The
Popsicle Index
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As
First Published in the July, 1999 issue
A
Conversation About the Popsicle Index
by Catherine Austin Fitts, Contributing
Editor
www.solari.com
When I was a kid, the way our neighborhood would figure things out
is by sitting on the stoops in front of our homes and having a conversation.
Some conversations lasted an evening, some conversations went on all
summer and some---like who was a better hitter, Ted Williams, Willie
Mays or Hank Aaron---were still going on when I left town. Conversations
were our way of finding out what gave us meaning. Conversations helped
us understand problems and find solutions. Conversations were how we
got smart because no one was as smart as all of us.
I was thrilled when Mike offered me the opportunity to write a column
for From the Wilderness. I learn and have fun. Best of all,
a column in From the Wilderness gives me a “stoop”
from which I can have conversations with you. The From the Wilderness
readership represents the richest accumulation there is of practical
wisdom about institutional deviancy in America. This is a readership
of people who have the wisdom to face the greatest risks and who can
help me figure out how we build wealth in a way that outperforms and
bests those risks.
CIA drug trafficking is like most deviancies -- a symptom of a deeper
spiritual problem. My interest lies in developing economic maps and
tools that will help us reengineer our investment of time and money
to support sustainable spiritual solutions. Integrating spiritual principles
into our management of resources is a necessary step to realizing the
blessings and avoiding the risks of our new technologies.
The economic models that we used in an industrial age are not compatible
with the developments of the last three decades. New technology increases
our interdependency. That increases the damage that our mistakes can
do to each other. If we want a practical example of how this works,
step back and take a look at how Y2K will impact our lives. Y2K is a
taste of “old model medicine”. It is what happens when we
integrate microchip technology into an old “win-lose” economic
model in which people keep their conversations to themselves and do
not share their maps and tools. We get a big mess.
Edward Deming once said, “There is no such thing as bad people,
just bad systems.” That’s my approach. While a jail term is
a more appropriate response to Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s
past conduct than the rewards they seek and receive, punishment and
scapegoating are not transformative strategies. Changing our incentive
system is.
Our current financial system encourages bad behavior. People who use
drug capital to finance their merger deals or their presidential campaigns
get ahead. Part of the reason is that the corruption has become deeply
embedded in our financial system. The problem is all of us. There are
more people in America addicted to drug money---whether drug industry
jobs and profits, purchases, investments, fees, related real estate
profits or campaign donations---than there are addicted to drugs. That
means people face an increasingly widespread resistance to doing things
right.
I am a high performance, ethical person whose firing by the Bush Administration
was on the front page of the Washington Post. I had $100 million of
equity in my investment-banking firm and my personal financial assets
were targeted and destroyed by the Clinton Administration. I speak from
experience when I say that that the financial incentives of leading
an ethical professional life in Washington and on Wall Street are reaching
new all time lows. The solution is not for everyone to stand up and
be a hero at extraordinary personal cost. The solution is systemic change.
Until we can make sure that men and women can protect their family's
financial security by doing the right thing, where they live, a spiritual
transformation is going to be a slow, sticky process. I am editing this
column at my mother’s kitchen table near Bolivar, Tennessee. I
completed the first draft of it in my office in the Edgewood community
in Washington, D. C. I live and work in both Bolivar and Edgewood because
the solution will come from the porch stoops along Main Streets of both
city and country. It begins with a conversation about the Popsicle Index
and how we create jobs and build equity for ourselves that will make
Popsicle Index go up.
The
Popsicle Index
What’s the Popsicle Index? The Popsicle Index is the % of
people in a community who believe that a child can leave their home,
go to the nearest place to buy a Popsicle and come home alone safely.
When I was a child growing up in West Philadelphia in the 1950’s,
the Popsicle Index was 100%. We were a modest neighborhood, even poor
by some standards. But we were rich in safety. Today, after years of
federal government supported drug trafficking and subsidy and loan programs,
the moms in my old neighborhood probably feel the Popsicle Index is
about 5%.
Mike Ruppert sometimes says to me, but the crime rate is dropping steadily.
My response is that national averages have their place but they don't
apply in specific cases. There are 63,000 neighborhoods in America and
what counts is each one, one-by-one. Moreover, the Popsicle Index is
not about statistics and it’s about a lot more than crime.
The Popsicle Index is about how people feel. Our feelings are real.
Our feelings and our thoughts invent our world. Our feelings determine
how we vote with our money in the marketplace or with our ballot at
the polls. Crime may be down, but any mother or father knows it takes
twenty years to raise a child and all it takes is one incident for a
child to lose their life, their peace of mind or their soul. Moreover,
even when reported crime is absent, the Popsicle Index can still be
very low. A lot of kids can die from cars driving through a community
too fast because the roads are poorly designed and people don’t
care much about each other. The absence of evil does not ensure the
presence of love. Conscious love is what must be present continuously
to raise healthy and safe children.
Here some questions about the Popsicle Index for you. Let me know how
you feel and we'll have a conversation.
How do We Organize Our Performance Around the Popsicle Index? -
Every evening, the nightly news touts the performance of the Dow Jones
index as a unifying indicator for how corporations are doing in the
stock market. Our corporate wealth is only part of our wealth. We need
a similar performance indicator to help us organize and focus our investment
in our people and their 63,000 communities—our schools, our infrastructure,
our small businesses and farms, our homes and community real estate
and land.
How do We Vote for the Popsicle Index with Our Money? - In a
healthy financial system, everyone in the system profits from helping
the Popsicle Index go up and loses sales and investment when their actions
- or the actions that they and their investors cause government to make
- cause the Popsicle Index to go down. That is why we need to use our
purchases, our media dollars, our bank deposits and our stock market
investments like a vote and “vote with our money.”
How do We Determine How Our Money Works to Impact the Popsicle Index?
- We can only manage what we can see. Democratic process and healthy
markets require sunshine. Only roaches prefer the dark. An essential
step to reengineering our investment around the Popsicle Index is community
level financial disclosure. The citizens of 63,000 communities in America
each need to share simple “maps” on how all the money and
resources work in each one of our communities.
How Can We Profit When the Popsicle Index goes Up? - Right now
the single biggest moneymaking opportunity in America is the profit
potential on making the Popsicle Index go up. If we own homes, businesses
and farms in a community with a low Popsicle Index and we figure out
how to get it to go up, guess what will happen? A lot of people will
make money. We will make money. What organized crime can destroy for
a profit, we can rebuild for a profit if we can figure out how to generate
sufficient profits to manage the expense of dealing with organized crime’s
control and influence over our government, law enforcement and courts.
How Can We Get Out of Debt and Into Equity? - The primary source
of financing large companies is equity capital. It comes from the stock
market. The primary source of financing communities, including small
businesses and homes, is debt. That means that communities - whether
schools, infrastructure, small businesses, farms or homes and locally
owned and controlled land - must pay far more to operate than corporations.
It means that corporations can outgun communities in the political process,
survive hard times, buy small businesses up cheap and attract our top
talent. No neighborhood and no democracy consisting of about 63,000
neighborhoods can be healthy with this handicap.
How Can We Use the Popsicle Index for Slug Management? - I divide
people into three categories: performers, followers and slugs. Performers
are people who give more energy than they take. Followers are people
who take as much energy as they give. Slugs are people who take more
energy than they give. CIA drug traffickers are slugs. People who make
money by rigging corporate profit with legislation that is bad for the
taxpayers are slugs. Anyone can be a performer or a slug. We decide
what kind of person we are. The problem with scapegoating and any non-performance
based approach is that it creates barriers. The barriers prevent diverse
performers - from different sexes, races, religions, technical and professional
disciplines, and creeds from collaborating on effective "slug management."
We need unifying high performance strategies that allow all Americans
to collaborate in positive ways if we are to free ourselves from the
slugs draining energy in our midst.
How
To Make The Popsicle Index Go Up
A theme that will reoccur again and again over the coming months is
one that Mike wrote about last month, and that is “The Pop.”
What is The Pop? The Pop is the increased value of equity that stocks
enjoy when they can be priced and traded in an open, liquid stock market.
Today, corporations take advantage of the Pop to get low cost equity
capital. The inability of small businesses and farms, community infrastructure
and residential real estate cooperatives to access and use The Pop
is one of the most significant forces working against democracy - and
the Popsicle Index. When access to equity capital is rigged for the
benefit of the few by the legal system and supported by dirty tricks
of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the markets that depend
on the “rule of law” and the “rule of performance”
can and must eventually fail.
Catherine Austin Fitts is President of Solari,
Inc. She is the former President of The Hamilton Securities Group, Assistant
Secretary of Housing in the Bush Administration and Managing Director
and member of the Board of Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. She can be reached
at caf@solarivillage.com.
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The Wilderness
Michael C. Ruppert
P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413 * (818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847 *
mruppert@copvcia.com
© COPYRIGHT 1998 - 2001, MICHAEL C. RUPPERT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
