Wall Street Virus

I see from this morning's news clippings that the Wall Street protests have gone viral, speeding across the so-called civilized world faster than a cold in a school classroom.

I thought for a time it would just go away. But it hasn't because conditions are ripe for spread. The world's economic body is ill, run-down, weak, suffering. It is open to all kinds of infections and bugs. So, damn. Now I have to think about it and adopt a posture.

That's what we bloggers do. Adopt postures.

Ahahahaha. I see the late Twiggy strutting her bony body down the fashion boardwalk, the late Mychael Jackson on stage tipping his hat with a white-gloved hand, and the very late Charlie Chaplin looking big-eyed and innocent whilst leaning silently on a cane. You youngsters might instead see Showtime dancers grabbing at their crotch or Kris Aquino fattening up on Goldilocks sweets or Manny Pacquiao smiling during his march to the ring where he knows he is about to pulverize another chump and make millions.

My posture is hunched over a Chinese keyboard whacking away at letters in hopes that something articulate might come out. Sometimes it does.

Here's my posture on protests.

The Occupy Wall Street movement fancies itself as a counter to the Tea Party conservatives. The Tea Party emerged from a bunch of old folks dissatisfied with the spending habits of Congress and blossomed as the megaphone for loud right wingers who tutored under the subtle charm of Rush Limbaugh and the calm introspection of Glen Beck and the fair and balanced perspective of the leaning tower of rightward tilt, Fox News.

My posture on that was to shrug. Even nitwits who require a collective to support them in their strident and irrational demands have a right to meddle with the American Way.

So I rather think the same thing regarding Occupy Wall Street. Even nitwits who require a collective to support them in their strident and irrational demands have a right to meddle with the American Way.

I do find amusing, and quite ridiculous, the media's obsession with things American. There's the CNN lady and the BBC yokel in downtown New York reporting breathlessly about "the several hundred" protestors gathered there. Now, frankly folks,  it is rather a bit of unmitigated gall for these hundreds of wayward bodies to claim they represent 99% of Americans, 98% of whom are in bed resting from last night's alcoholic or sex binge and looking forward to a day on the couch watching sports and gnashing nachos. Well, that's the guys, and the sex may only have been in their imaginations. The ladies are thinking about their nails or about running down to the mall to buy a new handbag. The youth are on Facebook being inane, as youth are wont to do.

Now what is going on in Syria is a protest. What is going on in Egypt is a protest. What is going on in New York or Denver or London is a youthful spit of frustration that is not based on very deep thinking. It smacks of trying too hard to be like other righteous malcontents raging in the streets.

It smacks of the same kind of jealousy you see in the Philippines where the "have nots" rip the "haves" because they can't figure out how to get even a little. Scape goats, excuse mongering. Venting.

"Corporate greed."

Baby, examined through a different set of colored glasses, it is called "profit motivation". It is the drive to succeed that underpins ALL jobs in America. It is the gold statue we all aspire toward, more wealth, more capability, self-improvement. It's just that these banking guys outdid us. They played it right, with their education, their connections, their achievements. Maybe luck was in there, too.

Why knock them down and undermine the fundamental dynamic that assures America's economic health and vibrancy, built on personal aspiration and success?

Controlling salaries and benefits for CEO's is like controlling rents. It creates so many anomalies in the economic bucket that holes pop out all over the place and it no longer holds water.

Stick with the principles. Markets define limits. Competition defines success.

Spending tax money to get the banks through an economic meltdown was a smart thing to do. It saved America. That the banks are back competing for talent again and paying their CEO's obscene amounts only means that the effort succeeded.

Indeed, I think exactly the opposite of the Wall Street crowd. I view America's corporations as a strategic strength, one of the ways to assure that Europe's shenanigans (subsidizing Airbus to undercut Boeing) or China's cheating (stealing every industrial secret they can get their hands on, whilst going around the world bullying small kids) don't undermine America's economic well-being. Don't CONSTRAIN big corporations by micro-managing how much they pay their CEO.

Let the dog's lose.

Stop double-taxing corporations. Stop harassing them about taking jobs overseas or operating in countries where human rights conditions are a little loose (like the Philippines). Stop playing moralist to the world and expecting the driver's of America's wealth to stand as proxies for some kind of religious fervor in favor of kindness. Companies are not people, contrary to what Mitt Romney claims. They are apersonal organisms of productive might. They are a concept, a principle. Compete well and generate wealth.

Why beat on them with sticks?

THAT will create wealth and jobs???

That's my posture.