SAN FRANCISCO, May 11, 2012 — Those who wonder why the Occupy Wall Street crowd hasn’t been heard from much lately deserve an explanation. Many veteran Occupiers have retired now that the economy seems to be on a steady upswing.
“Clearly the economy couldn’t have turned around without us,” said Lance Noble, a longtime Occupy Duluth activist, the sole remaining occupier still holding down the fort in downtown Duluth, Minnesota. “I told our demonstrators they weren’t needed anymore and dismissed them.”
Noble himself plans to give up his post as a rabble-rouser soon. “My work here is done,” he comments. “I’m moving on next week to changing the climate in Washington, if not the environment itself.” He’s planning a pro-windmill demonstration in Livermore, California. “If we can just get a few more windmills up and running, I think we can clean up the ozone layer in a few months, just the way we finally cleaned up Wall Street.”
Wall Street financiers agree that the work of the Occupiers is largely responsible for recent economic growth. “At first I was a little skeptical,” said financial adviser Oliver Warbucks IV. “At first I figured the Occupy crowd was a motley bunch of guitar-strumming unemployables with nothing better to do, but I can see now that they had a major influence on lowering interest rates and creating more housing. Frankly, I don’t know where this country would be now without them and their protest signs.”
Wind power AP
Warbucks held a press conference to personally thank the Occupy movement for its fine work in changing the money-grubbing ethics on Wall Street, which he said has finally seen the error of its ways. “I can’t speak for my colleagues on Wall Street, but I underwent an economic born-again experience.”
Warbucks says he has hired several Occupiers to work for him as stock market runners and, inspired by “The Buffett Rule,” is also donating a third of his income to the Internal Revenue Service. “It’s the least I can do,” he said. “Warren is no fool. He always knows what he’s doing financially, so I expect to get my money back tenfold from the IRS.”
Occupiers claim that the movement helped head off a major Depression through their defiant tactics. “It was looking pretty grim there for awhile,” notes Duluth Occupy leader Noble, “but once the media gave the Occupiers a little exposure, we could see the banks start to knuckle under to our demands. It’s been very encouraging.”
He adds, “A few banks, like Washington Mutual, even went out of business — all due to us, of course. That was no mere coincidence, believe me. The banks that didn’t listen to us quickly went under.”
Economic experts agree that the Occupy movement has led to increases in gross domestic product and has given the consumer price index a new lease on life. “I hate to brag too much,” Noble goes on, blushing slightly, “but bankruptcies are way down since Occupiers put the pressure on the government. I talk to Tim Geithner almost every day. He tells me that the 99 percenters are down to 98.7. Things are really looking up.”
Noble himself is broke but optimistic that his new windmill-tilting movement to help the environment should put him back on his feet financially. “I’m investing my last $275 in a windmill plant even though I lost my savings by investing in Solyndra solar panels.
“I’m convinced that windmills are the next big thing, but if that doesn’t work out, there’s always hamsters on a treadmill to give us the clean energy we so urgently need.”
Gerald Nachman is the author of several humor and entertainment books, most recently Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan’s America; Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s; and Raised on Radio about the golden age of radio. For years Nachman was a critic and syndicated columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Daily News.
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