“See how cruel the whites look. Their lips are thin, their noses sharp, their faces furrowed and distorted by folds. Their eyes have a staring expression; they are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad.”
— Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake), Chief of the Taos Pueblos, to Carl Jung

“Of course there is something wrong with you [but] you are not being judged. I don’t mean to offend you personally, but do you not belong to the human race that has killed over 100 million members of their own species in the twentieth century alone?
You mean guilt by association?
It is not a question of guilt. But as long as you are run by the egoic mind, you are part of the collective insanity. Perhaps you haven’t looked very deeply into the human condition in its state of dominance by the egoic mind. Open your eyes and see the fear, the despair, the greed, and the violence that are all-pervasive. See the heinous cruelty and suffering on an unimaginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict on each other as well as on other life forms on the planet. You don’t need to condemn. Just observe. That is sin. That is insanity. That is unconsciousness. Above all, don’t forget to observe your own mind. Seek out the root of the insanity there.”
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

The Gift Of Atonement

The entity called Wall Street graciously offers us a profound and wonderful gift: its willingness to sacrifice itself to atone for our culture’s many transgressions: Our greed, gluttony, arrogance and avarice. Our fear, corruption, cowardice and apathy. Our relentless destructiveness, carried out with a genocidal fury sufficient to guarantee our own destruction, as well as that of all other living beings.

Therefore, let us accept with gratitude Wall Street’s willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice: its desire to throw itself upon the sacrificial altar so that we might find salvation.

“While eyes were on the absurd charade of the "threat of Islamist terrorism to western civilisation", the real doomsday scenario that poses a far greater threat to western civilisation...was gathering pace right next to Ground Zero, in Wall Street.”
— Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian

Yes, in its humility this citadel of world finance and sanctuary of globalized capitalism—alternatively called “The Beast,” “Whore of Babylon,” “Satan’s Lair,” “Wealth’s Demonic Pimp and The Lamb-in-Wolf’s-Clothing”—is masking its willingness to sacrifice itself on the altar of collective atonement with a frantic, grasping mega-grope for anything of value it can still yank out of your pockets, purse, savings or retirement accounts, or your child’s or grandchild’s future that has managed to escape its grubby clutches until now.

But I say unto you, be ye not fooled! In truth, Wall Street begs to die. Is it not our duty to heed Wall Street’s heroic call and slay this wicked Beast?

Why Does Wall Street Want To Die?

Wall Street begs to die because it has debased its own image by exposing itself as the ultimate fraud for the entire world to see. Sure, it may have deluded you into buying into its many hallucinations, among them the notion that “markets” are the “best” and “most efficient” arbiters for the “distribution of capital, labor and resources.” But only the most deluded of Wall Street’s practitioners actually believed such drivel. Wall Street instinctively knew, as greed’s most prominent purveyor, that its “greed is good” ideology was destined to lead to its own destruction. It was only a matter of time.

“Industrial capitalism is eroding and kleptocracy is replacing it. If the system is saved it will only be temporary, and an even greater financial crisis will emerge.”
— Grand Theft America

Thus, when its own greed finally caught up with it—in the form of a “subprime mortgage meltdown” of its own making—Wall Street instinctively went crawling to Uncle Sam for a massive handout. Babylon’s Whore has done this for generations, of course. But this time, it forgot to use its customary discretion, opting instead to whimper out its alarmist demands in the form of a high-profile, 2 & ½ page memo. Having at last totally exposed itself for the charlatan it has always been, Wall Street now begs that we put it out of its many miseries.

The Lamb Lies Down On Wall Street

Hear ye, my people, the sacrificial plea that bleats from the lips of our Lamb-in-Wolf’s-Clothing! Yea, though the lamb doth bleat with demonic fury that We the Sheeple of These United States must allow it to fleece us for all that is not nailed down, BE YE NOT FOOLED! In truth, the Lamb pleas with us to end the unholy reign of affliction that it, with our slavish allegiance, hath wrought upon the world.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.”
— Alan Greenspan

“But why is the Lamb-in-Wolf’s-Clothing possessed with such demonic avarice?” you might wonder. The answer, O wicked little sheep, comes as you understand how the Lamb’s evil is merely a projection of your innermost soul, and your heart’s desire. Your most grasping, clutching, greed-filled, and fearful delusions are what gives it life.

Its “life,” of course, is not the life experienced by living beings. Rather, it’s the soulless half-life possessed by machines, thought forms, ideology, dogma and demonic hallucinations. Like Lord Voldemort, Wall Street’s only use for living beings is as fuel, which it devours with the ruthless gluttony of a black hole. A collapsing star. A McMansion-dwelling exurbanite whose daily commute from gated “community” to the central city comes courtesy Hummer H2. Wittingly or otherwise, humanity has enslaved itself to this cyber-mechanical beast, unconsciously becoming its impotent, delusional accomplices in exchange for its palliative of shabby “consumer goods,” its service as guarantor of The American Way of Life, and its promise of a “brighter tomorrow.”

“The $700 bailout bill is being driven by fear not fact. This is too much money, in too short of time, going to too few people, while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings...Why aren't we considering any other alternatives other than giving $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect the investors? Why aren't we directly helping homeowners with their debt burdens? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy? Isn't time for fundamental change to our debt-based monetary system so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the US Congress or the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs?”
— Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) Ohio, Address to US Congress, September 29, 2008

But now Wall Street tests you! By pretending to extract a last-ditch lifeline from you, even as it offers itself unto its sacrificial altar, it carefully observes your responses. It probes your cowardice, your proven fears, your known weaknesses. Once again, it tests your steadfast impotence. It understands, from the bottom of its soulless pit, your addictions to its “services,” and knows that any sudden withdrawal fulls you with dread.

Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the Lamb-in-Sheep’s-Clothing delights in how you fear all evil. And that you’re even more terrified of all that is good. It knows its prey well.

The Sell-Out You’re Gonna “Buy-In” To, Like It Or Not

Generations ago, in the midst of the “Great Depression,” a prominent American politician asserted that “the only thing” Americans “have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Today’s American politicians rationalize their aiding and abetting of Wall Street’s desperate power-grope into our pockets as America’s “buy-in” to prop up a decrepit financial structure threatening imminent collapse. How do you feel, little sheep, as you watch your political “leaders” sell you out to their corrupt “buy-in” of a quickly collapsing market ideology destined to plunge much of the globe into Great Depression 2.0? As you—bleating with mounting fury from your squalid, shrunken pasture—stand witness to the continued robbery of what little that remains, at which moment do you suppose you’ll finally grasp what your politicians are most terrified of? And who they’re really working for?

“Greed: It stands at the beginning of every boom. Without it, there would have been no Roaring Twenties that led eventually to the Great Depression. Without it, there would have been no New Economy, the wild times of the dot-com era in the late nineties that led to the crash of 2000. Without it, investment banks and hedge funds wouldn’t have seen the market for credit packages and derivatives driven to insane heights – a market that is now collapsing and may possibly take the world economy down into the depths with it. Greed is not only at home with both large and small investors, but also in many businesses where executives enjoy obscenely high salaries while wanting to pay their employees third-world wages.”
— “The Myth Of The Market” | U. Schäfer | Sueddeutsche Zeitung | 4 October 2008

What besides “fear itself” keeps you clinging desperately to Wall Street’s soiled loins, frantically sucking its rancid “udder” for one last drop of hallucinatory “nourishment”? As you debase yourself, kneeling before the Beast, did you feel it inscribe its mark upon your forehead? Did you even once consider the parable of how Jesus “overthrew the tables of the moneychangers” and “cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple”? If Christ declared that you “cannot serve God and mammon,” then who is the Antichrist? Who is it that demands you serve ONLY mammon? Did you ever suspect that the Antichrist would arise in the guise of sacrificial lamb, clad in wolf’s clothing, swearing total allegiance to the god of mammon?

“This Sucker Could Go Down”

Some folks have sung sorrowful laments of how “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Now that you suddenly find yourself with nothing left to lose, rather than donning sackcloth and wailing mournfully from your ash heap, shouldn’t you celebrate your newfound freedom? That you have nothing left to lose is a given. Any society that has become so degenerate that it finds itself scrambling furiously to shake loose the few remaining coins from the pockets of its most vulnerable on behalf of its most privileged has nothing left to lose. That the vulnerable masses have, willingly or not, relentlessly heaped untold riches on its ultra-elite for generations only confirms the society’s total degradation. So when “this” decrepit, unsustainable, unjust “sucker” finally does “go down,” shouldn’t you rejoice that the nightmare is coming to an end?

“Look, I don’t call it a bailout. This is a robbery. [Wall Street bankers and their accomplices in the U.S. government] are looting the U.S. Treasury. I can’t believe that they’ve gotten away with it so far. [O]ver the last eight years--but really over the last twenty-eight years--[they] have operated [like this]. I don’t know how quite to describe Wall Street, but just imagine a bunch of junkies just putting more junk into their system[s] and constantly in some kind of feeding frenzy to get more of that junk. And it’s like the U.S. Congress just decided to take a big hypodermic needle and give them another injection--a word they actually like to use--of the junk, of the heroin. I think that nothing has made me more upset, other than the war, in the last umpteen years...”
— Michael Moore on the Wall Street bailout, er, “robbery.”

Of course, another nightmare is just beginning. The ultra-privileged do not willingly or easily dislodge from their exalted perches. You may encounter resistance as you try and sneak away from your coerced servitude to the pentagon-enforced financial-consumerist psychopathoplex, generically known as “The American Way of Life.” OK, let’s stop kidding ourselves here. You have no intention of quitting your service to the psychopathoplex; the pain involved in untethering yourself is more than you think you can bear. Oh, really? C’mon, stop sniveling and look on the bright side...

What caused the Wall Street collapse?
“This financial crisis is a mess. And now Congress is poised to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion in taxpayer money with no strings attached. They can never find the money we need for health care or education, but somehow they can write Wall Street a $700 billion blank check. That's $2,176 from every man, woman and child in the United States.”
— Lawrence Lessig, Change-Congress.org

Mere decades after we Americans chose to “gain the world” for the reasonable price of our collective soul, impending economic collapse is poised to snatch even this tawdry prize from our clutches. But won’t you feel at least some relief at ridding yourself of that white elephant? Sure, you’ll still find yourself bereft of a living soul, but think of all the time you’ll have for friends and family once your big screen TV finally bites the dust and you can’t simply open a new line of credit at Best Buy to finance a replacement. Or after Comcast shuts off your cable TV and broadband Internet and you can no longer tune into “Army Wives,” download Beerfest off of BitTorrent, or tune into any of your favorite “reality” shows.

When you no longer have a job to commute to, think of how much you’ll save at the gas pump! Once you’re finally evicted from your subprime McMansion in that sterile, climate-controlled gated community way out in the exurbs, think of the excitement you’ll feel as you relocate your family to your new shanty deep inside the reeking bowels of your nearest megalopolis. Only half the size of your recently repossessed H2, it might feel a bit cramped at first. But hey, “home is where the heart is,” right? Besides, once the “long arm of the drive-thru window clerk” quits stuffing cheese burgers and fries down your gullet, you’ll quickly slim down. That’ll leave plenty of room for you, the spouse, kids and surviving pets.

What Gives Life To Delusion Is Your Belief

Every illusion is an assault on truth. A sustained assault turns illusion into delusion, illusion’s more pernicious sibling. Cling to your delusions and they become like Weebles. While they may wobble, they won’t fall down.

“[Previous] to our time no economy has ever existed that, even in principle, was controlled by markets. In spite of the chorus of academic incantations... gain and profit made on exchange never before played an important part in human economy. Though the institution of the market was fairly common since the later Stone Age, its role was no more than incidental to economic life.”
— Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. (Rinehart & Company, Inc, 1944)

How did you come to believe that Wall Street benefits you in any way? You’ve witnessed again and again that it has failed you. You’ve heard its lies and have seen how it robs you, deceives you, and wishes to destroy you. Do you refuse to trust your own “lying eyes”?

“But didn’t you say that the Beast wants to sacrifice itself to atone for our sins?” you ask. That’s the simple version of reality. The expanded version is that Wall Street remains unconscious of its own death wish, yet it is intent on sharing its wish with you. What it has forgotten is that you give it life. Like any tyrant, it needs you, but you don’t need it. Your destruction guarantees its annihilation.

The global financial system, of which Wall Street is a major component, is what Ivan Illich called a “radical monopoly.” A radical monopoly is any system, institution, product or service that has become virtually inescapable. You may want no part of it, but you will find it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to evade its omnipresent touch. A simple monopoly is difficult to shake off once its tentacles have metastasized throughout an environment, and its spurious permanence has poisoned the mind and stifled the imagination. By contrast, a “radical monopoly is generally discovered only when it is too late.” (emphasis added)

For your own good, and for the good of your friends, loved ones, your neighbors and the planet, let us join together and kill Wall Street. There’s no time to lose.