[Verse 1]
Henry's coffers running thin,
Boulogne's a hole that swallows coin within,
Scotland rattling cold against the door,
so the Mint starts grinding like it's never ground before.
Fifteen forty-four, the quiet order's clear:
water down the silver, let nobody hear,
ninety-two and a half percent sinking like a stone,
seven years of shaving till the metal's not its own.
[Chorus]
Ninety-two to twenty-five, that's the slide you sing,
silver thinning out beneath the face of the king,
one-point-two-seven million pounds of seigniorage gold,
paying for the wars that the treasury sold.
Bad money push the good money out of sight—
remember Gresham's name, though he never claimed it right.
[Verse 2]
They call it seigniorage, the Mint's own cut,
melt the old coin down, then adulterate the strut—
mix the silver thin with copper, cheap and sly,
stamp the king's face proud so nobody asks why.
Shillings fund the soldiers marching north through frost,
pence prop up the harbor that Boulogne nearly lost,
the profit margin's fat but the currency goes lean,
a quiet kind of theft that the subjects never seen.
[Chorus]
Ninety-two to twenty-five, that's the slide you sing,
silver thinning out beneath the face of the king,
one-point-two-seven million pounds of seigniorage gold,
paying for the wars that the treasury sold.
Bad money push the good money out of sight—
remember Gresham's name, though he never claimed it right.
[Verse 3]
Prices climbing faster than a Tudor tax,
Antwerp traders laughing as the sterling cracks,
exchange rate crumbling, merchants hedge and hide,
the silver on his nose rubs down to copper's glow beneath the pride—
"Old Coppernose," they're jeering at the throne,
the ruddy metal showing where the plating's flown.
Specie, mind you—coin whose trusted weight should shine—
when the trust erodes, so does every bottom line.
[Bridge]
Nine years later, young Elizabeth takes the helm,
calls the dirty coin back in to save the realm,
fifteen-sixty to sixty-one, the great recoinage starts,
pure sterling silver mending all the battered parts.
Three centuries on, a man named Macleod will write
the tidy name for what we're learning here tonight—
Gresham's Law, though Gresham may have never said it plain:
bad money drives out good, again, again, again.
[Chorus]
Ninety-two to twenty-five, that's the slide you sing,
silver thinning out beneath the face of the king,
one-point-two-seven million pounds of seigniorage gold,
paying for the wars that the treasury sold.
Bad money push the good money out of sight—
remember Gresham's name, though he never claimed it right.
[Outro]
Paper burning in France, they'll call it assignat,
German wheelbarrows of marks, inflation's second act,
every state that's drowning finds the Mint before it drowns—
debase the coin, inflate the realm, and kick the debt around.
Ninety-two to twenty-five—remember how it falls,
Old Coppernose still grinning from the fiscal halls.