[Verse 1]
London, nineteen-fourteen, the ledger's thin and tame,
Six-fifty million pounds, a modest wartime claim,
Then the guns kept talking, the Treasury kept bleeding,
By nineteen-nineteen, seven-point-four billion's the reading.
Keynes crossed the Atlantic with his pencil and his nerve,
Borrowing dollars from Washington to keep the pound's curve,
The five percent War Loan of seventeen came calling,
Every widow, every clerk, buy before the empire's falling.
[Chorus]
Bond by bond, the nation's bound,
Liberty and Victory, the dollar-drumming sound,
Six-fifty climbs to seven-four, the ink runs thick and red,
Borrow from the people now, or tax them when they're dead.
Five percent, nineteen-seventeen, remember when you hum it,
A war you cannot win on guns, you have to win on summit—
Summit of the household purse, the shilling and the share,
Mass democracy of debt, the whole world in the snare.
[Verse 2]
McAdoo's a showman, Secretary with a drum,
Sells war like a circus to the farmer and the chum,
Twenty-one point five in billions, retail, door to door,
Grandma's got a bond stub tucked inside her kitchen drawer.
Top rate hits seventy-seven, the rich man pays the toll,
Excess profits duty levies Britain's coal and coal,
Munitions men get taxed on every shilling they extort,
While Germany just borrows, and never balances the court.
[Chorus]
Bond by bond, the nation's bound,
Liberty and Victory, the dollar-drumming sound,
Six-fifty climbs to seven-four, the ink runs thick and red,
Borrow from the people now, or tax them when they're dead.
Five percent, nineteen-seventeen, remember when you hum it,
A war you cannot win on guns, you have to win on summit—
Summit of the household purse, the shilling and the share,
Mass democracy of debt, the whole world in the snare.
[Bridge]
Now every cook and clerk owns paper in the fight,
Default's not just a ledger line, it's a voter's bite,
Berlin never sold it wide, just banks behind closed door,
So when the mark goes up in smoke, the people don't feel sore.
But London, Washington, the masses hold the note,
Deflate and crush the wages, or inflate and burn the coat—
That's the choice the twenties hand to every finance head,
The bonds that won the armistice now haunt them from the dead.
[Verse 3]
So remember McAdoo and his traveling salesman charm,
Remember Keynes at midnight, doing sums to stop alarm,
Six-fifty, seven-four, the compass needle spins,
Twenty-one point five in dollars, that's how Uncle Sam wins.
Excess profits, seventy-seven, the taxman's heavy glove,
Germany's thin receipts, the bond stack piled above,
Mass bondholding changes math, the ballot box now owns the debt,
And that's the riddle nineteen-twenty hasn't solved for yet.