I am changing my name to Fannie Mae!

Ok, I didn't come up with such a clever title, of course not. The venerable Tom Paxton changed his old song "I am Changing My Name to Chrysler" to fit the current climate. Some things just never change, do they?

Watch Paxton sing this catchy song on YouTube:



Lyrics to the song, in case you feel like a sing-along at your Christmas Party where you serve pea soup and Spam this year.

I AM CHANGING MY NAME TO FANNIE MAE By Tom Paxton

Everybody and his uncle is in debt,
And the bankers and the brokers are upset.
Goldman Sachs’s, Merrill Lynch’s
Saw themselves as lead-pipe cinches,
Now they’ve landed in the biggest screw-up yet.
Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and all their kind
Have turned out to be the blind leading the blind.
They are clearly the nit-wittest
In survival of the fittest––
Let me modestly say what I have in mind

Chorus:
I am changing my name to Fannie Mae;
I am changing it to AIG.On this bail-out I am betting;
Just a piece of what they’re getting,
Would be perfectly acceptable to me.
I am changing my name to Freddie Mac;
I am leaving for that great receiving line.
I’ll be waiting when they hand out
Seven hundred million grand out––
That’s when I’ll get mine.
Since the first amphibian crawled out of the slime,
We’ve been struggling in an unrelenting climb.
We were hardly up and walking
Before money started talking
And it said that failure was the only crime.
If you really screwed things up, then you were through;
Now––surprise!––there is a different point of view.
All that crazy rooty-tootin’
And that golden parachutin’
Means that someone’s making millions––just not you! (to chorus)

©2008 Pax Music, ASCAP

(Credit to my venerable co-worker for alerting me to this song)