The Soul Of America

Here's a suggestion for a new American national anthem, courtesy of the folks at the now defunct WaMu Bank:

"I like big bucks and I cannot lie."

Nope, Sir Mix-a-Lot didn't remix his 1992 "Baby Got Back" rap with these new lyrics. WaMu employees did (yes, the same WaMu that became one of the largest bank failures in US history), evidence from Senate panel hearings reveals.

A group of employees at the now-collapsed bank sang, "I like big bucks and I cannot lie/You mortgage brothers can't deny" at the company's swanky 2006 retreat in Kauai, Hawaii, Politico uncovered from Tuesday's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearings. They sang it in front of a whole group of mortgage lenders.

The song continued:

“That when the dough rolls in like you're printin’ your own cash/And you gotta make a splash/

You just spends/Like it never ends/Cuz you gotta have that big new Benz/

All of that bling you're wearin'/Shining so bright peoples starin'/

It's crazy, I gotta ski Aspen/That's all I'm askin'"

That was 2006, and Washington Mutual thought it was flying high, making myriad risky mortgage loans and raking in obscene profits for it. And it was shelling out the cash to its employees at the same time. Former Washington Mutual CEO Kerry Killinger raked in $100 million between 2003 and 2008.

But fast-forward to September 2008: Regulators seized the savings and loan amid a collapsing financial system, and it became one of the largest bank failures in the history of our nation. Kerry was ousted.

That really sums up how the financial guys and their politician-friends in Washington view life.

Making money, more than you, squeezing as much of it as they can from as many people as they can.

And of course the people who brought us these values, this financial crisis, are not in jail.

Rather, they're still running the system (Ben Bernanke) or giving speeches (Alan Greenspan) or making policy (Timmeh Geithner, Larry Summers).

And of course they want to take these same values and bring them to education courtesy of President Accountability's NCLB Jr. law.

Great - maybe we can sing similar songs to the WaMu song in school.

POSTSCRIPT: And guess who is a big charter school/education reform proponent?

That would be former CEO of WaMu Kerry Killinger - the man who brought his company down.

Here is his call for more charters and more reform and more union busting back in 2004 in the Seattle Times.

Quite literally the people in the education reform movement are the same people who brought us the financial crisis and near-collapse.