We are the 99%

I have to say that the Occupy Wall Street fascinates me. In some ways, I wish I was able to join in and attend some events. Although I would probably go to San Francisco even though Oakland is closer because I think that rallies/protests in Oakland have a tendency to become destabilized and unsafe. But that is a whole other blog topic.

I get why people are pissed. I am if I think about it too long. I absolutely believe that politicians have sold themselves to the highest bidder. Banks and large corporations largely control our political and media systems and they have little regard for the average person. However, I have a hard time with some of the steps people think will help fix the problem.

Having worked in banks and dealt with regulators who come to audit, I am not sure that large amounts of controls and regulation is what the banking industry needs. Especially since the banks pay outside audit firms to tell them how to deal with it so that they can make their round peg of operations fit into the square whole of regulations. And the outside audit firms ALWAYS have employees that are smarter and better at their jobs than the government inspectors. I once had to explain to a state inspector that if you took the amount of the monthly payments and multiplied it by the term of the loan it was more than the original amount lent because we charge this little thing called interest on loans. I also had one state inspector who would spend the first 2 hours of his day transforming computer paper to lined paper with a pen and a ruler. Even when we offered to provide lined paper, he declined. These are the people watching the till. And are a pretty good representation of the people I met over the 4 years I dealt with Government inspectors. Whether through a lack of training, a lack of caring or just a plain lack the people who are hired to watch our financial systems are less capable than the people who run it and they have very little power to enforce the regulations that they do have already. Until that changes, no amount of new laws are going to keep our country safe from another banking failure.

So I am doing one of the few things I can think that really might make a difference. I am taking my money and trying to go to small, local stores. Christmas shopping for me this year is going to be completed mostly at gift shops of institutions I wish to support. The local zoo, kid's science museums and the fine art museums and some local independent stores. I have already bought the vast majority of my meat on the the hoof directly from ranchers for a couple of years now, and I try to buy produce through my CSA or farmer's market. These things make me feel pretty good about supporting local business and institutions, but there is a trade off. It is more expensive and takes a lot of time to track things down. Not everyone can afford to fight the corporate power that way. And there are some things that it just isn't feasible to find at a local store. Local, independent grocery stores are extremely difficult to locate. Try to buy toilet paper or clothes from a small store. It isn't easy.