The bank-industry-skewering song, titled “Bet Against the American Dream,” was written for the “Eat My Shorts” segment of the April 9 episode of the series, “Inside Job.” Broadway veterans John Treacy Eagan and Christian Borle can be seen recording the number in the video below.

The segment’s plot is described this way on the “This American Life” website: “A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities... while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create. Planet Money's Alex Blumberg teams up with two investigative reporters from ProPublica, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, to tell the story. Jake and Jesse pored through thousands of pages of documents and interviewed dozens of Wall Street Insiders. We bring you the result: a tale of intrigue and questionable behavior, which parallels quite closely the plot of a Mel Brooks musical.”

Fittingly enough, Eagan played Max Bialystock in the Broadway version of that Brooks show, The Producers. The song's music supervisor/producer is Stephen Oremus. The orchestrator is Bruce Coughlin.

To view the video, look below:

Bet Against The American Dream from Planet Money on Vimeo.

— Thomas Peter