How to explain what's happened on Wall Street to my third grader

Here's what happened, son.

First, people like me took money we earned and we put into a bank. Remember this past summer when we took the money you made selling cookies and lemonade and put it in to your savings account? We put our money in the bank because we wanted our money to be safe. In other words, we didn't want a bad person to take it from us. The bank took our money and gave it to another bank. You see banks need even safer places to put the money we give them and there's nothing safer than a bigger bank.

These big banks then took our money and gave it to some really smart people, many of whom are trustworthy, thoughtful folks. A good number of them, though, are not. And that's where things have gone terribly wrong.

You see, son, the really smart people -- many of them in a city far from here -- decided that if they took our money and gave it to their friends to use as they wished, we wouldn't mind. They were wrong. They needed to tell us what they were doing with our money. They didn't. Our government, which is elected by all of us to watch our money, among other things, was supposed to be keeping an eye on things. They didn't do a very good job and so we need to elect new leaders who can keep an eye on our money.

The bad bank people were hiding their behavior from the government and were using our money to gamble and place bets. What has made the current situation even worse is that far too many people were gambling with money that was technically not there's. You could argue that the money was stolen and being used in ways that your dad is, frankly, to simple to understand fully. You'll need to get a little older to understand human psychology and economics before you can begin to appreciate what occurred here.

I can tell you this, though, when you bet with someone else's money and lose that money, you have to pay it back. When you are already in debt to other people, it makes it VERY hard to pay back the money you borrowed. It's like drowning in a swimming pool. The more you struggle, the more tired you become and the less strength you have to get to safety.

What's the lesson here? That's hard to say. I would not urge you to stop putting money in your bank account. A bank is the safest place for your savings. However, I do think you need to ask questions about where your money goes when you put it in your bank. Remember, banks put money in other banks. You want to know who those banks are and what they plan to do with your money. It's a fair question. Ultimately, the more curious you are, the better. Asking questions forces people to answer them. And as they answer them you can decide whether they are lying or telling the truth.

It's a universal problem: trying to decipher lies from truth. In the world in which you are growing, it's an important and critical skill to master. I don't think any of us can afford to stop asking questions anymore. My hope is that as you grow, you will learn to be curious about things that at first seem simple and mundane. Often, things that seem to be too good to be true are often just that and nothing more.

Congress Needs to Hold Fast With a Firm NO to the Bailout

Seems like these investment bankers have rigged this game pretty well. Let's see, spend years creating credit derivative schemes to play games with other people's money, then when it comes flying back in your face, hand the bill to the very suckers you've been fleecing all of these years. Wow. Why didn't I think of that?

$700 billion. Let's let that roll around the tongue a bit. Seven...hundred...bill...yon. Well, shit honey, that's a hell of a lot of barbeque and baby back ribs. And since no one in charge in Washington or New York really knows what happened to get us into this stinking cesspool, I think we should consider bringing in some people who do. Sarah Palin anyone? Why don't we just all pile on to the plunger in a wild orgy of self-destruction. The last two hundred and thirty two years have been a good run. No need for anyone to feel responsible for what's happened. Afterall, taking responsibility is for suckers. It's every capitalist American's right to fleece his fellow citizens. We were taught that in grade school.

OK, I'll let that rant fester for a moment while I turn my mind to more pungent matters...

Which of these wankers would lend any of us simple Americans one dime if we'd proven we could not responsibly manage the money we'd previously been given? The answer to that is as plain as the bag I will be drinking from later this week. You gotta love these guys, though. They are slick. They've got every angle covered. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we are told that our entire civilization is in danger of collapse. Boy, these guys have huge balls. Perhaps I'm just too dumb to really get it. And here I thought our president was not too bright. Wrong! He's f'in brilliant for coming up with this latest play to save his secret society buddies from potentially having to sell one their family homes. Having declared that...

It's completely ass backwards that we would seek to bail out Wall Street when there seems to be no real plan for spurring the mule that brought them to the corral in the first place. These scumbag banker's don't need the money; the American small business person needs it. Afterall, as George Bailey might have said, we are the people doing "most of the working, living and dying" in this place. The Mr. Potter's of Manhattan stole our deposits and now they claim we owe them? Whiskey tango foxtrot?

America's credit is in the toilet, so you hear all of the politicians fluffing us about how we are the most (pick a word) "creative, industrious, hard-working, resilient, admired, etc.," workers in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Heard that all before. What they really mean to say is "Please, dear Lord, don't let the American working folk pull back our clothes and expose us for what we really."

Of course it's not really that simple. Real people are getting hurt while the charlatans at the top lick their wounds in relative safety. I feel sorry for everyone who has been misled and is being left with nothing in the wake of this scandal. In a different time, us common folks would be storming the castle and demanding a piece of the booty. Hell, I don't know why most of us don't get down to lower Manhattan right away and open up an enormous can of whoop ass on some of these people. The problem is, it's so damned hard to point the finger through all of the smoke and mirrors. So, until this fog clears...

I hope Congress sticks to its decision. We need to wake up and see Wall Street for what it really is: a scam that has for too long been held unaccountable for its boorish behavior. My fellow Americans, I urge us all to wise up. The safest place for your money is not in the hands of some whiz kid in Manhattan. Great investments abound in your own communities and neighborhoods. Time to learn about micro-investing and how to help your local coffee shop entrepreneur. Enough of this sending your hard-earned money to a group of people only interested in their own short-term gains. There's no short path to success unless you want to steal from someone else.

And if this rant wasn't enough, I toss in this radish to my diatribe salad:

The Henry Paulson view of throwing more good money after bad does not float. It's a reactionary move designed to cover one narrow sectors butt: and that sector is full of Mr. Paulson's pirate friends. Witness his invitation to Goldman Sach's chairman to a private meeting two weeks ago to discuss options that only us saps could dream about. I am sure the lunch was catered. Who got the bill for that, Mr. Paulson?

What is Goldman Sachs Doing?

I don't know about the rest of you out there in America, but I think I've had just about enough of Wall Street. Does anyone believe for a minute that if the country were in trouble, Wall Street would be rolling up their sleeves to help any one of us?

According to The New York Times today, two weeks ago there was a private meeting at the Federal Reserve office in New York. "The only Wall Street chief executive participating in the meeting was Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Mr. Paulson's former firm."

The media needs to investigate this relationship. Who is Lloyd Blankfein and what was he doing at that meeting?

Who was he representing? Was his participation a violation of the spirit, if not the intent, of Sarbanes Oxley rules? And, why in heaven's name would our Treasury Secretary be including only ONE member of the investment banking community?

Title IV of the Sarbanes Oxley Act describes enhanced reporting requirements for financial transactions, including off-balance-sheet transactions, pro-forma figures and stock transactions of corporate officers. It also requires timely reporting of material changes in financial condition and specific enhanced reviews by the SEC or its agents of corporate reports. Source: Wikipedia.org

I am a shareholder of Goldman Sachs stock and even I'm shocked at the cozyness of the relationship between the company and a government official who is now considered to be the most powerful treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton held the post over 200 years ago.

Where does Henry Paulson get off having secret meetings to protect his former company's tail -- and the backsides of his friends -- at the expense of tax payers? And, who are the regulators really interested in protecting? Apparently it's not me.

How to break the cycle of poverty. It only takes one interruption to break a circle.

As I sit here in a Native reservation coffee shop in faraway Atlantic Canada sipping coffee, I get an email from a friend in Portland, Oregon. There is going to be a meeting on how to address the cycle of poverty there in the coming weeks and he wanted me to know about it. It got me to thinking about why this is a perennial subject to address for non-profits.

Where are the answers? It's one thing to talk about statistics and issues. It's another thing entirely to consider fully what one can really do. I don't have the answer any more than the average person does. I do know that there are some maps for what we can do. Here's one...

Oxfam Canada has some pretty impressive thoughts on human rights that any conversation should include:

Oxfam believes the following five human rights are central to true and sustainable development:

The right to a sustainable livelihood –
We support people to achieve food and income security, decent working conditions and increased protection of the natural resources on which they depend.

The right to basic services –
We support people to gain access to basic health care, clean water and education for all.

The right to life and security –
We support people caught in the middle of war, violence, natural disasters and the displacement they cause to live safe from abuse, harm, suffering, illness and death. Where necessary we advocate for international intervention.

The right to be heard –
We support people to achieve their civil and political rights, have their voices heard and influence decisions that affect their lives.

The right to an identity –
We support people who are marginalized because of their gender, religion, ethnicity or cultural identity to live free from discrimination and enjoy equal rights and status with others.

Poverty is always going to be around because some people can't or won't work. It's not the "cycle of poverty" that we need to confront, it's a social contract that consistently believes a hand out followed by a slap down is better than a hand up. For some, we MUST give a hand out. The elderly grandparents raising their grandchildren, for example. A single mother who needs to feed her children, is another. America should absolutely have universal conscription like Israel, by the way. But, you should have a choice of whether to go into the military or a non-profit job. That's another matter.

Minimum wage jobs are important to any economy. But, they must not be the only labor opportunity for the poor. Canada certainly has many problems with its poor and homeless. I saw some terrible sites this winter in Montreal. People sleeping on grates in the subzero cold was pretty sobering. But, what is at the root of that? At the root is a society that wants everything cheap, fast and easy - a society that does not believe in the basic human right of a sustainable livelihood. The cycle of poverty, in other words, is nothing but the uglier twin to the cycle of narcissism.

And I'm not talking about the kind of narcissism one sees on Wall Street or in Hollywood. No, I'm talking about the cycle the cycle that everyday American's indulge in. Example: A parent who insists on buying cheap Chinese-made, flashy, clothing from Target so her kid can look dazzling at elementary school. Anyone who buys anything on sale at WalMart. Or, business owners who can afford to pay benefits, but do just the minimum allowed by law so they can make a payment on their timeshare. Someone has to pay the price for cheap goods and it's ultimately all of us in terms of joblessness, crime rates and hopelessness.

We are a society literally clawing, scratching and biting over each other to get to some imaginary "top." And while aspiration is what makes America powerful, it also is the source of its greatest ills. A cycle needs to be broken in only one spot to stop itself. That spot needs to start with basic healthcare for everyone, in my view. Some basic human rights- codified since ancient times -- include those listed above. If we simply start with a firm belief in any one of them, though, we could literally break the circle and begin a new circle of tapping real human potential for good.

I have more to consider on this, clearly. Perhaps that's best for another post.