Merdeka Poem 2012 Part Deux - Democracy and the Opium Den of Fantasy Money and Usury

Democracy and The Opium Den of Fantasy Money & Usury

Leaders, don’t give me paper money

To buy my votes,

Don’t build bridges and roads

On money created in fantasy,

For you are robbing the future

From me and my family,

Leaders, don’t tell me that

You can cure all the problems of humanity

By printing more and more money,

For each scribbled paper that you print

Steals the value of my savings,

Each QE that you sanction

Is a sanction against me,

Yet, again and again you climb

On your soapbox and assure me,

"Trust in me, believe in the economy,

“Vote me in, for change you can believe in!”

Leaders, don’t promise me

That things will change for the better

When you topple the incumbent,

With quotes from the Quran

About morality, when in your policy

You say nothing about the

Immorality of paper money,

Leaders, don’t speak to me of God

For who are you trying to kid?

Who will explain to God and His Prophet

For the usury and interest that

Is in the very water that we drink

And food that we eat?

Leaders, stop dressing your thirst for power

With the cloak of charity for others

And the pious dress of a religious teacher,

For you are taking the road to hypocrisy,

Wanting to be electable by the majority

And leaving behind the Adab of the Nabi,

And the morality of Unity of humanity

In the Oneness and sublime Uniqueness of God,

The One True guarantor of Love, Truth, Mercy and Beauty!

If you are playing

The Game of Democracy,

Do not waste your time with me,

Sell your fantasies and dreams

To those still drunk and dazed

In the Opium Den

Of Fantasy Money

And Usury.

………………………………………

A GROWING AWARENESS. There is a growing awareness in the West, especially amongst the more thoughtful, about the scourge of Wall Street greed and fraud in the City (of London), the two biggest centres of finance and credit in the world. Also becoming a focus of progressive research centres, NGOs and financial reform activists is the role played by the Federal Reserve of U.S. in first permitting, than openly perpetuating and encouraging the financial regulatory system (or lack that of, actually) and Wall Street executive compensation structure that profits the irresponsible and the fraudulent bankers of the big banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. The new word coined by the activist about these crooks in pin-striped suits is 'the banksters', a wordplay of bank and gangster. And they are not far from wrong.

NOT HIPPIES. I take seriously the view of these activists, social commentators and pundits because they are not hippies travelling in a Volkswagen van and typing their blogs while smoking a joint. They are often former Wall Street suits themselves, financial whizkids, respected writers, lawyers, auditors, former securities and finance industry regulators, professors of economics and attorney generals. But things are just so bad, that fraud, cheating, open abuse of power and insider information are so toxic that these guys (and gals) simply had to voice out their conscience.

NO PROSECUTION. Since the 2008 credit catastrophe have you heard of a successful conviction of a single Wall Street boss? No, because more often the regulators are former Wall Street veterans themselves. And when their tenure ends they will return to the welcoming arms of the companies that they were regulating. On top of that, the banksters' friends in the government and regulators (read politicians, including, alas, President Obama himself) have declared certain banks (who coincidentally are the biggest contributors to political funds) to be 'too-big-to-fail'.

MOM & POP BUSINESS. By that logic, if you are a family hardware store in suburbia, you deserve to fail if the economy tanks, demand falls and you are over your head with debt. You didn't do anything morally wrong, you just made a couple of bad judgment calls... something which is normal and acceptable in a capitalist economy. But the Government won't come and rescue you. Too bad.

DAYLIGHT ROBBERY ON A TITANIC SCALE. But if you run your investment bank / insurance company / fund management into the ground by overselling stocks and lying to your customers (see recent Facebook and the old dotcom IPO fiascos), or by encouraging predatory lending to the poor and disadvantaged (sub prime mortgage), or by disconnecting profit from risk (by dumping the toxic debt out of your books to another bank or fund manager), or by spreading the contagion of easy(read worthless) credit worldwide to the point of bringing the 8 billion souls on Earth to the precipice of global financial armageddon... well that is okay. You are too-big-too-fail. The government will simply print more money (QE or quantitative easing they call it) to 'lend' to these banks. Each dollar that the government circulates into the industry(not the real industry and commerce, by the way, but the finance industry) devalues your savings. Pundits have said that this present generation of well-dressed thieves have successfully engineered the biggest theft in history of real wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich few. The bastards.

A GLOCAL PROBLEM. This problem is not a U.S.A. problem. This problem is not a European problem or even a Chinese or Japanese problem. It is a global epidemic that can affect you, me and a Bedouin camel herder in the middle of the Saharan desert. Because are you aware that these financial powerhouses have started their speculative trading into food and commodities futures and derivatives? The curs. 

TOO BIG OR TOO CORRUPT TO FAIL? Too-big-too-fail is an intentionally deceptive adjective for these financial giants. The more accurate term should be too-corrupt-too-fail companies. Because the hard truth is that our current global fiat money system and usurious interest-bearing financial system is riddled with SYSTEMIC corruption and fraud.

These writers are heavy hitters
in the world of finance, securities,
currency systems and interestingly
enough, regime change. Very
informative, very scary.

LOOKING FOR DEEP THROAT. Malaysia will be celebrating its Independence Day this coming 31st August. Less celebratory is the upcoming national General Election. Some say end of this year, although those who should be in the know tells me that it would be early 2013. The election issues are the same infantile stew of religion, racism, money and provincialism. As far as I know no single political party is addressing the singular riddle knocking on the borders of our country, which is how to stay connected to the global economy while trying to immunize the country from the pandemic of banking fraud, speculative plays in the commodities and food market and the crumbling edifice of the world's reserve currency - the American Dollar. People tell me Malaysia is 'relatively' safe because our central bank has been conservative in their policies on lending and proprietary trading by the banks. But is it really? I spoke to Moses and I think we deserve to have our own local pundits and activists to keep an eye on the banking sector. But who will write? And most importantly, where can we find our Deep Throat?

Hmm.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way