(Melchizedek Communique, MC031509) It was a bizarre picture of people inhabiting the underside of Hollywood. It was "The Day of the Locust."

The 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West was later made into a movie, also titled "The Day of the Locust." Various interpretations of its meaning have been made. West's use of the locust in his title "calls up images of destruction and a land stripped bare of anything green and living." [1]

The novel is set in the heyday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal", referring supposedly to a new deal of the cards for Americans. In "The Day of the Locust", its characters are desperate for employment and their personal stress manifests in bizarre ways. The book ends with a crowd crushing each other to death at a movie premiere.

ITEM: Police do not know what prompted the chaos involving hundreds of people outside the Park Central New York hotel in Manhattan yesterday evening. They were there to audition for "America's Next Top Model," police said. "It was pretty scary," Jessica Paravati told WNYW-TV. She said she was caught up in a stampede after waiting on line overnight, hoping for a shot at stardom on the reality show. [2]

Various exotic financial instruments are "a locust-like alternative to producing anything at all," writes Thomas Geoghegan in the latest issue of Harper's magazine. Instead of making widgets, we are making credit-default swaps. This has been caused because "we dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the time of the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter's term." [3]

Why would Capital invest in factories paying, say, 5 percent on the investment, when Capital could invest in exotic financial instruments paying much more? And so, as usury was allowed to expand, Capital moved away from manufacturing and into the more remunerative financier gadgets instead, argues Geoghegan (op. cit.) [3]

Capital has gushed out of manufacturing and into banking. "Basically, we're all waiters now; we're bowing and scraping and working for the banks." [3]

This theme of usury continues in another article in the same issue of Harper's magazine: "Usury Country" (by Daniel Brook). [4]

"Some people think our financial collapse was the result of a technical glitch" [3] and not the inevitable result of an unnatural practice of causing money to breed money. "The most hated sort [of wealth-getting], and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it," wrote Aristotle. [5]

Incredibly, U.S. lawmakers and government leaders are frantically engaged, at this time, in an effort to prop up this parasitic locust of usury. The press keeps repeating this is "an economic crisis" when it is truly a usury crisis. At least one U.S. Senator, however, is saying, Let the creature die. Senator Richard Shelby reportedly states, Shut 'em down. "We let the market dictate everything else. We could let the market dictate this," he said. [6]

The U.S. government cares greatly that persons can continue paying their mortgages. Not much concern though is given for those who rent: if they cannot pay, the banks are not in for a loss. But if mortgage holders walk away from their debts, that spells trouble for bankers. So ask yourself this: Is it the people paying mortgages the U.S. government cares about, or is it the money owed to bankers? Why is there no concern for the hardships of people who rent? (Answer: Renters' troubles do not much affect the banks.)

------- Sources -------
[1] "The Day of the Locust", Wikipedia, March 15, 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Locust
[2] "Chaos erupts in crowd at NYC 'Top Model' auditions", AP, March 14, 2009
[3] "Infinite Debt", by Thomas Geoghegan. Harper's magazine, April 2009, page 31
[4] "Usury Country", by Daniel Brook. Harper's magazine, April 2009, page 41
[5] Melchizedek Communique, MC022409
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/mc022409.html
[6] "Sen. Shelby: No Bank Too Big to Fail", by Greg Brown. Street Talk, March 13, 2009