April 11th that is being coordinated “The Way Forward.”

http://anewwayforward.org/blog/

Greg from Cleveland, ANWF Organizer, on Democracy Now!

April 10th, 2009 by tyc

Greg Coleridge, our amazing Cleveland OH organizer, Director of Economic Justice at the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Comittee. This is a great piece on what you need to know to solve the banking crisis.

The ANWF Packet for 4/11

April 9th, 2009 by tyc

On Saturday, it’s us vs. the bankers and anyone else who wants to stay away from really thinking about what caused millions of our friends and family to lose their jobs, homes, and opportunities. Please bring a loved one when you come; it’s important for them to see what you care about. I’m doing something these days because I think about how I will feel if I don’t and the last chance we have to emerge from this scandal has been lost.

Someone out there wrote this to me: “Just a line to let you know I will be at the Lombard Public Library on Thursday April 9. I talked to the director, and he said it was alright to pass out flyers in front of the library. I’m an unemployed union worker and will be attending a meeting of an organization within the union on Thursday evening. The library director told me that between 500 and 700 people visit on an average day. There hopefully will be 30 to 40 people at the meeting. Several friends I have called also plan to come on Saturday. So I’m getting the word out best as I can. If I can help with other things please e-mail me and I will do the best I can.”

Please do it up today and tomorrow. We had so much coverage yesterday, our organizers are coming through left and right and coming up with constructive ideas and discussion. Thank you to Shane, Debria, and David Swanson for stepping in for the rest of DC, so extremely critically and with bravery.

Look at your rally listing to make sure you have the details on what’s happening at your rally.

Here’s what you need:

1. Flyers, letters, leaflets, signs made by people all over and by the state organizers.

2. We’re expecting people to participate in what can be the largest outdoor phonebanks in history - make that happen. Bring your cell phone and signs for your members of Congress — they are in your district this week. Also, people will be lining up at the closest ATMS to take their money out of the big 5 banks, very easy to get in line as well.

2. Please shoot video and upload to our bliptv account (user:breakthebanks, password: banks) or to Moyers’ channel at http://www.mediafire.com (user: watsont@thirteen.org pass: b1llm0yers). You can also send it with the snails (address will be in the comments).

3. Need or “day of” plans, in detail?

URGENT HELP NEEDED IN WASHINGTON DC

April 9th, 2009 by tyc

We’re sad to say that a dear person to our lead organizer in DC has passed away. We’re working hard in a time when we also remember the personal things that matter to us.

We need your help in DC to lead the rally there. Debria has offered to bring a few signs and hold onto the permit (granted!). Can you be that one or two or three contact people who can take on a few tasks: 1. bring a megaphone and bring flyers, literature, signs and 2. reach out to more groups in the last two days?

We have great speakers who will say what’s on their minds — Mike Lux, Jane Hamsher, Will Greider. Plenty of people signed up to go and many more planning to go. We’re close — we need you.

Please come help out. You got a megaphone or want to help rally at the rally? Email tyc@annewwayforward.org

Tiffiniy

Nassim Taleb’s 10 Principles for Sustainable Economy

April 8th, 2009 by tyc

Economist Nassim Taleb, and author of The Black Swan has a must-read piece in today’s Financial Times. Since you need to register an account with FT to view it (free), I’m reposting the 10 points here to make things a little easier:

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.

4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.

5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.

6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning. Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.

7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.

8.Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.

9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).

10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.

Great FT Article About Principles Going Forward

April 8th, 2009 by zephyr

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who wrote “The Black Swan,” proposes 10 principles going forward. These are the first three:

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.<

Our commitment to economic and banking reform set in stone

April 7th, 2009 by tyc

If this day ever ends and I am at one of our rallies, I will express in person how amazing it feels to fight for a system that is made to help every person and their families prosper.

Two main things you need to know going forward. What we are doing is organizing ourselves so that no system can shut us out, be it economic or political. We have for too long been without the ability to organize ourselves in the public sphere and our most serious ideas have fallen to ONLY table talk. All of the amazing hundreds of organizers have worked tirelessly for weeks because they want fair and real solutions to our economic problems. These are the early days for the ANWF movement.

We have cemented our specific demands for economic regulatory reform in stone in this letter we have written with the Consumers Union. We will not budge, though we will grow. This letter will be circulated at the rallies for many more to sign on. We thank all of you who have already. Groups who want to help out and be a part, please email donnydonny@gmail.com.

For day of guide to outdoor legislation and phone banks, please do see our day of guide. You may upload your high quality video to the Bill Moyers servers or tag them “anwf”, instructions on the same page.

We have flyers!

April 7th, 2009 by tyc

If you want a fun and easy way to help spread the word about the demonstrations on Saturday, check out or flyers page where you can print out several different versions. You can fill in the local details (time, location, etc.) on the computer first, or by hand after you’ve printed them out. Flyering is fun! Post them everywhere people go, hand them out to attractive strangers and then meet up with them again at the rally.

But seriously folks, it’s a great to help get more people to the demonstration. If you make your own flyer, email it to hello@anewwayforward.org and we’ll upload it for others to use.

(Pictured in the flyer above, which is by Crystal Regan, are Klaus Kinski, ALF, Kurt Vonnegut, and other famed creatures)