Occupy St Louis: Actions and solutions

So, last week I arranged to conduct a “forum” at Occupy St Louis (ground zero is a few blocks from my office) on practical solutions to Wall Street. It took me a while to figure out their very democratic system and in the process I had a few great conversations with a union organizer and a woman from NYC flogging her book and donating the money to the movement. Turns out all I had to do was get on the PA system and announce my workshop. One person showed and we had a fruitful conversation, but our ideas were largely theoretical.

Things at OSL got more organized and this week I agreed to conduct another forum, “Practical Solutions to Wall Street Power and Excesses.” I was actually on the schedule at their FB page and on the written schedule at the site. Yesterday was the big day.The weather was awful, having turned from sunshine to cold autumn rain. I prepared a two page handout and made seven copies, figuring I’d take five home with me.

I got there and no one could locate the PA system (probably stored away so no one would electrocute themselves in the rain), someone was playing loud music (I asked him to turn it down and, in his mind, I guess he did), and someone else apparently was going slightly bonkers with a metal folding chair. So, a couple of young guys screamed out, and others repeated, that the such and such forum would be starting now at the top of the stairs. “We’re all gonna get educated!!” the guy screamed, in a voice that would land my throat in Hall’s cough drop territory for two days.

Turns out I got the education. We had a very civil meeting, a great discussion, which took little prompting. There were 10-20 folks around me at any given time. The one person who looked the least likely to contribute (and looked the “least likely” period) had an impressive command of the facts and figures about Wall Street, the global economic system, and our political process. And he originated the “big idea” which I am going to share with you.

That the movement generate a nationwide petition making a demand that, say, the corporations sitting on $2-trillion in cash currently be forced to invest it, or some portion of it, in this country on things that create jobs. If, within 90 days, they refuse, then the movement (and sympathizers) boycott their businesses, walk out of the job, etc. A national strike.

This seems like a worthwhile idea for the following reasons:

-It’s an action with an immediate affect. this was the biggest complaint about all the other solutions. Everyone kept saying “we need jobs now!”
-It does involve any legislation or tax policy.
-it forces U.S. domiciled corporations to acknowledge that they must be part of the solution in creating jobs here instead of in China or India.
-It involves the unions which can bring organization and numbers to the effort
-It forces awareness because demand (boycott) and the means of production (strikes) both stop at the same time.
-It can build in strength as the movement builds.

Even it such an action turns out to be symbolic, that’s something.

My larger point here is that this is an important exercise for me, working with others who are so frustrated by the current system that they are willing to sleep in public spaces, risk getting beat up and arrested by the police, and so on, to create some alternative means of “hope and change,” since the last movement in the vein (you listening, Obama?) seems to have netted the 99% little, if anything.

I’ve been studying financial engineering, Wall Street, and the global financial system for five years (go figure – I just get interested in these things). I am working on a sociology degree with a focus on these topics. This summer, I was talking with my daughter who is at college and I kept wondering, how come no one is protesting what Wall Street (see my definition) is doing to this country?

Wonder no longer. I am energized!

Here’s what I handed out at my forum:

Solutions for Restraining Wall Street Excesses

First, a proposed definition of “Wall Street”: The circuit of political and financial hegemony that runs through the global financial services firms; the administration and the regulatory agencies under its control; the Congress, its committees and subcommittees, and the agencies it controls through budgetary proceedings; K street and the corporate lobbyists; the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, other central banks, and sovereign bank systems; and elements of the global media. The most important characteristic of Wall Street under this definition is that its power completely and utterly transcends political parties. It is a system unto its own.

Some ideas (talking points) we the people can consider:
• Make the U.S. Federal Reserve accountable to the people. Currently, the Fed operates independently of the President (even though he/she appoints the Chairman and Congress approves) and the Congress, or any official elected by the people, for that matter,
• Enact a transaction tax on all Wall Street activities. If politicians seriously consider a “sales tax” or value added tax on people, then why not a “sales tax” on Wall Street transactions?
• Nationalize the banks. Three years ago, U.S. taxpayers handed them $750-billion, and while they paid most of it back, they also fattened their own compensation packages. Where is the improvement to the economy for the other 99%?
• Repeal the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of year 2000. This act prevents oversight of derivatives and other exotic financial products at the heart of repeated financial crises of the last thirty years.
• Insist that appointments for key positions within the federal government come from outside the system, not the same people that have been corrupting the system for thirty years.
• Force Wall Street to invest a portion of its profits and revenues into rebuilding the infrastructure of this country. Wall Street gets an F for managing the nation’s finances. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given the state of this nation’s infrastructure a D for many years. Invest in infrastructure engineering, not financial engineering.
• Start nation-building here at home. Take every dollar saved as we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and invest in the foundation of this country – education, infrastructure, and energy.
• Break the circuit of Wall Street power.
• Force the use of comparative accounting procedures and rigorous standards on corporations. Financial engineering has become so complex, regulators allow each of them to use their own “proprietary models” to value their balance sheets. No one on the outside can discern what their real value is. How do you tax an entity that has the right to report whatever the hell it wants to? How do you invest in a company that offers little real transparency over its activities and accounting?
What are your talking points?
jmakansi@yahoo.com