Starve the Beasts - Start the Revolution

It is apparent now there remains only one way for ordinary Americans who love their country and want at least some of what's good about it to be preserved for future generations: We must kill the FIRE Economy beasts (FIRE: Finance, Insurance and Real Estate).

Recommended method of choice: Starvation - suitably slow and painful.

We're the victims in a hostage situation, if you didn't know, held captive and mesmerized by the soft, flat-panel-TV glow of the FIRE Economy, which depends on our sheep-like conformity and Stockholm-syndrome-like admiration of our captors, but it's NOT too late to regain our senses, if only for the benefit of our children and grandchildren. Even if it is only wildly exaggerated - and it isn't - that the Systemically Important Too Big To Fail (SITBTF) institutions completely have captured our flag, our capital, our political parties, our "democracy" and our very lives, we as regular, hard-working, country-loving J6Ps have only this one remedy remaining, as all others woefully have failed.

We've tried writing letters to Congress, but they fell on deaf ears attached to bodies sated with the addictive, lobbyist-supplied narcotics of perks and favors and clothed with garments filled with finance-industry campaign contributions. One might feel good having written a letter, but unless you're one of the someones stuffing their pockets with cash, it's wasted effort. We've tried voting out the "ins" in the Capitol Building to no avail, either. Once the DC Kool-Aid has been consumed by elected Representatives and Senators of BOTH parties the fix is in. It's all good fun in Washington; ask anyone who has done the peoples' business in Babylon for even one lousy two-year congressional term and they will concur: it's a great gig if you can get it, and better if you can keep it as long as possible. As such, they always will cater to the whims and needs of the purveyors of campaign cash who can insure they remain as Courtiers at the Castle in Emerald City.

Last year we fell for the whole "change you can believe in" campaign gimmick but somehow the candidate elected in November has pulled off in many ways an astonishing, seamless transition from his predecessor, of which his administration's dealings with Wall Street, AIG, Fannie/Freddie, SITBTFs and the economy are only a few, validating once again that immutable fool-most-of-the-people-most-of-the-time law of the universe. (Which, in and of itself, should be all the evidence necessary to prove, beyond any doubt, the entirety of Wall Street's now-not-so-behind-the-scenes direction of public policy, and government's role as the FIRE economy's stooge and enforcer.)

We have only one option remaining to fix this ourselves, to starve the beasts, and it is, simply:
Stop Doing Business With Them.

If you are banking with a SITBTF bank, start by closing your checking account. Move it to a smaller community bank which offers the same features such as bill payment services, payroll depsosit, automatic debits and the like. Close your savings accounts, your CDs, your money market deposit accounts and move them to one or more community banks, and introduce yourself to an actual banker and branch manager (it will be handy someday to personally know someone).

You still will have ample FDIC deposit insurance, regardless of the institution's size and you still will have nationwide ATM capability, so shut down those SITBTF accounts NOW. If you own or manage a business, and are so empowered, close your business deposit accounts and move them to a financial institution not considered part of the current problem. It's a lot of effort, and it's not easy, but your future generations will thank you.

DO THESE THINGS, and, one, we will get someone's attention when they begin to notice a measurable increase in closed accounts and a rapidly falling deposit base (worst-case scenario for a SITBTF), and two, we will begin to starve the beasts via an orderly "run" on these giant messes masquerading as solvent, responsible financial institutions.

Next, open new IRA and investment accounts - not that you have much left in them, which makes the timing opportune, and you weren't getting any useful advice or guidance anyway - at regional or online brokerage firms NOT owned by or associated with any other FIRE economy player, including the giant mutual fund industry. Starve the beasts!

Need home, car, business or life insurance? Well, don't get insured through any subsidiary of any SITBTF company, especially one which has used its past-life AAA rating for evil, not good, and now has been seized by our government stooges and enforcers, not to rescue it but to co-opt it as a money conduit to pour tens of BILLIONS of dollars borrowed from China into the balance sheets of other, well-connected domestic and foreign (!?!) SITBTFs, one of which has the initials "GS."

Finally, methodically begin to terminate your borrowing relationships with the SITBTFs. This is the difficult part. Start by paying down and paying off your credit cards - all of them. Start consuming with CASH whenever possible. Yes, cash, Benjamins, coin of the realm and all. Besides, cash transactions have that certain, quaint, pleasing quality of anonymity so lacking today in our every-waking-thought-is-now-monitored cyber-world. Close them as soon as they are paid off and don't fall for that FICO-score crap that your credit rating will decline if you - YOU - voluntarily close a credit card account. If it does, so what. For god's sake, it's your option and your choice. Perhaps we all should shoot for no FICO score (or, zero, as Dave Ramsey boasts).

If enough of us begin voluntarily closing our revolving credit card accounts and paying with cash, the saps at FICO will be forced to change their secret statistical recipes which have worked so well the last 30 years to keep millions of us enslaved with debt. If that happens, if FICO is forced to change its magic algorithms, then voluntarily closing a paid-off account would IMPROVE a credit score, but our goal should be to not have a score at all - that'll show 'em. By then it won't matter. FICO will be going away soon enough as the discredited, flawed, theoretical mathematical formula it is, one, like so many financial models of the last generation, which worked right up until it didn't.

So, got an AmEx card? Pay it off and cut it up. Ditto for Discover. Mega-Bank Visa or MasterCards - flush 'em. What's in your wallet? Forget Capital One and get reacquainted with some dead presidents. For those credit-card-is-required transactions, use your debit card, the one attached to your new checking account at a small, solvent community bank. Starve the beasts! Take back our country! Car loans are trickier, but, again, an auto loan from a smaller community bank will help starve the beasts. The same for home loans - starve the beast by doing business with anyone else. We can do it.

Since Washington clearly will not DO ANYTHING to help ordinary people, only the monied interests, WE MUST. This is war, it's revolution, a fight for our future, but it's bloodless and LEGAL. We must declare our independence from the tyranny of the FIRE economy and the Systemically Important Too Big To Fails. We have the right to take these matters into our own hands because the heads of our elected and appointed leaders are crammed so far up the exit chutes of the titans of Wall Street and the Main Streets where the SITBTFs are headquartered there is NO OTHER SOLUTION.

If you agree "too big has failed," you have great company. Kansas City Fed President Tom Hoenig delivered a speech (as a private citizen, not necessarily reflecting the view of his Federal Reserve Bank) in March entitled "Too Big Has Failed," suggesting the time was right to break up the financial cartels. Hoenig testified before Congress April 21 and reiterated that view (his written statement here), going as far as saying "when you have banks that are too big to fail, you will get oligarchs." (Yes, oligarchs.) Simon Johnson, former IMF economist and now MIT professor, posting at The Baseline Scenario recently authored a must-read "The Quiet Coup," in the May issue of The Atlantic. William Black, a former regulator who led the cleanup of the Savings & Loan mess in the early 1990s and blew the whistle on the massive fraud and corruption in that scandal, recently told journalist Bill Moyers on PBS that CEOs of some of these SITBTFs, in order to increase their own personal income, have deliberately set out to make bad loans - pure fraud. He would know: the title of his recent book is "The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One." And don't forget Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who has been out spoken in his belief that no bank should be too big to fail.

There are countless more of us, without a public forum, who feel the same way, and we have the power to do something about it. The time is right, the time is now. Take back our country. Let's make SITBTF no BFD and RIP. It'll take a decade, maybe longer, but this is the only way to end our present hostage situation and we have the power. All we need is the will to make it happen. Start today. Stop doing business with our tormentors - all of them. Stop patronizing our persecutors. Are we stupid? HELL NO.

Stop the madness - starve the beasts. If we don't, WE are part of the problem and we deserve what we are getting and what is happening, now and in the future, because it WILL happen again if we let it.

Starve the beasts - start the revolution.