Why Wall Street Can't Be Fixed and How to Replace It

Part IV

Change the Story, Change the Future

Barack Obama was swept into the U.S. presidency on a promise of change. Like those who came before him, however, he has no doubt already learned that those who hold the world’s most powerful office are captive to its imperatives.

In President Obama’s case, the imperatives include appeasing Wall Street interests that are part of his political base. Not only did Wall Streeters provide substantial funding for his campaign and for many members of the House and Senate, they also have the power to bring the economy to a standstill if his policies displease them. To act against Wall Street, President Obama must be confronted with a popular demand from below too powerful to be ignored.

There is an instructive parallel between our present situation and that of the early American settlers who mobilized to declare their independence from the rule of a distant king. Then as now, leadership in dismantling the institutions of Empire did not come from within the institutions of Empire; it came from a powerful social movement that mobilized from below. Deep transformational change is unlikely to be achieved in any other way.

The power of popular movements resides in their ability through dialogue to change the stories that frame the collective life of the society and through their actions to create new cultural and institutional realities. People throughout the United States and the world are already engaged in this work of birthing the New Economy (by whatever name they might call it).

Chapter 14, “An Address I Hope President Obama Will One Day Deliver to the Nation,” presents my high dream for a future presidential announcement of a national policy commitment to a real-wealth New Economy agenda.

Chapter 15, “When The People Lead, the Leaders Will Follow,” draws out the parallels between the self-organizing resistance movements of the earlier colonists who achieved their independence from British rule and the subject colonists of our day who through their actions are declaring their independence from Wall Street rule—and it outlines a strategy for citizen action.