Bullrider 5.13 How Bonuses Get The Creative Juices Flowing

Letter to the Bank #75 (Voices-even the confused ones-must be heard)

Letter to the Bank (Occupying Wall Street)

Dear Bank Manager—if you can call it managing because really all you’ve managed to do is get all of us (sigh)—this is why it is hard to remain polite—you know, in a great, big ol’ mess,

Where were we? Oh yes. As one who has made a specialty of politely being rude to banks and bankers these past few years but who also expends much time and energy in the earnest effort to keep channels of communication open it is with pleasure that I can report back from Zuccotti Park and tell you they’re on the same page! They don’t plan to insult but to engage! By setting up camp they ask for and establish their right to do so. I’m down with their talk, their agendas, their hopes and desires, and above all I’m down with the fact that they are out there trying to speak their minds. The voiceless are finding their voice and what a powerful voice it promises to be. I’m waiting to hear those voices rise up in London, in the City, in Paris, France. Go Global. Don’t remain a Western voice or a white voice or a male voice become universal. This is about bigger things than banker bonuses. Those are just the shame of the old order.

Winter will come and those camping out will be stubborn. They can’t stop now. This has become inevitable. They are on a roll. People will bring hot soup and tarps, tents and socks. Doctors will bring mobile flu-shots and medicine (though some at Occupy Wall Street will balk at the idea of a shot in the arm administered without questioning the effectiveness of flu-shots, and good for them). Question all authority because for all too long we’ve hung our heads and done as we were told and that in a country where we should feel free enough to loudly debate everything. We've listened to the refined arguments and explanations of the 1% for oh so long and have heard oh so little of substance. Now it is time to listen to the daft and the silly, the extreme and the difficult, the messy and the clumsy and even the barely legible. That is where graffiti and poetry come from, the soil of art is the almost inexpressible and only if that soil is tended with loving care can those voices emerge. Nurture them and encourage them and show them the whole complexity. It takes a special talent to role the whole big ball into something we can all grapple with and maybe right now that is what is in the works.

Dear BM, I have to highlight one of their demands in light of what, despite your resistance, I’ve been insisting all along:

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

I’m personally delighted to see the protesters out their articulating (however inarticulately) their/our numerous grievances. Did I ever send you a Delete All Debt mug? I know it is absurd. I know it is preposterous! What? One day everyone at the stroke of an agreed upon clock will push a button and kill all debt? Too big to do? Bit tired of the “too big” argument. Very tired of the “too little to succeed” actuality.

I’ve been banging out these absurd letters to a bank manager who does not even exist who goes by the preposterous name of Bullrider, or Banks, or BM, for the past four years or so and honestly it may do a lot for the soul, my soul, get it off my chest at least, but it doesn’t really go much further. You know I’m not even sure it gets it off my chest. I think all this time I have been hoping my rage (I call it rage but is the simmering kind, the kind that is no doubt familiar...the fuel to the 99%) would form into cogent arguments for change. Once they did I’d get out there and share my thoughts loudly in the Public Square. My mistake? Waiting for these arguments to clarify. I should've been out there long ago. We all should've with are simmering fury at the state of the world and its sad attempt at economy. Well now we know you don’t need ghee. You just need butter. Fact is I get so caught up in nuance and language I forget to forge my thoughts through with threads of...there I go again...I forget to speak clearly. And actually that is okay. Speak up! Write me back! Argue me down! Put me back in the enveloping folds of my ragged armchair in front of my dismal TV with my potato chips and beer.

Sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay on behalf of the Bruxist Collective. 

Thanks to Hyperallergic for this image.

Letter to the Bank #40

Dear BB,

This is how I will be referring to you from now on. Addressing you as BM could be somehow misconstrued as an insult and the last thing I wish to do is drive you away. You are so much more than my financial advisor or bank manager, more than just a suit. You are my guru, my therapist, my inspiration, my life. You are occasionally dim but you are always full of optimism. Nothing gets you down not even a lousy economy. You are the shade in my light and it is to you, chief executive officer of the Mine’s Eye Bank, that I turn whenever my world stops doing so for however brief a moment. Seeing as your bank exists only in the realms of my imagination it is one I can certainly relate to if not trust. Only you can fully appreciate the fact that my letters do not simply address matters of personal finance but take on the ever more important issue of a lack thereof. I take on the trenchant concerns of one who lacks what might be termed any real personal finances to speak of. Considering everything I earn, and all that I serve as guardian to—be it my art books or the seeds of my loins—in the end belong to the Brotherhood of Bouncy Bankers.

You own me and I, unfortunately, owe you.

Despite this painful, though by no means recent, revelation my letters will remain, as always, packed with wit and satirical asides. In my efforts to get to you I find myself tripping over syntax and sentence construction assaying to employ every trick in my toolbox. Getting to you is what this is all about and this is why:
As a family man approaching his post middle years shouldn’t I be bounding out of bed of a morning full of vim and vigor, shouldn’t I be singing a little ditty as I brush my crooked teeth? Instead I ache. I roll over rubbing my stiff neck. I gulp down a glass of stale water to assuage my parched throat. Why is it parched? Because I do not have the time to get to a water fountain, a cooler or even the Red Bar (and the Red Bar requires money). My body aches because I do not find the time to do the stretches recommended by my physical therapist to help me with my back that is chronically uncomfortable which causes disrupted sleep and thus a tendency to flop somewhat inertly out of bed of a morning. No time. No money. I’m a visionary trapped in a dualistic universe. This also causes chronic pain, low level, perpetual discomfort.

On an entirely different note why is it that those who fail to make a ton of money are considered the greatest criminals of all? If you rob a convenience store you go down for a good five to ten I’ll bet. A white collar criminal, on the other hand, caught bilking the average Josephine of her meager income by persuading her to make financial decisions she is not equipped to handle, usually waltzes away with all blame placed squarely on the little old lady’s stooped little shoulders. She should have known better. As to the matter of bonuses—I’ll do the decent thing and skip lightly away leaving that whisper in your ear. I know eventually you will do the right thing. But my admiration for yoy knows no bounds. Despite these issues that continue to undermine your good name you remain undaunted. Your good cheer, your bounce is ever an inspiration.

Most sincerely,

K. W.

One of his friends

Windfalls for Bankers, Resentments for the Rest - NYTimes.com

Windfalls for Bankers, Resentments for the Rest - NYTimes.com

Letter to the Bank #15

Dear Bank,

I recently looked at my reserves of empathy that, if ever they were banked with you have long since found a safer refuge under my metaphorical mattress, and found they were running dangerously low. Clearly I’ve been spending way beyond my means. What I have left I must preserve for the downtrodden and the disenfranchised, those who rarely if ever get to brush their teeth using fresh, clean water. This means future letters I send you may appear dry or brusque on occasion, if not, once in a while, downright snippy. Do not take it too personally. I believe the supply of Love to be boundless so we should all be okay in the long run.

Why am I telling you this? Because lately some desperate individuals have been grabbing at my shirt sleeves demanding my sympathy and understanding and I find myself unable to give them any. They are mostly snake oil salesmen: unscrupulous money lenders, credit officers, and mortgage gamblers. For years (or at the very least a year) they have toiled to make money (mostly theirs) grow. That has been their work. That is what they are paid to do. Is it their fault that the money pool is shrinking instead? Should they be penalized for the worldwide epidemic of credit defaults? Apparently they have now discovered within themselves new feelings-feelings of soulfulness and angst, feelings of being victimized, preyed upon, and cheated. They have discovered deep reserves of righteous indignation and they want my help. They now want redress for wrongs perpetrated on them by the public at large. And what has the public done to cause them so much grief? The public has decided that their huge, excessive, boundless, irrational bonuses are out of all proportion to the work they do and want them to go without. People are mad-not just a little mad, or jolly mad, but murderously so. They want to throw eggs. They’d like to sit at the foot of the guillotine knitting as the heads roll. That is how bad this is. Instead the carpet is being pulled out quite gently from beneath them and they are being offered food stamps. They are getting off lightly. They should cut their losses and lay low. The pool of empathy out there is getting dangerously shallow. I used to have a lot more and I am sad to see it evaporate just as they are sorry to see their prepaid vacations go up in smoke. The upside of course is this: ultimately we are all in the same boat. Question is who is going to end up cannibalizing whom in that vast, endless ocean of debt?

I should publish these!
Yours sincerely,

K