I just read Bex's brilliant diary on leverage and how it can be used as a sledgehammer, and was struck by his idea about how to use it to reel in Wall Street. If banks are highly leveraged in the loans they make to Wall Street, which they are, the closing of consumer accounts means not only that they lose the cash in their vault, it means they lose 20x that amount in loan capacity and all the interest that would have earned.
So when the masses get behind a "move your money" day, it's a sledgehammer. But if you change the concept of a fixed date for rallying people to move their money to a floating date, like, oh, maybe the day after the Dow tanks suddenly the OWS movement doesn't seem so "unfocused". Read the post, it's beautifully explained.
So I'd like to suggest extending Bex's powerful notion into a Web 2.0 campaign game called the Dow Decline Trigger, or DDT for Wall Street. If traders can use leverage to improve their advantage, so can we.
The idea is that we organize a network of people around financial actions that taken en masse--like closing a bank account--exert leverage. Each action is triggered by a specific market event, like a Dow decline of more than 2%. So, let's say the game is to get people to commit to closing their bank account, but to wait until the next time the Dow declines 2%. Like the Maveric's surfing contest, which doesn't have a fixed date but is triggered by a massive swell, part of the fun is watching the weather, anticipating the event to take shape. Imagine the daily market ticker being like a power meter, and when the needle hits 2%, it triggers the sledgehammer: thousands of people take a coordinated financial action.
What other actions would exert leverage? Get a million people to take $500 out of their account for 5 days at the same time the day after Wall Street tanks? Get a million people to not shop at all for a day the day after Wall Street peaks? I'm sure there are better ideas. The idea is to use Web 2.0 to help drive OWS 2.0, by coordinating people to execute financial transactions actions that exert leverage. Can you imagine the impact if Wall Street suddenly realizes OWS doesn't end at tents in parks, but meets them where they live and breath?
Thanks, Bex for the great post.