How to Save America In One Week

→ Washington’s Blog

Many people think we just have to sit here and take it.

Many others are starting to call for revolution. See this, this, this, this and this.

But there may be a third way.

As I wrote a year ago:

As MSNBC news correspondent Jonathan Capehart tells
Dylan Ratigan, the main problem is that people aren't making enough
noise. Capehart says that the people not only have to "burn up the phone
lines to Congress", but also to hit the streets and protest in D.C.

Even though most politicians are totally corrupt, if many millions of
Americans poured into the streets of D.C., a critical mass would be
reached, and the politicians would start changing things in a hurry.

As [liberal] PhD ecnonomist Dean Baker points out:

The
elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary
people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where
the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which
Johnson and Nixon’s conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the
huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling
arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial
discrimination. More recently, the townhall meetings, dominated by
people opposed to health care reform, have been a serious roadblock for
those pushing reform….

A big turnout ... can make a real difference.

Baker is right about Vietnam.

Specifically - according to Daniel Ellsberg and many others - Richard Nixon actually planned on dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam Nixon also said he didn't care what the American people thought. He said that -- no matter what the public did or said -- he was going to escalate the war in Vietnam.

However,
a well-known biographer says that Nixon backed off when hundreds of
thousands of people turned out in Washington, D.C. to protest an
escalation of the war.

Similarly, no matter how completely sold-out
to the Wall Street giants D.C. politicians are, they would start
paying attention to their real employers - the American people - if we
make enough noise.

If 3 million Americans all peacefully
surrounded the White House and Capitol Hill, holding signs saying
"We're Not Leaving Until the Too Big to Fails which Caused the Economic
Crisis are Reined In", things would change pretty fast.

3
million might sound like a lot of people. But many millions of people
read popular alternative financial and economic news sites. You are
probably one of millions of people who will read this essay (by the
time it is published by some of the larger sites).

In other
words, it's not even a question of convincing other people to go. We -
those who read alternative financial websites - could do it ourselves.

If millions of us don't go protest in D.C., it's because we are choosing not to sacrifice a tiny bit in order to change things.

The bad guys are only winning because we - the American people - aren't making enough noise.

Not Now . . .

It is human nature to try to put things off until tomorrow. Tomorrow, when things are easier, we'll do it...

It is easy to despair that it is already too late. Should we whine and give up hope?

Well, about a month before the American Revolutionary War, Patrick Henry said:

They
tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an
adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or
the next year?

If not now, when? Like Patrick Henry asked, when will we be stronger? When will the robber barons be weaker?

If we're going to save America through non-violent protests, now is the time.

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
- Bruce Lee

There
is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is
the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at
points in history and creating a power that governments cannot
suppress.
- Howard Zinn, historian

The power of an aroused public is unbeatable.
- Dr. Helen Caldicott

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
-Ferdinand Foch

In
times of danger large groups rise to the highest pitch of enthusiasm,
courage and sacrifice . . . Mankind will be refashioned and history
rewritten when this law is understood and obeyed.
-Helen Keller

Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead

We
must remember that one determined person can make a significant
difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the
course of history.
-Sonia Johnson

You
let one ant stand up to us - then they all might stand up. Those puny
little ants outnumber us a 100 to one. And if they ever figure that
out, there goes our way of life.
- Hopper (a grasshopper who is the
leader of the gang of thugs who are stealing money from the other bugs,
speaking to fellow grasshoppers in the Disney/Pixar movie A Bug's
Life)

If you don't like the news, go out and make some news of your own.
- Scoop Nisker

Similarly, conservative financial writer Karl Denninger writes today:

You
- America - You - can fix this tomorrow. Put 500,000 people around
The Treasury and The Fed in Washington DC and refuse to leave until
Geithner and Bernanke both resign and depart and the FDIC goes through
all four of the largest banks, marks their "stuff" to market, and
resolves all that are insolvent. Lay peaceful siege, MLK-style.

Denninger wrote last week:

Everyone wants a way to save them - an investment strategy, a place to hide their assets, etc.

Let me give you the answer folks, and you're not going to like it:

There is only one way, and that is to save everyone. That is, to force this crap to stop - by whatever means are necessary - and possible.

Yeah, that's a strong statement. It's also true.

Let's
presume that we don't do this. That Bernanke does his QE2 thing as
threatened and announced. It won't work - it can't, because the
commodity price ramps will cause margin
compression and destruction of those in the middle and lower classes.
That in turn means people buy less, which means employers fire, not
hire.

That in turn will cause him to believe he has to do more. This is his thesis. So he will.

And that will in turn impose even more effective tax on America.

At
some point one of two things happens: Either the world blows the
dollar off and it literally collapses in value by half in the space of a
few days, or we get into a printing spiral that debases the currency
so fast that prices change between the time you go to work and get
home. But your wages won't go up because of exporting our labor to
China, so you will slowly - or not-so-slowly - be unable to buy
necessities - food and energy, along with medical care.

Either
way the end point is the same. The government becomes unable to issue
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid checks, along with paying people
like the Military. At the same time you're literally being starved to
death. In desperation the government will then attempt to seize
everything through some form - whether it be through massive fines and
forfeiture, or whether it is through simple tax increases. That of
course will simply make it worse.

You can try to hide in
something like Gold, but it won't do you a bit of good. The government
is not that dumb. They already have in the law provisions requiring
reporting of transactions over $600. They'll go to a fully-electronic
currency (we're damn close to being there now) and force clearing of all transactions through The Fed. This will effectively create a 100% reportable - and taxable - data stream.

If you try to barter around it, and you will, they'll fix that too. Treasury will simply expand the already existing
IRS program for "rats." Your neighbor and everyone else will be
"enticed" with a 20% reward for all "off-grid" transactions that they
report. And civil forfeiture will be used to literally steal everything
you own when - not if - you get caught.

Forget it folks,
unless you're planning on going Rambo. And if you're going to do that,
you may as well get started now. You'll go to prison or die - but
over time people dying for what they believe is nothing new. We call
them terrorists when they lose - and freedom fighters when they win.
In 1776 a bunch of men decided they had enough, and they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors. They, in aggregate, won and thus are "freedom fighters" - but some of them also died.

All
the noise I hear - all words and bluster behind keyboards but no
gunshots - tell me that nobody's prepared to do that. So quit babbling
about it. All that does is get you on the No-Fly list and a visit from
the guys in the black (and armored) Escalades. Don't bother with
"sound and fury" nonsense. You're not only wasting your breath you'll
get arrested - for nothing.

No, the only solution is for the people to get ****ed off enough to rise up peacefully but in a form and fashion that makes clear that we're not talking, we're demanding. We're putting in front of Congress and other officials positions that are not "polite requests" - they're instructions, as all citizens are entitled to put forward to their elected officials.

The people en-masse must come to the conclusion that this will not be allowed to stand.

Enforcement
of that mandate does not require unlawful acts. There may be some
people who decide to embark on them, but that's not the message that is
being sent or intended.

No, instead the message to send is that we have choices that are lawful and peaceful, and we will exercise them in full.

• We will not do business with banksters who caused this or any merchant who does.
• We will not work overtime or even work hard; we will instead engage in consumer withdrawal, making as little as possible and drawing as much from the government as we can. That is, we will try to suck the government teat dry and lawfully minimize what we give both to big corporations and government.
• We will NOT cooperate with law enforcement.
  "You have the right to remain silent" is an absolute. This already
  takes place in parts of America - go try to investigate a crime in some
  gang-ridden place. Nobody will talk. Well, we can make that the rule
  everywhere - we can make the decision that the government is a bunch of gangsters,
  and we will not help them. Our eyes are closed when it comes to
  Government. All we will respond with is a polite "Have a nice day."
• We WILL picket, protest, and show up in front of banksters and politicians homes - not just offices. We have a right of free speech in The Constitution and we will use it. You don't have to listen, but the streets are PUBLIC PLACES. Peaceful protests - but lots of them, in your face, every single day. Public shaming is very effective. If you want to be in a public role - running a big publicly-traded bank or in a political office you're fair game to have signs waved in your face no matter where you are. Sure,
  they'll withdraw from the public - that's fine. Guess what?
  Barricading themselves inside a fort hurts them - and their families -
  more than it hurts us.
• We WILL intentionally ostracize both banksters and politicians. We will NOT
  cut their hair, sell them gas or groceries, or fix their air
  conditioners. A Bankster comes into church, they sit in an empty pew -
  nobody will get within 10' of them. Communion? Surely you jest. You
  want 20% of our income as a tax due to QE2? Fine. You can have it,
  but you're cutting your own hair, your own grass, and fixing your own
  damn car. We won't rent you an apartment, we won't quote your new
  windows or a new roof. In short, we're going to say "screw you", and
  every time we see you on the street, we're going to say it literally
  and loudly, just to make sure you understand. If that drives them into
  isolation, that's good, not bad. The Amish call it
  "shunning." It's part of your civil rights - you have a right to
  freedom of association, which includes the right not to associate. Guess what - being a bankster or politician isn't a protected class.

Look, at this point folks we have a former Chief Underwriter for Citibank who has testified under oath, in written form, that they were knowingly
making bad loans to people. It wasn't an accident, and it wasn't
carelessness - certainly not when they took these knowingly-bad loans and sold them to investors.

Yet people still [do business with the too big to fail banks who have committed massive fraud on America].

Its your dollar.

This nation is yours.

Its currency is yours.

And the actions of these people - Bernanke, Congress and the rest - ultimately only happen because you consent.

Are you going to continue to consent?

Once more, can I ask why? Do you like being screwed? Do you like high taxes - especially illegally-imposed back-door taxes used to fill in the holes in the fraudsters' balance sheets - the
very holes that were created through the process that caused you, or
your neighbor, to wind up with a bubble house and an un-affordable
mortgage - one that was or will be foreclosed upon?

Let's assume you refuse to continue to consent.

If
you choose to protest, to withdraw consent, and to engage in every
lawful act available to you to stop it, when do you consider the job
"done" and stop?

That's up to the politicians, but I'll put forward my standards for what would be "sufficient" for me to call my job done and stop writing Tickers.

The politicians can choose tomorrow
to initiate forensic audits, mark everything to the market, force the
bogus loans out into the open and, likely, take these firms into
receivership. Detonate the bad debt, renegotiate the loans that are
viable and have a lower loss in doing so rather than foreclosing, clear
the balance sheets. Break the big banks up, bar the executives from
any financial or publicly-traded firm for life. Refer anything crooked
found to prosecutors with instructions to not only prosecute but seek
forfeiture of all the ill-gotten gains. Impeach Bernanke and make
clear, through changes to law if necessary, that "price stability" means
just that - we all go to the store seeking mild deflation every day, and we insist that The Fed both stop trying to prevent it and
leave those with savings able to earn a decent low-risk return by
ceasing their tampering with interest rates and protection of scammers
and frauds.

If and when they make that decision, we the people stop, because we will no longer have anything to be ****ed off about.

Until
then, we don't - and if that means that the banksters and politicians
wind up with hair down to their ankles, a leaky roof, a broken car and a
hundred people waving signs in their faces every time they open their
door?

So be it.

Will you step up, or are you going to continue to consent to being assaulted?

And see this.

How can both liberals
and conservatives be calling for the same thing - massive protests
against the banking elites and their water-carriers in D.C.?

Because that's what all Americans want.

While the elites have tried to divide and conquer America into a false left-versus-right dichotomy, all Americans want the rule of law to be enforced.

All Americans want the big boys to be held accountable to the same laws that we have to follow.

All Americans want there to be a level playing field so that the little guy has a chance to compete fairly.

For liberals, remember Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi.

For conservatives, this is what Jesus would do: kick the moneychangers out of the temple.

You know it ... now act.

We can save America in a week if we follow the call ...

Postscript: George Orwell - author of 1984 - pointed out in the Tribune (October 19, 1945),
the effectiveness of arms in preventing tyranny partly depends on
whether the average citizen can afford the current weapon of choice
possessed by the government:

The
connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of
feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again.
And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think
the following rule would be found generally true: that ages
in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will
tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap
and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example,
tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical
weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are
inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong
stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer to
it--gives claws to the weak.

The great age of democracy and of
national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle.
After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the
percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the
same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its
combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and
French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious
business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the
breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it
could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily
smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation
could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that
Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans--even Tibetans--could put up a
fight for their independence, sometimes with success. But thereafter
every development in military technique has favoured the State as
against the individual, and the industrialised country as against the
backward one ...The one thing that might reverse it is the discovery of a
weapon--or, to put it more broadly, of a method of fighting--not
dependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant.

Comments

[steve from virginia]

30 million giving the finger to the Wall Street racketeers and not paying their bills will soon get their attention.

I say 'will' because it's coming ...

[snowball777]

One might suggest not generating the bill in the first place, if not closing the account.

[Max Hunter]

I think he was just looking for a place to take a shit today..

[RockyRacoon]

Well, it sure is stinkin' up the place.

[bank guy in Brussels]

From what I saw in the US - The US establishment learned its lessons from the 60s and 70s and have taken numerous steps to make sure that doesn't happen again.

One is the media control is much better. There have been huge demonstrations in recent years in Washington DC which the media almost pretended didn't happen. Back pages of newspapers and bloggers only covered them. Big fizzle despite hundreds of thousands.

If it gets to civil disobedience, 'sit-ins' in US gov't offices, then you've got criminal terrorism charges etc and long prison terms. US people know this, they are beaten down, terrified and terrorised. A few people getting their heads beaten in or indicted, the rest of the crowd will disperse.

And if anyone gets good at organising such things, they will be attacked and destroyed, one way or another, media smears and assassinations, fake 'suicides', off-beat criminal and civil charges that seem un-related, like Spitzer and a silly hooker.

Yeah, the 60s. But it's 40 years later, and the US oligarchs and fascist are much better at the street control game now. They do indeed fear what happens here in Europe with people in the streets, so between the media and the crooked US cops and courts, they make sure it won't happen.

[Mitchman]

As we used to say in the 60's: If you are not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

[George Washington]

So what do you suggest?

[Popo]

There is a FOURTH way, GW -- and it's the one your namesake opted for. It was radical. It was violent. It was organized and it was bloody. We spend years in this country learning about the great hero George Washington. We should remember that he struck fear into the hearts of his oppressors through decidedly non-peaceful means. You want to talk about what scares the elites? How ironic that a poster named George Washington advocates a peaceful sit-in. I advocate nothing. But I predict there will be blood before this is over.

[AngryVoter]

Non-violent protest by refusing to make mortgage payments.  Hit them where it hurts.  If millions skipped one month's payment it would send a very large signal.

[snowball777]

Uhhh...millions have been skipping them for months: no change.

[Malachi Constant]

Do nothing. Don't consume beyond the cheapest essentials. Don't produce beyond minimally passable. Avoid money. If you have friends, exchange favors. See 'Secessio' in Wikipedia.

[DaveyJones]

I'm with you. Shut down the economy. It's already on it's last legs. It's the only thing they care about. It's the biggest weapon we have and they are incredibly vulnerable. They can not arrest every one of us for refusing to purchase and work. This is not about our economy, this is about our children, our future and our survival.

[calltoaccount]

Here's the other Denninger piece from last fri w specific call to action that has finally motivated me to dump all accounts with the big crim banks notwithstanding the considerable inconvenience in doing so, changing lots of numbers, credit cards, autopays, etc.   It's time to invigorate talk w action.  If all ZHrs followed suit and spread the word, we might just be able to make something happen.

The No-Shop Zone  (by Karl Denninger)

Christmas is coming.

Black Friday is coming.

And you, Dear Friends, have a choice to make.

You can ratify - or reject - the illicit $600 billion tax increase that Bernanke just landed on our economy with his ill-conceived and outrageous "Quantitative Easing" nonsense - especially the most-vulnerable members of our economy - the poor and working poor, who are disproportionately impacted.

How?

Simple: DO NOT DO BUSINESS THIS HOLIDAY SEASON DIRECTLY, OR WITH ANY MERCHANT THAT BANKS WITH:

• JP Morgan/Chase
• Citibank
• Bank of America
• Wells Fargo

These are the four largest banks in America.  They are the ones who disproportionately benefited from the bailouts, and who continue to hold hundreds of billions of dollars on their balance sheets of HELOCs and other home loans that are worth far less than what they are claiming.

These are also the banks in the middle of Foreclosuregate.  I remind everyone that Citibank's former Chief Underwriter said, under oath, that Citibank was knowingly making bad loans - 60% by 2006 and 80% by 2007 - and selling them off in securities to pension funds and other investors.  Instead of being forced to eat these bad loans and be closed as a consequence they were bailed out with our taxpayer money, and still are by Bernanke's "Quantitative Easing."

Exercising your lawful right to refuse consent to this is simple: Ask the merchant you are considering purchasing from who they bank with.  Be cordial.  If it's one of the above, take your business somewhere else and tell them why.

If you have accounts at these banks: Close them and move your money somewhere else - to a local bank or credit union.

To Merchants: You can avoid this.  Close out your merchant and deposit relationships with these institutions.  Use a local, community bank instead.  If you're a large chain, use someone other than these four.  There are alternatives and choices.

We as consumers must choose.  We have every right to deny these institutions any benefit from our business, and to continue to do so until every one of their so-called "assets" is marked at the market, transparently, and the Federal Reserve's "accommodations" that are making possible the hiding of losses - both QE1 which created a huge ramp in oil and commodity prices, and QE2 which is doing more of the same, along with severe damage to the value of the dollar, is withdrawn and in fact reversed.

We have the choice to withdraw our consent to the inappropriate levying of an effective $600 billion tax on Americans via higher prices for gasoline and basic foodstuffs - a tax that disproportionately hits the poor and middle class.  A tax that is seventeen times the size of George Bush's "Tax Cuts", yet was unilaterally enacted by Ben Bernanke without Congressional authorization or debate.

Freedom of association includes the freedom not to associate and not transact.  I elect to do so for any firm that banks with these four "monster banks" who literally ate our nation's prosperity.

JOIN ME IN THIS PROTEST, STARTING NOW, AND DENY THESE INSTITUTIONS ANY ABILITY TO PROFIT FROM YOUR ECONOMIC ACTIVITY.