Letter to the Bank Manager #81 (Your Illness Is Cureable)

Dear Bank Manager (maybe Mr. Bullrider still works for you or maybe he does not! No matter! You’re hypothetical anyway though I continue to yearn for the human connection),

Do you see how the nature of these letters has changed over the years? When I first began writing to you I was reaching out to you on your raft—rather your gin palace, as my father would’ve called it—a drowning man desperately in need of salvaging. Salvaging seems to be the appropriate word. Saving always smacked of conversion and that was not what I was seeking. I only wished to get my own house in order. I had no desire to become you with your fine yacht and padded bank account. I hoped only that you might aid me in the complicated work of making my financial life more secure and less mind numbing. I was asking you to make my money work. I still believed, had faith that that was the job you were hired to do.

Now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to throw you a lifeline and, given your overall arrogance, beg you to take hold of it. I’m saying: Look! Look! Look! We’re not trying to push your head under! We are trying to get you to change your ways. That is it. They are unhealthy. They do none of us any good. Your practices may appear self serving but they are eating away at you from the inside. Because the erosion is from within and you are not one to stare at your own belly button (as my mother would put it) you fail to see it. Whereas once upon a time you were my financial therapist now I am your life coach. You are dying. If you do not change your ways your life force will ebb out and trickle down (there’s that expression again!) the drain. I’m urging you to change your ways. You drink too much. You must cut back on your meat consumption. You have to stop throwing so much money at agribusiness and the factory farms they prop up. Instead pour it back into the world where it can do the most good—before you get melted down, a victim of financial global warming.

These letters may at times appear aggressive. They are intended as fair warning. Warning can also appear to be an aggressive word. I’m struggling to get through to you. Sorry but you are so thick skinned it requires the greatest of fortitude (and a physical strength I do not have) to not pick you up (metaphorically) and shake some sense into you. I know your notion of sense: The more money I have the better off I am. Your wrong. You are living for all the wrong reasons and making that clear is, apparently, going to be the work of a lifetime.

Yours sincerely,


Art O’Connor

PS—You are not as yet terminal! You still can save yourselves. A fine Canadian institution called Adbusters, has a wonderful proposal:
On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax  on all financial transactions and currency trades. Let’s send them a clear message: We want you to slow down some of that $1.3-trillion easy money that’s sloshing around the global casino each day – enough cash to fund every social program and environmental initiative in the world.

I am sure, for you, this medicine has a bitter taste, but I promise in the long run you’ll feel much, much better. Now unclench your fists, and breathe slowly. Rest in the assurance that Mother Theresa and Robin Hood are working on your treatment.

PPS—In my letters as you can attest I have always refrained from calling you names or resorting to crude language in any form. I’m not out to put your back up! Getting through to you is my goal. If you close your ears and leave the table I’ve failed in my work. I do however beg of your restraint when it comes to some of the imagery I apply to these letters. Understand they serve as an emotional outlet and/or a visual counterpoint to the restraint I in turn apply to our continuing dialogue with you.

Letter to the Bank Manager #79 (The Big Stink)

Dear Mr. Bullrider Esq,

You know what’s been trickling down all these years? Not hope, not work, nothing that could be called a growing return on the average investment of your average working being. What has trickled down is a very bad smell, the stink of corruption. When a body begins to fall apart it will reek and that is clearly happening in the world of finance, and, maybe not as obviously in the world of non-renewable energy, and within the insurance industry. I may be ignorant when it comes to business but I am not stupid. My observations are not based on the massive numbers that get hurled around to the point of being meaningless, changed as they are by the billions from one CEO speech to the next. I’m simply using my eyes. Sometimes it takes years to believe what your eyes have been telling you all along. A Tipping Point of Recognition, of Seeing, has taken place and now the whole world sees it: The Big Stink. Foul play is everywhere and people all over the planet are fed up. I’m willing to believe that the practices now proving to be so damaging to the economy are so ingrained that it may take a little while for you to see the problems you have caused and naturally it is hard to turn the spotlight on yourself and have the courage to admit your own mistakes. Now would be the time to drop your defensive stance and open yourself to criticism. You may see the awful, almost unbearable truth just in time and thus avoid recriminations. You might successfully remove yourself from a lucrative but soul destroying career and point your ambitions toward something the community can not only condone but applaud.

Yours,

Art O’Connor

PS-Your regular correspondent, K.W., is taking a well deserved break from your perpetually unnerving silence on any subject he broaches with you! I’ll hope you’ll listen to me. He has urged me to remain polite even as I am pushed to the limit of my patience with that ugly infrastructure you are a part of.

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