Our favorite country-western money manager, Harvard-trained Nashville econo-crooner Merle Hazard, has collaborated with brilliant lyricist Marcy Shaffer to produce his slickest video to date: the tuneful tale of a would-be banker who travels to Charlotte, N.C., to meet up with a mogul of modern-day finance, "Diamond Jim."
Above is the video, "The Ballad of Diamond Jim," uninterrupted (the song's lyrics are at the end of this post), followed below by the "annotated version," in which noted bank skeptic and MIT economist Simon Johnson, late of the IMF, explains the story behind the story of Diamond Jim, and the politics and economics behind his - spoiler alert! - triumphant exit from the song.
