Letter to the Bank Manager #93 (playing the system all the way to the bank)

Jef Bourgeau

is an American photographer, painter and conceptual artist who has become notorious through his sculptures, photography and curatorial work. The most famous and provocative of Bourgeau's work plays on the relationship between iconic imagery and irreverent materials, together forming a new context often drawing upon current controversies and, perhaps, the willfully provocative.

Jef Bourgeau is the founding director of the Museum of New Art (MONA), of Detroit's artCORE (empty storefronts to galleries), and co-founder of the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography.

Letter 93

Dear BM,

I’ve been thinking a lot about acronyms and name brevity, expression brevity. In the age of Twitter I’d like to be able to say it all with very little I guess. There is poetry to be found in them thar hills. BM I believe to be an apt and effective acronym for “bank manager”. My own name defies such easy reduction. Reduce my name and you’ll get a fine broth maybe but nothing workable. The best I can do—assuming I dust off my middle name, Handler, is this: AHOC—isn’t working for me. However might there be a forgotten other middle name? Let’s say Dennis, comes before...you know—Handler. ADHOC works. My Underemployed Runners Guild, of which I am the sole current member becomes URG which I kind of like—expresses something of the frustration I generally feel these days especially regarding the cynicism, the greed, the dog eat dog spirit that currently prevails. I am at heart an optimist. I am a throwback, an achronistic presence on the contemporary “Art and Banking” scene: Without time; in a state of timelessness; deficient of time, Erroneous in date; out of the right chronological position or order ....
Out of whack I may be but I am also free. I’m not charging you for this am I? If anything is truly out of whack and demonstrates to the core the very meaning of Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi for “unbalanced life”) it would be the world of Banking and Finance.

I’m also having fun pulling words apart to figure them out. Corporation for example is a good one. If corporations are people are people corporations? Corps is body, corporeal is having body, corpse is a lifeless body. My mind wanders. Did you look at that link I sent in my last letter RE: the movie The Corporation? There is a moment in the documentary when we witness the CEO of a huge international conglomerate giving tea to a group of protestors in his own back garden. As the current CEO of one myself—my family—I’m not without sympathy. He and his wife appear to be the nicest people but the results of their profit motive are so awful they do not bare contemplation and there lies the problem. The deaths, the diseases, the murder, the mayhem, the displacements, the hunger caused by the actions of such corporations are too hard to innumerate, and too painful to grasp. Now if, as the protesters suggest (now sitting on the grass sipping tea and looking confused) this makes their hosts murderers, then it is not an impossible jump to the conclusion that we are all culpable who live in a western landscape reaping the rewards (even at the bottom) of our economic geography.

On a slightly different note I must share a quote from today’s New Yorker magazine from an article on Damien Hirst by Peter Schjeldahl:  “...there’s mythic bite to Hirst’s career: the working-class lad who gulls the toffs and makes them like it”. I love the idea of the unethically wealthy buying the very art that mocks them. The trouble is one cannot help feeling on some level Damien Hirst is laughing at everybody else, you and I included. It is why I for one watch him at a wary distance. I cannot love what he does. He plays the system just as traders do. The super rich who bought his art are now sitting on massive investments. It is a win win for both of them. Ultimately they are in cahoots. I wonder if Damien Hirst ever incorporated?

In Debt (also referenced in my previous letter), David Graeber highlights the etymology of the words hostage, host, hostile and even hospitality all derived from the same Latin root and all points back to how strangers relate*. You and I really should get that beer I discussed in our earliest letters and think about the implications of the relationships that most banks set up with their customers, the hollowness of which we are all becoming only too aware.

You no doubt are fully aware of the mixed tone of the letters I send to you—one moment polite and reasonable and the next seething with fury—but I do not apologize. Bankers wobble but they never fall down! At the very least I want your head to spin.

Yours sincerely,


Art (Dennis) Handler O’Connor



PS—In the same issue of the New Yorker Gary Shteyngart (in an amusing piece) suggests outsourcing tweets. I have all the time in the world but you, as a responsible financier (or financial instrument?) have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Just thought this might be useful.


DEBT, The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber—p.101, The Moral Grounds Of Economic Relations, 1st Melville House Printing: May 2011

Letter to the Bank Manager #92 (are you a person or a corporation?)

http://movetoamend.org/occupythecourts

Dear Bullrider (I’m guessing you’ve bounced back from your latest travails, travails never so big you cannot pass the cost on to your customers!),

I think at this point you know, and I know, that my letters to you, Art’s letters to the banker, are 99’s letters to the one. Art is a euphemism for life, humanity, in all its glory and failings—and Banker is a euphemism for the Corporation. As we all now know corporations are people, or have been designated as such by bodies like the Supreme Court (also people—apparently people who don’t know what a person looks like which is good because justice is supposed to be blind—right?). We also know that Corporations are Brands. They are a brand of person we usually call  disassociated, disconnected, unfeeling, and, as far as society is concerned inept and dangerous. Society generally puts such people somewhere where they can perpetuate no harm. Trouble is they are connected to each other and as such are very powerful. If you like they are the first plug in the wall and we all depend on adaptors to draw on their power. Depending on the very elements in our society that by any definition can only be seen as psychotic is a tragedy.

As you know I try always to drive a wedge between the human you, whose feelings I insist on working on despite the fact that getting to them causes me much angst and physical pain. To cut through your thick skin such that you feel the pain you cause requires the use of a chainsaw and I usually end up with multiple blisters and sore muscles before I have even made a dent. I will however keep trying to get through. It may be that one day your guard is down, your men are off drinking coffee, your food taster is otherwise engaged, your letter reader is home with the dastardly flu and it is you—yes you— who picks up this letter and, bored, decides to open it. On the off chance this should occur I’ve decided I should include in bold colorful type (for the moment may be so fleeting I have to catch your eye) a suggested reading list, or suggested links, movies etc.

I’ll try to do so from now on. I’ll reference the things I’ve heard, the news stories that added another notch to my world weary heart. I will share with you that which I believe you should know. Lets move beyond the probability that you will dismiss all and everything I put forward as only the left wing, pinko, conspiratorial, radical, environmental garbage talk of an out of touch, artistic individual, and assume you are made of softer material, have flexibility, and are open for business.

Let’s talk.

Sincerely,

Art O’Connor

Here is the first list:

Debt, The First Five Thousand Years by David Graeber. I believe the author went to LSE in London, is a self described anarchic economist, and has been described as one of those who provided philosophical underpinnings for the Occupy Movement. The book is fascinating and full of material I’d love to qoute but best you just take a look at it yourself.

The Corporation, a movie by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan

Letter to the Bank Manager #91 (cheap fishing nets—another plastic hell)

My Dear Friend,

With the start of a New Year, we, on a personal level, begin a new era. As I have repeatedly insisted, I’ve made great effort to remain polite at all times and have struggled in my attempts to not yield to the baser aspects of my nature during my dealings with you, the financial sector, the banks, the money people. You are a money person—that must make you feel good—better than being—as 99% of us apparently are—un-monied people. The speed with which the un-moneying is taking place is terrifying and yet it continues to behoove you to act as if everything is just fine. Optimism is now a euphemism for don’t look and don’t see, and it is a euphemism you insist on resorting to every day on the radio, the internet, wherever experts are making utterances about the state of the economy.

I no longer feel the need to throw my full weight at the machine as, thankfully, there are many of us now watching and recording the falsities and untruths as they unfold. You cannot pick up a paper or listen to the radio without hearing the innate contradictions built into the system. When it come to understanding how foreclosures happen, what the nature of debt is, how financial instruments are built...well we are getting as good at this as you and we are watching.

I am going to be concentrating my efforts this year into writing many more letters to you, letters I might actually put in the mail. My goodness! It isn’t as if the Post office couldn’t do with any help we might offer! Besides if I don’t send them I cannot complain about your failure to respond can I? That this has only just occurred to me after posting these missives on an obscure blog for the past—four years is it?—is another matter. I never said I was more intelligent than you. I simply have more heart. The gaping hole in yours is what I shall focus on and perhaps, to end on an upbeat note, an optimistic note, we might together fix your problem and thereby fix the problems of the majority, the 99%, which is basically everyone I know. We lie floundering in the bottom of your boat, trying to breathe as you throw out your cheap, easily replaced nets (ever indifferent to the environment) to make room for more fish. We are no longer small fry though. The plastic not only piles up on the bottom of the ocean, and on beaches everywhere. It also gathers in draws or gets shredded in those wonderful shredders that will destroy credit cards in a blissful second. We have discovered we can breathe on land, give voice to our grievances, avoid your temptations and even quash fees that you might be tempted to impose. This is great news. We’ll come en masse into your banks, and we’ll show you where you went wrong, and we will help cure you of your failure to feel and will teach you to grapple with scruples, and fix our own problems in the process! Simple right?

Yours you’ll never know how sincerely,



Art O’Connor

George Monbiot on Steve Keen and writing off debt

The money would have achieved far more had it simply been given to the public. But, as Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated over the weekend, governments have learnt nothing from this failure, and seek only to repeat it.Instead, Keen says, the key to averting or curtailing a second Great Depression is to reduce the levels of private debt, through a unilateral write-off, or jubilee. The irresponsible loans the banks made should not be honoured. This will mean taking many banks into receivership. Otherwise private debt will sort itself out by traditional means: mass bankruptcy, which will generate an even greater crisis.
These are short-term measures. I would like to see them leading to a radical reappraisal of our economic aims and moves to develop a steady-state economy, of the kind proposed by Herman Daly and Tim Jackson. Governments and central bankers now have an unprecedented opportunity to learn from the catastrophic mistakes they've made. It is an opportunity they seem determined not to take.
• A fully referenced version of this article can be found on George Monbiot's website


From the Guardian Weekly 10.21.11

Letter to the Bank #71 (The Bouncy Banker meets Inspector Clouseau)

Dear Bank Manager,

Oh the weight of the load you carry. I know your job involves so much more than this but would you say the following is a fair description of what your responsibilities are vis-a-vis the customer?

“The bank manager is responsible for increasing or maintaining the deposits on hand at the bank. This may mean developing incentive programs to increase the customers that use the bank or developing programs that encourage the savings of existing customers. Bank managers work closely with the bank president and marketing team in developing these programs. The bank manager may also work on increasing other aspects of the bank's business such as the loan department, the investment consultants, or even the mortgage and finance divisions of the bank.”

I pulled this job description off the web and I accept that it may not do you justice. From this description I get no sense that your customer is regarded as any more than a cash machine. There is no emphasis on making your client’s funds grow or helping them manage the octuple draws on their meagre savings. Rather the emphasis is on getting as many poor saps to give up their money so you can invest it for your bank’s own benefit. No wonder we regard that extended hand and gold tooth smile reservedly.

Now most artists are probably smart enough to avoid biting the hand that feeds them but I seem to have somehow developed the habit of doing quite the opposite. Picture that cartoon of Inspector Clouseau at the beginning of the Pink Panther movies. I see Clouseau holding with both hands the large wrist of a poor, unsuspecting central banker, cufflinks gleaming, a massive gold band on the ring finger, and nibbling at it like a corn cob—though corn on the cob is not something the French relish. In France they feed corn to the pigs. Huh. I see Clouseau being severely reprimanded by his boss, the ever compromised Dreyfuss who always is stuck playing both ends against the middle, himself.

When I was growing up there was a toy called the Weeble. “Weebles wobble but they won’t fall down!” That is you! You may wobble, you may even crash, flop, flounder for a while but in the end you’ll always bounce back. You’ll get up, brush yourself off, buy a new suit if you must. You’ll lose everything on paper but it is only paper and miraculously it’ll all come back restored by an uptick in optimism contrived by lobbyists, corporations and politicians. They hold a gun to the temple of that pessimistic economist who now turns round and declares a run on diapers as a sure sign that consumer confidence is up. The Government, also feeling pessimistic but oh so dependent on the banks that so brilliantly create wealth if given enough rope, gives them rope. With a gentle slap on the wrist, that immortal wrist that clutches that never ending purse, the government says (between pursed lips): “next time we let you fail”. Both the government and the banks know full well that’ll never happen. They stay afloat together or go down together albeit long after the rest of us have already sunk down in oceans of debt never to be repaid. Given the inevitability of this I feel compelled to repeat my brilliant but utterly ignored although to me compelling idea we should erase ALL debt. Imagine the worldwide sigh of relief! Everyone would suddenly be presented with the chance to start over from scratch. Optimism, that foundation stone of a functioning market would be restored, and if that in turn were built on a real bedrock of regulation perhaps we could all start over on the right foot, or the left.
 One day you’ll thank me for being so upfront and straight with you. I make no bones about the fact that I find your operations quite sleazy. I find them dubious to say the least. I mistrust your institutions. There. Note: I am not being rude to you—here there will be no name calling, no killing the messenger. If I am rude in any way it is a polite rude. That is my specialty! That said if corporations are people as both the Supreme Court and Mitt Romney would like us to believe then I guess what I say is offensive. Tough. I’ll refer to bricks and mortar, and the wads of paper, the signage that declare you are now facing or confronted with a corporation, any way I wish. Honestly if I can find chinks in the armor, and hurt the feelings of a corporation, I’d be thrilled! But I digress. Why would I bother writing this unless I held out some hope you might listen to me? That is trust. I’m trusting you’ll engage with me despite my niggling notes. I trust you’ll see beyond my school boyish way with a metaphorical handheld catapult. Instead of swatting me away as I kick furiously at the shins of the massive redwood tree that is you, I hope you’ll bend down and hold out your hand extending the flat of your palm toward me. I’ll sit next to the throbbing blue ulnar artery of your fine institution and we’ll finally hash a few of these things out—together.

Gosh this was a long one. I get so caught up in the language, the metaphors, similes and idioms. I SO need the discipline a writing workshop, or the limitations of Twitter might provide. Until I get going on those fronts bare with me.

Sincerely,


Kristian Witherkay

Letter to the Bank #64

Dear BM,

Apparently some conservative member of Congress was saying something about how the poor should do their bit, pay their part, contribute their portion to the tax rolls. Probably went on to declare them—er...the vast majority of the citizens of these fair states—spongers and welfare state leeches. In fact didn’t the whole tea party thing start with some mean rant by some news commentator (Rick Santelli) about how people were in debt and being kicked out of their homes because they made stupid, irresponsible financial decisions and they deserved nothing less? What a strange inspiration for a movement, and what a nasty foundation to build a political platform on.

I am constantly appalled by the nastiness of the disconnected classes in this society. In some form or other the same disconnect is repeated in each and every corner of this planet—those born to wealth or those who have built their wealth, especially those who know deep down they have built it on the backs of underpaid, under insured workers, cannot afford to feel the depth of their own self disgust and so they separate, compartmentalize, divide, pull apart until they no longer can see their own role in the financial mess around them and can then sit back, inspired by the likes of the verbally dexterous Rick Santelli, and bemoan the stupidity of the little people who they (as they perceive it) float. In their fury (that runs in counterpoint to the fury of the working classes) they have set about to dismantle the safety nets that have for so long, in their opinion, only coddled the masses. They blame these so called masses and fortify their compounds waiting for the day when the plebeians come to demand their rights—rights the rich know, in the backs of their clouded minds, the privileged classes steadily eroded or even denied working families in their own efforts to maintain an ultimately unsustainable lifestyle.

I’ve been trolling the internet for images of protest signs world wide, specifically from Cairo where a fledgling democracy is having a painful birth but appears determined to breath strongly and deeply, South Korea where the embattled middle classes are making their voice heard as the gap between rich and poor grows, and Athens where the debt crisis is at CRISIS point. I show a random few here (without credit but this can be corrected if anyone insists) that I found visually interesting, and to which I could relate (no I cannot read Greek). I assumed I’d be finding signs I mostly empathized with but far from it. The desperate and the indignant comprise of all political stripes. The difference lies in their comprehension of their relationship to power, or their understanding of power structures. The disenfranchised with nothing to lose and those with plenty to lose will fight for their perceived rights on different platforms targeting governments or the wealthy and either way they are hoping to be heard by someone or something deep in the cloud of their wildly divergent frustrations. We live in a world where governments either merge with wealth, or clash with it and in doing so either prove themselves strong enough to impose regulations on unfettered profit motives and tax havens, or so weak they loose their clout because they  come to depend too much on the very thing that is undermining their credibility, the people with the money to vote them back in. At any point in any given day it becomes harder and harder to know who one’s opponent is, or who it is you need to educate, need to aim your frustrations at. As you know I choose you as the object of my fury and—all too frequently—contempt. You, the lowly bank manager, the petty bureaucrat, the salesman or woman, who is supposedly there to help the customer but usually is only doing the company’ bidding. I do not blame you for doing what you have to do to hold onto your job but you will suffer the consequences of being the face of unscrupulous and uncaring companies. The appalling optimist in me hopes that my letters will work on you by attrition, slowly wear down your thick skin, and eventually result in lights going on all about you that show how only if we all work together can the world stop catapulting toward financial disintegration.

In hope I wait for the current administration to prove itself as having the backbone and the vision to stand up to the corporations who currently appear to be setting the agenda, an agenda that is driving the middle and working classes slowly into the ground, and impose the kind of regulation that will dismantle heinous profits and bonuses, (neither of which ever trickle down) and replace them with programs that set about earnestly trying to create sustainable infrastructure, jobs, homes and healthcare for all.

Yours sincerely,

Your irritating conscience,

Your Chinese water torturer,

Your friend and your fiend,

Kristian Witherkay

Cut Cut

Letter to the Bank #57

From Russell Christian Illustration

My Dear BM,

These letters are turning existential! I think that is the right word. Rather than be mired in the humdrum world of my own crumbling finances I like to look up and out and on. I cannot stand just thinking and breathing anxiety all the time, or being pulled to shreds on the torture rack of the need to make art (and live and breath it as and when moments in the day open up) and make money not only to confront the impossible task of paying down debt but also to keep the little people in my life, at the very least, away from robbing banks i.e.—in modern parlance—off the computer. I’m confident my brood would make fine cyber-hackers given enough incentive and believe me if you deprive them of their candy, their toys, their sugar-bloated cereals they will find a means to acquiring these things themselves. You mark my words. In fact you’ve always known this and that is why, not so long ago, you were giving them credit cards as soon as they could walk. This whole financial crisis is THEIR fault! Let’s blame the toddlers! This isn’t far from the truth either come to think of it. Blaming naive, wannabe homeowners for the crisis, beginners who’d were sold a bill of goods, toddlers who dreamed of home ownership, were What did you expect? You guys didn’t understand what you were doing and still do not understand the half of it so how dare you point at those who fell for your sales pitch? If it was too good to be true then why were you selling it in the first place? And now you want to take their toys away! Simply put your behavior was criminal.

Gosh every time I start writing these letters in hopes of soaring poetical I end up dragged to the ground by these sorry, all too earthy and humdrum truths.

I was going to write about how life is so much more than money but money somehow always inserts itself into the picture. It destabilizes me every time I think ont (sic—I believe this is an acceptable Shakespearian term).

I was going to share with you all the current questions in my head. Some examples:

How would people respond if I burnt the books of Ann Coulter?
What if I framed a book of hers and titled the now completed artwork “Unburnt Book by Ann Coulter”, could I sell them? Make some money?

How about an artwork so insulting to bankers it could never possibly sell? You’d buy it, right?

Do you thinks bands who perform on a nice sunny day at an open air concert are sorry for those who are cancilled the next day due to rain?

Do you know what GOP stand for*? I bet a good fifty per cent of the population has no idea.

Do you like ambient music? That one just popped into my head.

Yours trying so very hard to remain polite,

K.W.

GOP stands for "Grand Old Party". Its a nickname for the Republicans who resent any form of government because it always gets in the way of them having "Fun."

Delete All Debt Mug

My first attempt at merchandising.
These are available from me for $25 which includes shipping.
Seems simple enough: Why not delete all debt everywhere all at once one day so everyone can wake up debt free.
I'm sure it would all shake down just fine!

Letter to the Bank #53 (Financial Streaking)

Dear Bullrider,

Hello! Your transparently ridiculous friend here, or more precisely ridiculously transparent friend...the one who believes you should/we should all be up front when it comes to the money we do or don’t have. I understand that smoke and mirrors are all part of the game but this game you are all playing is now ruining lives. You are leaving a trail of destruction in your wake—foreclosures and oil spills being just the tip of the ice-burg—not to be rude but the public is beginning to perceive you all as murderous thugs who are indifferent to life as we mostly know it.

So why is it that when I wish to bend an ear it is yours I turn to? I believe if I can bend your steely, sludge filled cochlea there might just yet be hope for us all. As obtuse as I may be when it comes to balancing a check book I may be the one best situated to see this whole shebang of toppling and regenerating stock quotes for the soggy cardboard edifice that it is. To the world of high finance I am the quintessential outsider (no longer victim but wizened observer).


My proposal is this:

We must all engage in a new openness regarding our personal finances and recognize the inarguable fact that, like the Greeks we live beyond our means and perhaps, like the Greeks, are in danger of having assumptions about what we deserve—like retirement at you know...forty, and so forth. These assumptions are based on what? Certainly they are not based on reality. We are all in debt whatever way you choose to look at it. Even you guys are in debt. The bonuses comprise the money you don’t throw at your debt obligations because having (as you all are so sure you do) the money smarts, you don’t want to tie up your money in petty matters like reducing the abstractions and distractions imposed by debt!

I’ve a name for this new plan of mine—Financial Streaking.

Henceforth we shall bare our financial souls.
I’ll be the first.
Just when people are least suspecting it, in the middle of a nationally televised football game for example, I shall rip off my facade and run across the pitch of our shared existence, plow through our collective dreams and so reveal the shallowness of the motivations at their core.

You’ll hear the sound of shock and awe as I determinedly streak, financially butt naked for all the world to see, dropping personal information like PIN numbers and passwords as I go.

Being human and all too frail my gumption and gall will run out quickly and so, if all goes to plan I shall needs must reach the changing rooms (preferably of my favorite team though truth being told I’m indifferent to football and use the analogy only to garner a populist connection to my otherwise whacky theme), having evaded security as I go.

Back on the field there it will lie, throbbing and sad, teetering on the twenty yard line, my dirty laundry, the truth of my financial instability, and in it the masses shall see therein reflected the paucity of their own dreams, based as they too often are on materialistic yearnings.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian Witherkay

Letter to the Bank #52

Dear Mr. Bullrider (or current BM if not available),

This idea is so insane…it just might work. Why don’t we simply delete all debt? I know it is a simplistic but I believe simplifying is good. We can assume debtholders won’t like the idea too much but visionary ideas must always face and overcome resistance. If we are ever to restore balance to the universe this is the only way. To the Mr. Potters of this world, for those who have never encountered debt the idea will no doubt be seen as dystopian, nightmarish, but for those in the hole—the other 99% —it is not just a utopian dream but one that is within reach! As the majority we can vote to end all debt because we live in a democracy. Of course the debt doesn’t stop at the borders and not every country believes in the democratic process. There are problems we’ll have to overcome. Naturally picking the date for Debt Deletion Day would be tricky. The whole thing would have to happen instantly so people don’t go hiding their assets or knocking down doors to find them. This is more of a headache than I thought. You could help. Give me your thoughts—the thoughtful ones not the reactive kind.

It is funny to think that communist China stood in counterpoint to capitolist America for half a century but now holds the purse strings. They are the greatest debt holder of all! My idea should appeal to capitolists everywhere. Even the banks that are too big to fail owe money to someone, somewhere! The US woud bennefit enormously if China freed it from its fiduciary obligations. At the other end of the spectrum homeowners could keep their homes to salvaging the remaining tattered remnants of this beleagured society. Surely that would be a good thing? Oh I know…legal paperwork would be voided. Ownership would have to be reconceived that sort of thing. These are minor details. The point is to let people be. Leave them alone. Get off their backs. Cease with the threats. Go silent. Be gone. Let people live their lives, their all too brief lives, with some semblance of dignity! This current system is no longer tenable. We need to circumvent, short circuit, the system. Spelunkers in the Matrix can surely find a way.

Perhaps we can find a happy compromise. If we were to be more modest in our goals and merely iron out the wrinkles in debt, even it all out, spread the pain. It would be good for people to feel in control again, self-respect, and bodily hygiene would return and, having learned to iron they’d all be well dressed to boot.  If we all took less and gave back less…for example you keep the art I sent you, keep the books you borrowed, and, for goodness sake, keep all that paperwork you insist on sending me. You know I never read it. And I’ll keep what I already have which means you’ll hardly notice a thing! If you don’t want me to write to you any more I won’t—all the less paperwork for you to deal with!

In short I’ll stop bugging you if you stop bugging me.

Yours sincerely,

Art Witherkay

The Not So Bouncy Banker Watches Aghast as People Walk Away from their Debt Obligations

In today/tomorrow's Sunday New York Times magazine I was delighted to come across an article that pointed up the fact that bankers play around with morals the same way they muck around with financial instruments. They tell everyone how they must be financially responsible, pay their mortgages, pay their debts, debts, they argue that are ultimately debts to society. If you walk out on your obligations we all suffer. If you abandon your home we are all stuck with the soon deteriorating property. All well and good but these days many folks are walking away from their obligations with very little left to show for lifetimes of work at pay that rarely kept pace with the cost of living as the renumerations toward the financial sector skyrocketted, went stratospheric. As one watched banks walked away from payments on office buildings as their values plunged. Are they not required to honor their debts? So it does look as if a lot more people will be walking out on their obligations and not with their tails between their legs but with their heads held high in grim determination not to be left a sucker holding the bone the banks proffered in the first place. Don't think I delight in this. It is sad that we are in this place where it is impossible to respect or trust the very people who were supposed to help us all handle our finances responsibly because they were the experts. For an earlier article on the same issue by the same author, Roger Lowenstein, go to "Just Walk Away".

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.

Letter to the Bank #36

Dear Bank Manager,

Walking past the crossing guard this morning he hailed me with: “Ah! The man with the money!” Naturally I responded (as any good citizen would) with: “Ha! Yeh, right! When I have some extra cash I’ll give you some!” We are always exchanging quips but this one, I must admit, left me somewhat stunned. As I walked away it occurred to me that both of us knew this to be a joke. Money? Who has money these days? The idea of it is almost quaint! Which brings me to a pertinent question: Why don’t I have any money? You could as well apply it to yourself I’m sure…well maybe not you but perhaps someone you know…unless you are in the top one per cent of earners in which case this just doesn’t apply. For them what I write here is written in some kind of Alien language that simply does not compute.
We can breath again. They’ve gone.
Seriously though—I work, my wife works, our children make mud bricks in the back yard for board and lodging, we are even frugal in a middle-class-sort-of-frugal-way. One major reason for this would be the confirmed fact that real wages have pretty much been locked in since the seventies whilst the cost of living has skyrocketed, expanded much like a party balloon—oh my gosh! What an analogy! Like…like…like a balloon that is about to pop! Then, as soon as one has built up any savings a vulture comes down and eats them all up. This has happened to us a lot lately—flooding in the basement, two cars on the fritz and needing major repairs two weeks in a row to the point of do we keep them going or roll them in to another less old clunker. Is it better to stay with the devil you know or exchange him for one your car mechanic claims to know, if distantly. Then anxiety sends us to the doctor with back complaints and nasty scalp conditions that our health insurance (we are SO LUCKY to have health insurance) all of a sudden deems a pre-existing condition, or not covered in the small print, or covered but yet to be met by our various deductibles. By this point the hair is so easy to tear out.
I’d feel no pity whatsoever for said plight if I was homeless or jobless, or without health insurance. I’d probably feel the same way if I was a wealthy—how can I put this delicately—Republican. I’d probably scoff. I’d say: Well what do you expect you lazy, liberal, socialist, bohemian, HOBOhemian whiner—a hand out? I’d say it with gusto too! Funny that—you can imagine the very same words coming out of the mouths of the most disenfranchised in this our—society. Now there’s a party of possibilities, an alliance. If I were you I’d have stopped reading by now. They are right! Why should the banks undermine their profit motives to prop up individuals like my ignoble self who wish to be freed up from financial anxieties so they can daub with paint on canvas all day, or write their silly letters—or cut sharks in half (down to size so to speak). And why should the government get involved? They are already way over extended. Like the banks they have financial anxieties of their own. However I do feel compelled to point out that I remain in my ignobility, a good citizen. I pay my taxes toward the dubious common good. I keep paying the interest on my mortgage and credit cards and ever so occasionally pay something toward principal. Now if only you’d stop asking for all that exorbitant interest and let me pay down my principal we could all get back on track. Better that than me, and millions of others in the same boat, from defaulting. I do sometimes feel that if I take one step too many backwards I’ll fall into the biggest hole and the only option will be to walk away from it all. That isn’t an option anybody would choose lightly. Strangely though it is almost comforting to imagine the silver lining around the black, black cloud that has been hanging over one’s head—the loss of all that Sisyphean debt.

Yours sincerely,

K. Witherkay

PS—As a good-for-nothing laz-a-bout I’m thinking of making these letters into big paintings and then persuading corporate art collections to buy them. I really should do that. I will.

PPS—I asked my seven year old to draw a lazy monster AKA a lazy middle class bohemian monster like me, not that I tried to explain. The somewhat phallic nature of the drawing is, I assure you, unintentional.

Letter to the Bank #35

Dear Banker,

(Knocks on screen of video camera) Helloooo? Anybody there…? (Pauses)

I’ll take a deep breath and start over. I'm not being sarcastic. I really do not know. But assuming there is...here goes.

Do you remember a while back when I promised, however angry I might feel, to remain civil at all times? I wouldn’t swear or use foul language. I wouldn’t call anybody names and I wouldn’t threaten to bomb, burn or generally take out my frustrations on any of your fine institutions—the latter more because I do cherish my freedom and the authorities are so sensitive these days they cannot distinguish between literal and metaphorical, real and imagined. Luckily for them and for me I, like our dear president, do believe in civil discourse. I would never shout: “You lie!” or “You cheat!” across the aisle. I might instead say: “You are a bit blinkered”,  or: “I find you lacking on the imagination front,” or “You aren’t very good at stepping into other people’s shoes are you?” and so employ the brilliant art of English understatement, i.e. I'd take the passive aggressive approach. I roll up my sleeves and dribble instead of spitting. I studied semi-idiotics in school. That is to say: I went to Art School, which brings me to my point, my present point of being in perpetual dire straights (in the middle class sense of dire straights if you get my drift). Who in their right mind goes to Art School? A middle-class, born with a regularly dish-washed spoon in his mouth, kid—that’s who. My parents did all they could to discourage me. They threw logs in my path, moved refrigerators in front of the bedroom door which took a huge amount of effort given my bedroom was on the second floor. They didn’t do so to discourage aspirations so much as to point out how aspirations and earning a living can (and in my case) prove to be quite at odds. That said I love to make art. Oh, boy! Don't I just! Trouble is I can’t, not with infinite bills to pay from an ever-emptying account. It’s problematic.

To your mind I’m sure the effort I put into trying to keep old obsessions alive and, in the case of my children, nurture new ones is, to say the least, counter productive. My son for example has just embarked on a search for a bawu, a kind of Chinese flute. Should I say: You concentrate on your schoolwork young man, and stop wasting my time! I know you think I really need to teach them, preferably by example, how to make a living in this ever changing economy, and, dammit (oops!) You are probably right.

Yours sincerely,

K. Witherkay

PS—Why are artists poor? There is a book by the same name. I haven’t read it yet but just might if I can get my hands on a copy. I'm guessing one problem is they are idealists and despite having no money keep giving the money they don't have to charities and good liberal causes like NPR. I'm curious about what artists of the other extreme give their money to— the NRA? That is fine I suppose as long as they don't have the money.

Letter to the FA 1

I wanted to share this wonderful poem with you. It is a DADA or MERZ poem by  Kurt Schwitters, non-sensical to some ears but to others it is language at its purest. I'd dare to compare it to the linguistic acrobatics of, and poetical license taken by, the banking industry and the financial sector in general.
Take a moment to listen to my rendition of the Jabberwock by Lewis Carroll. (Poem to come) If you imagine the Jabberwock as, for example, the Banks, or as credit card offers even, you can quickly see how Art can aid in deconstructing the language of money. In a further audio sample I read my own recent poem, Structured Investment Vehicles, a poem of which I am very proud. (Poem to come). Somehow I feel it will bring me ever closer to the financial advisors who are so dilligently working on my mounting debts as we speak. Please enjoy.

Yours sincerely,

Kristian (with a "K").

PS—You know what? I'm giving myself a new last name—poetic license and all—Kristian Witherkay. I think it has a dignified ring.

Letter to the Bank #26

Dear BM,

Who am I kidding? You won’t employ me as a curator, or let me have a say in your acquisitions process. Deep down in my gut I know this to be true. I must have been curiously disconnected the other day or high on the huge dose of Ibuprofen prescribed for my infuriating backache. Truthfully my gut also cannot quite stomach the idea of working within your “for profit” system though clearly, penniless as I am, I could surely learn a thing or two. Is it within the realms of possibility to earn well AND honestly, with higher purpose? Is this a higher calling you are pursuing as you enable museums to put on shows that they could probably not afford to mount without your help in the current economy? I know funding for many museums has been drastically cut. So in your efforts to mount these ambitious shows are you being altruistic or pragmatic? I honestly can not tell.

So many of the people I know have great dreams, positive dreams, poetic, artistic dreams but to do anything to realize them requires (dammit) money! Financing! Getting in to debt! Going in to foreclosure for goodness sake! Getting a bad credit score! Or...writing amazing proposals! Now there’s a good idea. Would you listen if I wrote you a proposal? I’ve got this great idea that requires I build a paper maché and cardboard bank, write a monologue and pretend to be working on behalf of the bank as a PR man. I attempt to reach those corners of the community most suspicious of banking institutions. You’d have to have some humor, be able to laugh at yourself, take a joke. I’d do all the hard work and your support would only reflect well on your institution. When I have a moment, when I’m not busy fixing a broken toilet, replacing a broken sump pump, or tearing out a ruined ceiling and so compromising my back, I’ll find a moment to work up my proposal. I only ask you to keep an open mind and stop badgering me with bewildering notices regarding my various credit cards. I know you only have a couple of weeks left to do your dirty work before new banking regulations kick in but how about leaving me out of it?

Sorry. I got a bit distracted didn’t I. More soon.

Sincerely,

KC

Letter to the Bank #22

Dear Bankers, 4/1/09

Is a Zombie Bank the same as a dead possum? That is my question of the day. I passed a dead possum this morning that was so dead maggots were crawling out of its eyeballs. Still I fully expected it to jump up and run away as soon as I was around the corner. That is kind of what the banks keep doing. They are all so big they can’t simply lie down and die. Then again if they don’t put on a good act of doing so the government won’t come in with those delicious tricks to revive them. Possums are so good at pretending to be dead one tends to suspect they aren’t dead even when their guts are all over the road. We've grown that used to things being surreal.

I have a suspicion that despite all efforts by the President to harness populist outrage the end result will be some form of collective impotence—not a happy prospect. We will no doubt be left holding not only our own debt but that of the banks as well—swell.

As you are well aware at this point (if you ever pay any attention) my missives are full of ire, laced through with fury. My writing has always contained the seeds of that metaphysical anger that just cannot come to terms with the irrevocable fact that the world is an unfair place. The built in injustice of the whole shebang just gets my goat. That injustice is now no longer playing possum but is dancing around spitting in our eyes yelling: “We are too big to die!” and so, by default, saying: “You are too small to live”, which you have to agree is not very nice.

So a certain populist joy at the prospect of one huge car manufacturer floundering, flapping its fins about on the beach, going down (naturally dragging thousands of hard working people down with it) is, if not excusable, understandable. This is one of those rare David and Goliath moments. As the masses stare into the dying light of the day allow them some small pleasure in the rare spark of a fire fly lighting up the dusk in the off season. Oh I know I’m being dramatic. There is always Art to soothe the Soul and it is accessible to everyone any day of the week unlike your once venerable institutions. Still I suppose if our lives are dreary we’ve only ourselves to blame. But…and there is always a But…could you at least stop trying to make them grimmer?



K. Citizen

April Fool! Of course I love the Banks! Really—dare I do otherwise?

PS—I’ve dated this letter though usually I am loath to do so—just to prove it is April Fool’s Day.
PPS—I did receive your letter—more loathsome I have to say than any of the letters I've ever sent you.

Mine's Eye Bank Letter 1

Letter to the Bank #21

Dear Banker (That is a little more personal),
You wouldn’t believe the number of letters, the piles of passionate scrawl I’ve come across of late—in my garage, in the basement, on official letterhead and restaurant napkins—that all address financial anxiety. I’ll bet if you multiply this by one of those huge numbers you’ve been bandying about, you’ll get close to the extent of people’s debt grief. It will not be a number in the usual sense, the numeric sense. It will look more like a mysterious blip on your screen, a strange sign the populace is hoping against hope you’ll finally interpret. The numbers are ambient but the feelings are very real and probably worth addressing. If you could help alleviate the distress out there, leaven the pain, you might be surprised at how much comes back to you based on your emotional investment.
If it is okay with you I shall begin sharing this rediscovered gold shortly but first you and I need to come to a better understanding. When people come to you ripping the shirts off their chests and so baring their souls I’d like for you to agree, in writing, to drop the stony face, the inscrutable smile, the professional mien and share in their grief. Let the healing begin!

Yours sincerely,



K. Citizen

DGR described the picture in the following terms: “The incident is just before Hector's last battle. Cassandra has warned him in vain by her prophecies, and is now throwing herself against a pillar, and rending her clothes in despair, because he will not be detained longer. He is rushing down the steps and trying to make himself heard across the noise, as he shouts an order to an officer in charge of the soldiers who are going round the ramparts on their way to battle. One of his captains is beckoning to him to make haste. Behind him is Andromache with her child, and a nurse who is holding the cradle. Helen is arming Paris in a leisurely way on a sofa; we may presume from her expression that Cassandra has not spared her in her denunciations. Paris is patting her on the back to soothe her, much amused. Priam and Hecuba are behind, the latter stopping her ears in horror. One brother is imploring Cassandra to desist from her fear-inspiring cries. The ramparts are lined with engines for casting stones on the besiegers.” (quoted in Marillier, DGR: An Illustrated Memorial , 108-9.).
for more on Dante Gabriel Rossetti