We live in a theater of liars and suffer because we noticed them at an early age. Years later, the theater is overburdened and threatens the seams of our social fabric. It is a liar’s story layered on a liar’s deed. The stratification is endless. Red herrings swim on the surface, camouflaging the deeds of the wealthy and powerful. Smaller versions emerge from the currents as followers; they are the weak and powerless who through observation, learned to mirror the more refined representations.
The media is populated with lovely distractions in human form, who know no better than to do as they are told, and repeat the stories for distribution, designed to manipulate and shift fortunes.
The wealthy families spawn successful offspring to control the newer forms which encapsulate and inform society. Their young have no fear of retaliation for their actions, because the established family fortunes are enough to provide the kind of legal help that can twist truths into a useful defense for any crime or wrong doing. Those without must remain silent or face the removal of their voice from the world of ideas.
The shattering of “instruments”, “derivatives” and newly minted markets, burst and crash around me daily; the creative work of brilliant descendants of the investor class, and their followers. They explode as if on a battle field, bringing down the fortunes of the ill-informed.
A Trojan Horse appears just in time; Bernie Madoff. A weak, former SEC officer, who would do as he is told; a useful yes man, who desired only to belong to the investor class; a gentle man, a beloved man. The cameras of the media surround him, feeding us with pictures of the details of his life; his face, the back of his hair, the fold of his collar. The cameras create a version of the Panoptican, where the prisoner is imprisoned by the watchful vision of a central “eye”; the prisoner does not escape because he knows he is watched, and those watching hold the prisoner in place because they cannot look away; they too are held captive by their curiosity .
The camera’s information is used to tell us stories, that the prisoner is “evil”; a destroyer of wealth. But yet he is protected, and lives as if he is being preserved rather than punished. There is no real record of his bad acts of destruction; there are only the media reports of his telling us so. It seems almost a myth, told by the wealthy and powerful, to distract us from the real travesties.
Billions of dollars of taxpayer money, the government said would go to buy Toxic Assets, (The TARP or Troubled (or better yet, Toxic) Asset Rescue Plan), such as bad mortgages or helping with homes in foreclosure, is only provided as gifts to banks. Apparently, the man who convinced the American public to approve the spending, “changed his mind” once he had gained their trust and their dollars.
Bank of America is provided with even more of the tax payers money; a second injection. It is another pearl in the string of gifts from the government to the banks; the taxpayer’s reserves are nearly depleted. We are told the banks will be able to lend again, but the banks do nothing but hoard the funds.
Simple homeowners, who do not sit within the enchanted sights of the privileged, are demonized when in fact it is the instruments created to profit from their manipulation that brought down our economy; an endless trough we cannot seem to escape.
Media technologies created for the democratization of opinion, are used instead to disconnect and herd the opinions of the unwealthy.
Stocks going up, are presented as stocks about to go down, with bells and whistles, by a Harvard graduate who says he is just the everyman.
Pensions which used to reward a life well worked were expunged and replaced with vehicles to save by transferring your funds into the stock market through 401K plans. It is a plan which allows the savings of the working class, to be transferred to the investor class. The funds are placed in black boxes, called Mutual Funds; overseen by a Money Manager; it is a working man’s version of a hedge fund. When the markets crashed, very few knew what to do, or how to control their monies. Money Managers knew this, before the market crashed. Hedge Fund managers knew this, before the markets crashed and took short positions, profiting from the down side.
Free markets should exist as even those with nothing, can create something. But we would be wise to acknowledge the forces at play in our economy, as we dream a desire into being. We need to be quiet, to listen, to do what we know is right, and to question the timing of emerging stories.
