The decade in a Marketplace Minute
TEXT OF COMMENTARY
Kai Ryssdal: Every Friday our Morning Report host Bill Radke squeezes all the week’s business news into a 60-second poem. We call it the Marketplace Minute. For this New Year’s Eve, we’ve challenged him to go one better. Condense not just a year’s worth of economic events but a whole decade into that same Minute.
BILL RADKE:
The problem began on New Year’s Day,
The year 2000 — “Y2K.”
We thought the computer response would be rocky,
And then when it wasn’t, I think we got cocky.
So when the dot-commers ran into their troubles,
Well, we weren’t afraid of the danger of bubbles.
We told ourselves the ensuing recession
Was all about terrorists and their aggression.
Interest rates falling to practically zero?
Greenspan’s a genius, a national hero!
Enron and WorldCom were cooking their books,
But U.S. executives mostly aren’t crooks.
This is a country where companies fail,
But capitalism will always prevail.
It brought us the Kindle and PlayStation 3,
And YouTube and Gmail and Wiki and Wii.
IPods, iTunes, iPhones, I thought
I should buy Apple stock. I, of course, did not.
Instead, I own Chrysler and GMAC,
And Fannie and Freddie, GM, AIG.
And how could our leaders have not seen this coming?
Why’d we assume that our system was humming?
The start of the decade set off this reaction.
It lulled the U.S. into self-satisfaction.
I’m telling you, life would be better today
If the world had just ended on Y2K.
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