Letter to the Bank #63 (baby boomers behaving badly)

Dear BM,

Face it! Things are no different here than in England. The kind of power wielded by Rupert Murdoch in Merry Old England, a power that had politicians, police and the media all quaking in their boots, is also being thrown around right here in the good ol’ USA. With the closure of the News of The World, that unseemly rag, England is waking up to a new era, one where there is some hope the media, the police, politicians and, yes, maybe even the banks, will wake up, man up, and finally do the job they are supposed to do. Sadly the idea of Democracy has taken a knock but then again it was thin to begin with. Maybe this time it will harden into to something more durable and tougher to scuttle. Perhaps being courageous, honest and concerned for the health of the community as a whole will be rewarded, and maybe—maybe—unscrupulous special interests and the profit motive will no longer be worshipped but will be regarded with deep suspicion.

There is an article you should read by Thomas Friedman in this week’s (newly designed, newly named) Week In Review: The Clash of Generations. In it he talks of “baby boomers behaving badly”. He quotes many of the protest signs he sees. They are the results of a younger generation meeting in the squares of Cairo and Athens, struggling to figure out what the hell is going on, and coming to some fierce conclusions.  The “Me” generation has dumped on the “them” generation and has left them holding the bag, caught in the headlights, stuck with a worldwide debt initiated by greed and self interest.

I’ll do what many I know are doing. I’ll continue to grapple with ways to manage my own fraying situation—to put it in perspective—old, failing cars, a house that needs painting, lack of the kind of resources needed in this day and age to visit family in other parts of the world—middle class, lower middle class problems perhaps...and I’ll turn to my passions, the things that keep me alive and kicking, happy even—my family, my painting, a garden, friends.

Why do I continue to share these thoughts with you, my non-existent bank manager? Because I wish to send a shiver up your spine, a shiver that infects your boss and your boss’s boss, a shiver that is eventually recognized as the cold of rejection, a shiver that finally will penetrate the wall of cosy self interest they have all been building for so long that even now as the world struggles to stay on its feet they fail to see because they are out on the ocean in their hundred foot yacht catching tuna.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay



PS: My friend gave me this bag. I imagine she thought it would amuse me and fule the fire of my ire, an ire we all need to keep stoking. She was right!


PLEASE NOTE: Even as I begin to name names, something I have mostly avoided until now, I remain polite even as I “Yield to rage”.