Sneak Preview - "King of the Hoboes"!!!

Here's a preview of "King of the Hoboes" going on sale this weekend at Amazon...

As they neared the Wall Street intersection, she was amazed at what Hyatt had achieved here. It was almost as a scene from Les Miserables, as the hordes of poor people rallied around the Resolver. He vented his rage against the monuments of greed that were the financial institutions towering above them, shaking his fist as the vagrants and the brokers alike stared in wonder. The police arrived and took up positions around the crowd, none of whom remotely considered a confrontation and a possible crack over the head.             

             

“Look around you!” Hyatt had already started his harangue despite the fact it was well before noon. He had started off talking to a couple of students before a few rookie bankers came by and began questioning his motives. He eagerly engaged them in debate, with two of his massive Disciples standing on either side of him as he lambasted him from atop his milk crate. Once he got on a roll there was no stopping him, and enough students and vagrants had gathered so that he was able to begin preaching in earnest to the motley crowd.       

                                                              

“Look around you!” he gestured dramatically upwards at the majestic buildings appearing as the walls of a great canyon encompassing them. “Do you not think that if they sold just one, only one of these buildings and gave the money to the poor, each and every one of you would not have enough to buy clothes as nice as what the man next to you is wearing?”

“Heck, I think I would be worse off than I am right now,” a vagrant standing between two hoboes cracked, evoking a round of laughter from his neighbors.

“Why don’t you tell ‘em to get a job?” a broker called out belligerently. 

“Why don’t you lend one of them that $300 dollar suit you’re wearing and see whether or not they come back as your supervisor?” Hyatt demanded. “Do you believe the hype from your Wall Street movie, that the difference between you and them is your work ethic? Do you think you worked harder pushing your pencil in your ivory tower while half of these men were digging foxholes in foreign deserts, fighting for your right to push those pencils? Do you think you worked harder to keep your job while their companies collapsed along with the economy, and this Government of yours took away their homes, their cars, and everything they had? Do you think you were more industrious when you invented those Ponzi schemes that liquidated their savings accounts and their investment programs? Woe unto you swindlers and defrauders! You cry out to these police officers for not chasing down the robbers and burglars prowling the streets for money to feed themselves. Yet you steal a hundred times as much with one stroke of a pen!”

“You’re up here running us down, yet we’re the ones paying the taxes that put those welfare cards in your pockets!” an accountant yelled at him. “The Government’s taking almost half my money. I’ll bet they’ll never see a penny of yours.”   

        

“Spoken like a true Republican!” Hyatt called back. “How much’re you making there, brother? Half a million a year? Or maybe your boss is making that, and you’re only making half of what he does. Tell you what, I’ll be willing to split half of what you’re making with the Government, I’d have no problem with that at all. Now, I know that there would be lots of privileges I would have to exchange in order to earn that kind of money. I would have to sit in an overstuffed chair seven and a half hours a day in front of a big glass window overlooking this entire area, in a temperature-controlled environment with some fine-looking, big-legged secretary at my beck and call. In order to do that, I would have to give up my freedom to walk the streets all day and beg for chump change just to buy a cup of coffee. That sounds like a mighty big trade, my friend. Let me ask our brothers and sisters here: how many of you would be willing to make that deal with these devils?”                      

                                          

A great roar rose from the crowd as many waved their hands in agreement. Those standing near the accountants heckled and ribbed them until they walked away in embarrassment.       

                                    

“Hey, I got a good one for you all,” Hyatt outstretched his arms. “Let’s take a gander at that Federal Reserve Bank down the way there on Liberty Street. Now, that place is holding onto ten percent of the gold reserves on this entire planet. That’s right, you can take a tour and check it out for yourselves. Now, just in case you get any wild ideas, I’ll let you know up front that each of them bars weighs twenty-eight pounds. They aren’t them little bitty bars James Bond was chucking at Oddjob in that Goldfinger movie. Those guards working the late shift down there wear steel-tipped boots in case they drop one while they’re moving them around.”

“Why don’t you see if you can get us some free samples?” a hobo called out to a round of raucous laughter.                     

             

“Hey, I’m working on that brother,” Hyatt replied. “Now, at last count, that bank had assets of $1.75 trillion dollars. First of all, that’s Federal reserves, as in backup money, like the money you keep in your sock instead of your wallet. Second of all, that’s like a thousand billion bucks. If they gave that to you in singles, you’d die of old age before you could count your change.”         

                        

“Heck, I’d be willing to die trying!” another man evoked a smattering of cheers.

“Check this out,” Hyatt challenged them. “The national student loan debt, at last count, was $986 billion dollars. That comes out to about twenty-six grand per student, according to the Internet. That’s about what these bankers pay for their wives’ cars. Now, imagine a kid out of college, working at Mc Donald’s because the job he studied for is maxed out of spots. Can you imagine him trying to pay that kind of note before covering his room and board? Why don’t they just use all that reserve money to pay back that debt? They sure as heck forced them kids to take out those loans, telling them they would spend the rest of their lives working at Mc Donald’s if they didn’t.” 

        

There was another ovation from the crowd as all the students in attendance heard Hyatt’s battle cry on their behalf. Most had heard nothing but horror stories from friends who had graduated, and realized they were facing a similar fate upon entering the work force.

“You’d better get some schooling, Hyatt!” a broker challenged him. “Why do you think we have Federal reserves? Would you cash in your 401k to pay off your wife’s car loan?”

“I sure as hell would if my wife didn’t have enough money left over to put gas in that car!” Hyatt shot back to a resounding cry of approval. “I’d be able to start a new 401k just as sure as you could rebuild your Federal reserve!”

Eventually the crowd had grown so large that the Disciples had to join ranks in front of Hyatt to keep him from being knocked off his milk crate. He saw a police van pulling up to the curb and realized they might call this a disturbance. He whispered instructions to his men before turning the crate right side up and disappearing into the audience.