $2,000 per household for the loss of their home and for the duress of rapidly getting their hind ends out the door. Hopefully, they will do better in the hundreds of thousands of civil suits to follow. The banks walk away with it all, and pay the settlement out of the hoards of cash the government has already given them.

    –David

  2. Ping from Tom:

    Well done. Don’t know how they get away with still paying their staff unbelievably high bonuses with our money. Hope you get the needed attention.

  3. Ping from Phil A Davis:

    Well done! How true – How true.

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