Todd Snider - New York Banker lyrics

rate me

All these years, Arkansas, teaching at the high school

How was I to know by retirement day

I’d learn a lesson so cruel?

I came to the day I had waited on

Just to find out all the money in our pension was gone

We invested in something called the Abacus Bond

Sold to us by a New York banker

Chorus:

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

A big time banker from New York City

Came down south one day

Sold our people on the bond

Had our money betting on some kinda

Home loans getting’ paid

Buy it they say, we were clearly told

This kinda thing was even safer than gold

But later on we found out the bond we’d been sold

Had been set up to fail all along

Chorus:

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

We’d been set up to fail all along

Though none of our people had ever quite sensed it

Come to find out the bond born to failed been built

So that banker could bet his bread against it

When the house market crashed, our retirement did too

Everybody said there was nothing we could do

That banker walked off with a million or two

I’m still teaching at the high school

Chorus:

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people

Good things happen to bad people, bad people, bad people