What We Need For True Change
Courtesy of Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
You’ve seen the 9/12 Rallies.
The Glenn Beck Rally.
The Strewart Rally.
And none of them have done a thing to influence Washington DC policy, have they?
Nope.
Nor will they.
Why?
Because you go home the same day.
President Obama, The Senate, Congress, Ben Bernanke – they look out their window and they see you. Or do they? Well, no. You time the rally to be convenient for you. It’s on a weekend. They’re not at work.
You’re preaching to an empty church!
Oh yeah, they know you’re there. So what?
The next morning they go to work and you’re gone. You’ve gone home. You made your "Statement", such as you claim it, and that’s all.
You’re ignored because there’s nothing uncomfortable for them in what you did.
Now contrast that with MLK. He literally got in the administration’s face. He rallied, he protested, and he did it daily. He didn’t speak and then go home, he spoke and then came back the next day and waved more signs!
You want results?
You don’t need a leader. In fact, some "charismatic leader" is exactly what you don’t want. It wasn’t MLK saying "I have a dream!" that made the difference. It was black Americans all over the country marching daily, being jailed for speaking their minds, continuing to protest and wave signs under people’s noses – in short, refusing to shut up and go away – that made the difference. (The same thing, incidentally, is why the Vietnam protests eventually worked.)
It was, in fact, the implied threat that MLK was going to come to Washington with 100,000 ****ed-off black men who might riot that caused the administration – which had been hostile to his message – to crack and support him instead.
But that implied threat didn’t develop overnight. It developed over months and years of protests in places like Birmingham, where people took to the streets, waved signs, and even when jailed came back the next day and did it again.
You don’t need a leader.
You need balls.
The proper question is when will you find them? If not now, when?
You’ve been asset-stripped for 20 years. Two stock market crashes in the last decade. Tech stocks sold to you with knowingly-false representations, and nobody went to jail. Banks making loans they knew people couldn’t pay, and nobody went to jail. Banks selling securities to you and everyone else knowing they were fraudulent, and nobody went to jail.
These banks have and are paying out hundreds of billions of dollars in bonuses and salaries from looted funds – stolen from you – and nobody has gone to jail.
Again, our own previous Federal Reserve Chairman admitted, just this last weekend, that these institutions engaged in fraudulent and criminal activity – in plain language – and yet nobody has gone to jail.
And now the same scam is being run again. You’re watching, in real time, The Fed and our President pump the stock market and admit that they’re trying to force up stock prices.
At the same time companies like Kraft, Kimberly-Clark and Campbells are having their operating margins destroyed by insane commodity price ramps – an intentional act promulgated by our Federal Reserve and supported by both Congress and our President. That these acts severely damage the least-wealth among Americans – Senior Citizens on fixed incomes and the working poor – doesn’t matter to them – and, apparently, it doesn’t matter to you either.
These acts will result in another market collapse. It will not result in hiring of employees, as with collapsing margins there are no operating profits with which to hire people. It is simply a matter of when the market figures this out, and the longer the ramp goes on before consciousness intrudes the worse the crash will be.
You got reamed by the Tech Bubble and then the Housing Bubble, and now you’re being set up for the same scam again. Your home has had it’s value pumped and then dumped and you’ve lost your job for a second time and our former Fed Chairman and Citi’s former Chief Underwriter both have admitted to what went on, but you still refuse to rise and demand it stop. If you’re retired you’re on the second year sequentially of no COLA adjustment for Social Security and ramping medical costs, yet you’re told there’s no inflation while your grocery bill goes up by 10% or more.
You simply won’t inconvenience yourself. You will go to DC to listen to Stewart or Beck speak so long as it’s on a weekend when it’s convenient for you, but that next Monday you’re gone. You’re not waving signs under Bernanke’s nose. You’re not waving signs in front of Treasury, in front of The Capitol, or in front of the Senate and House Office Buildings.
You, and the useful idiots on both sides of the aisle, time your protests not only for a convenient weekend but you hold them when Congress is ADJOURNED fer Chrissake – they’re not even in town!
If just 1/2 of 1% of the adult, non-institutional population decided they’d had enough of this crap the scams would end tomorrow. That’s over 1 million peopleor 10 times what MLK promised to bring to Washington.
If instead people descended on Washington DC and every Federal Reserve Bank in the nation – waving signs and protesting literally every day in front of these Fed Presidents’ homes and offices, along with Congressional Office Buildings, The Capitol and The Fed – all of the scamming and scheming would be stopped. The big banks that robbed America would be closed. The executives would be investigated and prosecuted. And the nation’s long stint of being financially ****d by these vultures would come to an end.
It won’t happen so long as you come to Washington DC for a protest one day, and go home the next – no matter how many times you do it, and especially not when you do it when Congress is out of session and you pick on a weekend besides.
And it won’t happen so long as you need a "leader" to drum up charismatic dogma, no matter who it is – on the left or right.
You’re preaching to an empty Church and the people who you claim you want to hear your protests know you’re doing so – they ignore you because you explicitly declare by your very actions that you don’t really mean what you say!
No, change will happen when the people of this nation decide they’ve had enough. When the people individually, without some leader calling to them with their siren song for a convenient weekend day on the Washington Mall when Congress is out of session, show up in DC on a Monday and begin in front of Bernanke’s home – and those of Congresspeople.
When at noon, the signs are outside the Senate and House Office Buildings, along with The Fed, being angrily – but peacefully – waved in their faces.
And in the evening, the protesters are outside the homes again, along with the restaurant where these folks are eating.
No permits, no organization, no big stages, no big "media personalities" – from any political party or organization. Just people. ****ed-off people who each, individually, decide they’ve had it – and that they’ll do something to stop it and will keep doing it until it stops.
The first day they’ll shake their heads and laugh at you, thinking you’re another 9/12, Beck or Stewart "rally."
The second, they’ll wonder.
But by the time the first week is out, they’ll know – you’re not leaving until the stop the looting – and start prosecuting.
That, my friends, is when we see change.
Until you’re willing to do that, grab a stick.
It’s still going to hurt but you won’t bite through your tongue.
