Leeman Brothaz, who identify themselves on Twitter as “a group of Wall Street bankers that rap about financial issues,” but are in reality a pair of 29-year-olds named Theo Pappadopolous and Matt Sausmer, have released what is perhaps the first rap single to ever drop the term “quantitative easing.” Called “Greed Is Good,” the song provides an overview of the financial crisis from the point of view of Wall Street lenders who blame “corporate drones” who took bad “NegArm loans” for the crash. “You say Wall Street’s greedy, that ain’t right/Greed’s not the problem it’s your lack of foresight,” goes one verse, which continues:
We bankers ain’t liars/Wall street was lending for you fat consumer buyers/A subprime mortgage meant a no-doubt loan/We helped Main street buy some sick-ass homes.
The project was the brainchild of Pappadopolous, a former loan officer at Bridgepoint Mortgage and one-time personal banker at JP Morgan Chase. “I had thoughts from dealing with consumers for a long period of time, and I just put my thoughts to it and it came out in a song,” Pappadopolous, who is currently unemployed and living in New Jersey, told us this morning. “While a lot of people simply point fingers at Wall Street, the institutions, I took my perspective and said, ‘Hey you took the loans, you defaulted, it’s your fault too.’” But while his chorus is inspired by the famous line uttered by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and the video features the duo holding cigars, stealing money from a homeless person and molesting what appears to be hundred dollar bills in various ways, Pappadopolous points out he is not an “extremist” like Gekko, and offers a looser interpretation of the word. “There is a difference between greed and greedy,” he says. “We’re talking about Greed for success, greed for knowledge, greed for love.”
The project was the brainchild of Pappadopolous, a former loan officer at Bridgepoint Mortgage and one-time personal banker at JP Morgan Chase. “I had thoughts from dealing with consumers for a long period of time, and I just put my thoughts to it and it came out in a song,” Pappadopolous, who is currently unemployed and living in New Jersey, told us this morning. “While a lot of people simply point fingers at Wall Street, the institutions, I took my perspective and said, ‘Hey you took the loans, you defaulted, it’s your fault too.’” But while his chorus is inspired by the famous line uttered by Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and the video features the duo holding cigars, stealing money from a homeless person and molesting what appears to be hundred dollar bills in various ways, Pappadopolous points out he is not an “extremist” like Gekko, and offers a looser interpretation of the word. “There is a difference between greed and greedy,” he says. “We’re talking about Greed for success, greed for knowledge, greed for love.”
