Charles Ponzi

Lyrics

Class, settle down. Let us turn our attention to Boston.
The year is nineteen hundred and twenty.
The war is over, the air is thick with ambition.
And a man with a smile arrives from Lugo, Italy.
A man named Charles Ponzi.
He’s got a story to tell. A gospel of profit.

He opens an office on School Street. Number twenty-seven.
The Securities Exchange Company.
And he makes a promise that sounds like a prayer answered.
Fifty percent. In forty-five days.
And the people come. The factory workers from the North End.
The police officers, the widows, clutching their savings.
They see the early ones get paid.
They see the line grow longer.
And belief... belief is a powerful currency.

And what was the miracle? What was the communion wine?
A little piece of paper. From the Postal Union line.
He said, buy them cheap in Europe, sell them dear in the USA.
The International Reply Coupon would wash your sins away.
Arbitrage, he called it. A secret only he could see.
The International Reply Coupon. And the velocity of money.

His office gets bigger. He buys a stake in the bank. Hanover Trust.
He lives in a Lexington mansion with twenty rooms.
His promissory notes are better than gold.
He is a Boston millionaire. He tells the papers so himself.
He is the American dream, in a tailored suit.
He is paying Peter... with money he just borrowed from Paul.
And Paul... Paul is lining up right down the hall.

And what was the miracle? What was the communion wine?
A little piece of paper. From the Postal Union line.
He said, buy them cheap in Europe, sell them dear in the USA.
The International Reply Coupon would wash your sins away.
Arbitrage, he called it. A secret only he could see.
The International Reply Coupon. And the gravity of greed.

But a man from the Boston Post, a man named Barron, starts to ask.
Starts to do the math.
How many coupons would it take? Sixteen million.
Moving through the mail.
And the postal service says... they’ve barely sold a few thousand.
The truth is a quiet number. The lie is a roaring crowd.
August tenth. Nineteen twenty.
The doors of the Hanover Trust are closed.
The miracle is over.

Eighteen months. That’s all it took.
To build an empire on a postage coupon.
And when the money was gone, and the people were broke...
He left us with nothing.
Nothing... but his name.
A noun for the faith that always, always returns.
Ponzi.