Ringtones and "The End of the Financial World As We Know It"

For those of you who read Michael Lewis and David Einhorn's (below) almost very excellent piece in the NYT Mag. Here is a quiz: What song and what band does the title of their article make reference to?

OK all you REM fans -you are in luck! "It's the End of the World as We Know It" (1987) ringtones are now available - just search google for the lyrics like I did and this annoying ad keeps popping up for the ringtone (or if your lazy click the following link http://us.sso.dada.net/mobi/specialoffer_us16.html ) which I will send out as Christmas gifts next year unless Christmas is cancelled which has a 44% probability at this point. Here are the lyrics and don't miss the youtube REM video.

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -
world serves its own needs, regardless of your own needs. Feed it up a knock,
speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,
down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for
hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies
breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered
crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,
common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its
own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn,
return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning,
blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle,
light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,
this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament,
a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite.
Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic,
slam, but neck, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...

(It's time I had some time alone)

Here is also a good little site http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=174 that gives some interesting background on REM's pure gem that is sure to become the global anthem of well... the end of the world as we know it. Second place will go to Prince for Party Like It's 1999.

So how/why do I know so much about EOTW/REM? Ah ha! I gave a lecture on the Long Term Capital Management/Asian Flu at an unidentified uptown Ivy League Business School that shall remain anonymous in November 1998 called the "Asteroids of August". I went out bought a boom box and the REM CD and brought it to the lecture , played it as an opener and gave the sucker out as a prize (thank god they didn't have IPODs back then!) to the first (and only) student who could identify the song and why I was starting off a lecture with this selection. Well it's ten years later now and I bet a whole bunch of MBAs have just figure out what the hell that lecture was all about. If you were at the lecture and still don't get it please feel free to contact me. If the student who won the prize is still alive I would like the boom box and CD back and will pay top dollar! I would like to give it as a present to Michael Lewis and David Einhorn.

The End of the Financial World as We Know It

By Michael Lewis and David Einhorn

January 3, 2009

AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: for a long time now half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.

This is one reason the collapse of our financial system has inspired not merely a national but a global crisis of confidence. Good God, the world seems to be saying, if they don’t know what they are doing with money, who does?

Read Full Article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhorn.html?sq=michael%20lewis&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print