MONEY IS A CIRCUS SHOW

MONEY IS A CIRCUS SHOW

A homeless population equivalent to the size of Los Angeles is

unacceptable, and with over five times as many empty houses,  

we have not only a moral obligation but also an economic         

imperative to come up with a creative way to fix this travesty.

                                                  Richard “Skip” Bronson

                                                  The Huffington Post, August 25, 2010

Living in Zimbabwe once,

I read in the paper that the Reserve Bank

had run out of currency in the capital of Harare.

No one could withdraw funds because the bank

had no bills. This went on for days until the government

had the Munich company under contract print more,

which was actually just one small step toward what eventually drove

the economy into absolute ruins so that by July 2008

the official inflation rate was reported to be 2.2 million percent.

“What?” I asked myself at the time.

How does the bank of a country's capital simply run out of currency?

How can you just print more legal tender? 

Given the situation, I thought that handing out herds of mombe

might have momentarily eased the plight—

cows remain a highly valued commodity in Shona culture . . .

                     yeah, I was waxing with disdain at the time

                     but it got me thinking. And now I think we should all return

                     to more of a barter system because banks and their lending and

                     their paper money are a farce. When bungled and corrupt,

                     the true circus of modern economics comes to town

                     with all its shabby tricks. Everyone just ends up

                     stuck in their seats holding greasy bags of popcorn—

                     to lengthen the metaphor—listening to the stout man

                     with the bullhorn direct our interests

                     because we are not in charge of our own show.

Zimbabwe has now completely abandoned

its dollar in favor of foreign currency, but I’m not really talking

about Zimbabwe in this poem. The underlying travesty

of money controls the world, just in varying degrees

of transparency—and, like chained bears ambling

on two legs for our trainers we are all part of the awful act.

Time to shut-down the lousy spectacle, but leave the tents up

                                                               for those in need of shelter.