March on Wall Street ???

To My Dear and Wonderful Fellow Brethren of the United States Of America ~

Number one, if you don't read any of this letter, please at least read the poem I wrote at the bottom of it.

Also, if you don't think you have the 8 minutes of time it will take to read this letter, and it is about the very financial stability and future of your country that you live in, and that your children will inherit- I believe you better review your priorities.

So we now have people gathering together in Manhattan on Wall Street who claim that financial greed is running and ruining this country.

How silly they are………………   or are they?

Yes, there is a sense of disorganization and focus to their movement, but the truth is-while there may not be a specific target of their anger, there is no doubt much truth in their cause.

We have built a world that is not grounded in reality today. We manufacture nothing to speak of in this country anymore.  Manufacturing jobs in the United States in the last 10 years went from 28 million jobs to 9 million!  If you are not making any real goods and just pushing around paper, eventually you will fail.   Our car industry has been devastated-look on the streets, and most probably in your own driveways-we have given away the ranch,-greed and laziness has brought us to a place of financial insanity.

And the Wall Street community got a bailout??,  The stock market today is a joke compared to the original concept of what it was supposed to be.  Yes, back in the early 1900s it was a noble idea, and an experiment to spread the wealth and prosperity of the industrial revolution upon the workers who made it all possible -- Give a chance to the average American worker to own a piece of the American dream by sharing in the wealth of a growing corporate America.    Yes, purchase Coca-Cola stock, or American Telephone and Telegraph, or General Electric-and hold onto it for 10, 20 years-and when your children are ready to go to college-you will share in the growth of the United States of America.

But that is not the way it ended up. No, that is not what happened. What happened is that some clever Wall Street investment people loaded with greed in their heart, figured out how to transpose the stock market into a Las Vegas gambling casino.

Forget about investing as you knew it, the Wall Street greedy said-"let's create derivatives-let's get into "puts and calls" let's become day traders and all get rich!- Let's figure out how not to work or produce anything-and just have a great big party!!   Let's figure out how to buy oil futures, corner the market-and become wealthy, buying multiple homes, giving no real productive "added value" to our economy-and let all the "little people" work.

I call it the "Humpty Dumpty financial syndrome" --and without making this letter too long, which it already is-the final results of all that greed can very simply be stated from another poem of our youth "All fall down."-  And yes, "And all the Kings horses and all the Kings men couldn't put Humpty together again."   But karma is a bitch,-I don't know all the facts, but we do not have to look to far from home to see that some of the highest and mightiest have fallen.

And how do so many in this country continue living in such an opulence and luxurious lifestyle today?

Well, you must look "under the numbers" and recognize that "created wealth" is truly not being created today, but rather it is a Wall Street illusion. What really is happening is a very few, figuratively speaking compared to the whole population of the United States, have figured out how to manipulate the numbers-have not added any "true value" to our economy, and actually have raided the past wealth of our country.

Yes, the dollars being spent lavishly now by many of the super-wealthy are a combination of the tremendous sacrifices and efforts of the money amassed from the industrial revolution of the early 1900s, going through the beginning of the manipulation of Wall Street. Those proud past citizens of the United States who saved in banks,worked in our factories, farmed our lands, and off the sweat of the people who sacrificed for their children from past generations-who truly worked for their country and the future generations to come. 

This is not resentment, THIS IS REALITY!

That is part of the equation. And the other part of the equation is that last point I brought up-and that is "future generations."

Please understand the national debt today, if divided by the number of people today, would equal $105,000 for every single man woman and child in the United States. Not only that, but we are adding to that debt at the incredible rate of $3.85 billion a day, or a staggering $1.3 million dollars a minute!

The illusion of wealth which is being spent today by Wall Street aristocrats is a combination of robbing our past and kidnapping our future. Yes, the sad truth is the Emperor of the American economy has no clothes.  When you really think about it, the main function of all of the Wall Street fat cats of our economy do nothing more than raise capital for corporations.  That's it!  

But by changing that into a gambling scenario rather than investing scenario-they have become very wealthy bookies while the rest of the country suffers.  So they made some bad bets in 2006 through 2008-but instead of having to cough up the losses, they got a bailout from the exact suckers they would take the money from in the first place-this is insanity!

It is not a question of corporate greed, but it is truly a question of the manipulation of corporations by the sharpies of Wall Street.  That is the problem, not the profits from the corporations.  The profits of corporations should go to long-term shareholders as the original intention was.  But unfortunately when greed enters the equation, fairness and logic go out the window.

We are in a very bad place now and getting worse.  So many have bought into the illusion that you don't have to manufacture anything, don't have to turn over any soil,-don't have to plant any seeds, and everything will be fine.

It just ain't so!

I will stop the letter here, for there is much else wrong-corporate consolidation is a disaster-we are eliminating jobs, and the level of compassion we have for the American worker is disappearing.

I wrote the following poem after being heartbroken by losing my career and stability when losing my job that I worked so hard to build for 16 years-and one Wall Street merger deal, and it was all over.  The investment bankers who put the deal together in a few weeks made more money than all the workers of the company put together for a few years. 

The Takeover

Our biggest competitor, is a hungry predator,
That gobbled us up in a bite.
We were shocked to hear, our very worst fear,
The nightmare of takeover fright.

Well I suppose, that's the way it goes,
But I really hurt inside.
Not just for a business position, or bumpy transition,
But a part of my family has died.

Our company story, in all of its glory,
Had the heart of this special team.
So with sadness I feel, only time will heal,
I bid farewell to our company dream.

Somewhere beyond the finances, of Wall Street romances,
Are lives that also fell.
Of the fathers and mothers, and sisters and brothers,
Who don't show up on the P and L.

One day we will learn, it’s all not just what a corporation can earn,
That tells if a takeover is just.
But that insider trading, and corporate raiding,
Destroys families for the glory of financial lust.

In time history will show, CEOs don't even know,
How much hurt the loyal employees will feel.
But if the stock is a hit, that might even split,
The worker is only a gear in the wheel.

In the land of the free, it's a wonder to me,
How the guy who worked for twenty-five years.
Is given the boot, with no golden parachute,

To tell his wife he was crushed in the gears.

In time justice will draw, repayment beyond human law,
To those who were surrounded by greed.
So to all the guys at the top, who just wouldn't stop,
One day you'll learn to take no more than you need.

  

Mike Jacobs