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Paul B. Farrell
June 7, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) "” Got your "Evil Plan" yet? You really need one. For self-defense, attacks, plain old survival. Why? Things are bad folks. And they're going to get much worse. Trust no one. Believe nothing you hear. Nothing.
While reading Hugh MacLeod's best-seller "Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination" over Memorial Day I ran across a Newsweek feature, "Mad As Hell," an ominous warning screaming: "The anger that fueled the Arab Spring is now boiling over in Europe. Could club-wielding protesters be in America's future too?"
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum announces a presidential bid and appeals to fellow social conservatives.
Answer? You bet. The Tea Party is just the tip of the spear in the upcoming American Winter that could explode any time into a full-blown "club-wielding" revolution, against Wall Street, Washington, Corporate America and the Super Rich now running our government.
What's an "Evil Plan?" For MacLeod it started as personal, years ago when he broke free of corporate life, became an entrepreneur, made "a good living, doing what you love, without being accountable to some larger company." That triggered a revolution.
At first MacLeod jokingly called his decision an "Evil Plan:" Declaring independence, he was no longer controlled by soulless companies, trapped like most Americans in jobs he hated, working to make the rich richer. But the real reason "Evil Plan" fit became clear years later: Some old friends still resent that he "pulled it off," believe he's "doing something morally reprehensible." In their minds, his independence is an "Evil Plan."
That got me thinking about Mubarak, Kadhafi, Assad and other Arab dictators. They resent the Arab masses for not "staying in their place," hate them for demonstrating, demanding, rebelling against their dictator's iron-fisted "rightful" rule. Yes, when the masses rise up, leaders see anyone who wants freedom as a traitor, anyone resisting authority is guided by an "Evil Plan." And from Libya to Syria, leaders who believe they rule by a divine right also have the right to shoot anyone resisting their authority.
King George III must have seen our Declaration of Independence as an "Evil Plan," right from the opening lines about: "All men are created equal" and "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another ..." Yes, "Evil Plans" can be treasonous, punishable by death.
MacLeod's reference to "Black Swan" author Nassim Taleb's warning is the perfect answer to Newsweek's question: "Could club-wielding protesters be in America's future too?" Ironically, the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy has suddenly reemerged, shifting into high gear from an Arab Spring to European Summer and next to an American Winter. The question is rhetorical. The answer is yes. It happened before, in 1776.
But can we pinpoint the timing of a revolution? No. No one saw the Arab Spring coming. Taleb offers a simple reason: "The bigger the historical event, the more random and unpredictable the consequences. Nobody saw 9/11, Pearl Harbor." Nor predicted the JFK assassination, Hiroshima, Rome's collapse, Black Plague or Microsoft and Apple's beating IBM. Nor the 1929 Crash, 2000 dot-com crash, 2008 subprime meltdown. All game changers.
But our leaders ignored warning signs. "Everything just happened when it did, everybody was caught with their pants down, and everybody just had to deal with the massive unpredictable consequences afterward."
But is an America Winter really next on some cosmic list of future Black Swans? Yes, and also quite predictable. Why? Because the same economic forces that drove the Arab Spring and today's European Summer are setting up a hot American Winter.
The Inequality Gap is that force. The gap divides the Super Rich 1% from the rest of America. In "The American Interest" a few months ago Francis Fukuyama, a leading neoconservative, wrote: "A study by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez shows that between 1978 and 2007 the share of U.S. income accruing to the top one percent of American families jumped from 9% to 23.5 % of the total. These data point clearly to the stagnation of working-class incomes in the United States: Real incomes for male workers peaked sometime back in the 1970s and have not recovered since."
Warning: The last time this Inequality Gap was this big was just before the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression. Trickle-up capitalism: The rich get richer, the masses get poorer. It happened with Arab dictators, in Europe, and it's coming to a head in America.
"We need an "?Evil Plan' to foil our own leaders http://on.mktw.net/iO2rmK" 11:39 p.m. EDT, June 6, 2011 from MKTWFarrell
"R.I.P. Reaganomics Revolution: 1981-2011 http://on.mktw.net/kKjyyQ" 12:18 a.m. EDT, May 31, 2011 from MKTWFarrell
"Reagan insider: GOP destroyed U.S. economy, Part 2 http://on.mktw.net/mpNsFB" 11:31 p.m. EDT, May 23, 2011 from MKTWFarrell
"15 ways both bulls and bears can stay happy http://on.mktw.net/mI5unM" 11:48 p.m. EDT, May 16, 2011 from MKTWFarrell
Paul Farrell writes the column on behavioral economics. He's the author of nine books on personal finance, economics and psychology, including "The Millionaire Code," "The Winning Portfolio," "The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing." Farrell was an investment banker with Morgan Stanley; executive vice president of the Financial News Network; executive vice president of Mercury Entertainment Corp; and associate editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He has a Juris Doctor and a Doctorate in Psychology.
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