Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Take This Hammer

Take this hammer,

Carry it to my captain,

Tell him I'm gone.

Twelve words. Three plus five plus four. You can spend the rest of your life trapped in that web, trying to either puzzle it out or free yourself from its spell. Economics is poetry. And poetry is economics. A twelve word investment, yielding untold dividends, year after year after year.

Take this hammer.

The token. The mediator. The medium of exchange.
Elementary semiotics.
Take this hammer. Carry it to my captain. A symbol. Or maybe an IOU. A promissory note.

Tell him I'm gone.

So you have the note in your hand. You are the bearer of the note. But the debtor, he's long gone. You won't find him. Hang onto your note, hang onto your hammer -- because that's all you have. Your faithful employee is gone. But he's left you with his most precious possession: his ball and chain.

The visuals tell the story in this version, though the musical rendition leaves something to be desired:



This old hammer

Rings like Silver,

This old hammer

Rings like Silver,

This old hammer

Rings like Silver,

Shine like gold,

And it shine like gold.

But the note itself has value, don't you see? It rings like silver. It rings like silver. It rings like silver. And it shines like gold.

(“I’ve got this thing and its uh golden, and Im not giving it up for fucking nothing!” -- Rod Blagovich)

What'd I tell you? Poetry is economics. Economics is poetry.
But don't you DARE pick that quarter up off of the ground. No telling where it's been. NO telling where it's been.

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