WALL STREET, N.Y., May 1...Declaring that "only collective action can restore our faith in ourselves and each other,"  writer Igor Yopsvoyomatsky yesterday urged every American to "stop spending"  for one day next week.  

Speaking to a boisterous crowd in New York's  financial district, Yopsvoyomatsky said: "The neuro-economic manipulators have addicted us to consumption in order to enrich themselves.  And like drug addicts we must steal and lie to indulge our habit." 

He called on all Americans to " break the daisy chain of deceit that has strangled our lives. Stop lying and cheating and bribing each other." 

He called for a "no sale Sunday"  to protest the exploitation of the "consuming classes." 

"Can you go cold turkey on frivolous expense?" he challenged. "Can you show the manipulators that you can bring their system to a crashing halt?"

Yopsvoyomatsky, a recent immigrant from Pinsk, was on the first stop of a publicity tour to promote his new book "The Sociopathology of the Financial System " He led a contingent of "Desktop Desperadoes," writers who claim their books are so subversive they cannot even pay to have them published to Border's Books, hoping to have what he called a "guerilla signing." When turned away by store security he set up a table outside the store, grabbed a cordless mic and harangued the lunchtime crowd.

"Do you know what happens to sheep? They are slaughtered. Lemmings follow each other to mutual destruction. Rats under stress consume themselves. This is what they are doing to you."

"Who?" someone asked.

"Them..." Yopsvoyomatsky pointed to a skyscraper across the street. "The sleek, well-tailored men in the corner offices with the gleaming limousines waiting to whisk them to gourmet restaurants for caviar and champagne and later"--he sighed with a wistful look--"into the arms of their beautiful mistresses..."

A broker, unshaven, tie askew, shirt flopping untucked out of his trousers, stopped in disbelief. "Who?" he demanded.

Grunting with the strain,Yopsvoyomatsky hoisted his eleven hundred page book. "It is all here in painstaking analytic detail. They have created a polity of thieves..."

"A what?" the harried broker demanded.

Yopsvoyomatsky riffled the pages. "Under socialism people cheated and stole because they had nothing. Under capitalism they cheat and steal because they don't have enough. Under socialism the nomenklatura had it all..."

The broker shook his head with an angry squint.

"The what?"

"The privileged classes," Yopsvoyomatsky said.  "The ones with the powerful jobs, who shopped in special stores, had Black Sea dachas. Even a special lane to drive their cars. They had everything. The rest of us had to cheat, steal and bribe to survive..."

"That was Russia," the broker said. 

"What is the difference?" Yopsvoyomatsky said. "You have here capitalist nomenklatura. Bankers, hedge fund, private equity. They are allowed to create and circulate wealth among themselves. When they are ensnared by their own greed their cronies in government free them. Then they return the favor by hiring cronies to eight figure jobs...But they have done something much worse..."

"Tell them, Igor," a Desktop Desperado shouted and confided to a friend: "this is cool..."

"They have turned all of us into thieves, cheaters and liars so that we can continue buying pointless electronic toys they foist on us," Yopsvoyomatsky shouted. "You sir..." He approached the broker. "You give buy recommendation on bad stock to increase the value of your holdings..."

"That's a lie!" the broker shouted.

"Your client who you lied to owns restaurant that charges you thirty dollars for a piece of  farm-raised fish that they say is wild caught. A taxi driver who buys gasoline for price inflated by your speculation fixes the meter to raise the fare. At home, the plumber who lost mortgage on sub-prime insured by your CDO charges you thousands when all he had to do was replace a washer. And to add insult to injury he is having an affair with your wife, who is angry because she saw passionate e mail from your receptionist..."

The broker gulped and reddened. "So that's why he's been coming every day...And billing me for his time..."

"You open your mail, sir. The phone company has billed you two dollars for fictitious calls, calculating that you won't spend an hour on the phone to get the money back. Your credit card interest has been arbitrarily doubled and you have penalty for not paying. The hideously expensive private school wants a contribution or it won't even consider your superbly gifted children. The nanny has given your credit card  and account numbers to identity thieves in Slovakia. Meanwhile, her twenty dollar prepaid phone only has seventeen dollars in calls..."

" My God, you're right," the broker said with a stricken look. "We're all stealing from each other."

A contingent of motorcycle cops from the security checkpoint up the block arrived. "You are creating a traffic hazard, sir. You'll have to disperse..."

Yopsvoyomatsky climbed on his rickety table. "And look. They send the Cossacks  to attack us ..." The legs buckled and the table collapsed. Yopsvoyomatsky tumbled and was stunned by one of his falling books. "Police brutality," he shouted. 

He marched down Broadway, shouting: 

"What do we want?"

The crowd shouted, "No sale Sunday!"

"When do we want it?"

The crowd was puzzled. 

"Sunday?"

He arrived at the bronze statue of a bull, the symbol of BoA Merrill Lynch at Bowling Green.

"This bull my friends is perfect symbol of capitalism..."He paused for effect..." A bull screws passive cows. It takes huge shits wherever and whenever it wants and it gores anybody who comes into its pasture..." As the crowd roared he jumped on the bull's back. "We will show this bull what we think of it..."

Police moved in quickly and took Yopsvoyomatsky into custody. He was charged with obstructing commerce, orating without a permit and attempted sodomy of a financial icon.

The Daily Event is proud to have guest columnist Igor Yopsvoyomatsky, editor-in chief of paranoiaisfact.com, to answers readers' questions.

Dear Igor,

I sell souvenirs to tourists on the Staten Island Ferry and after eight years of Dubya I can't give America away. Nobody wants Statue of Liberty piggy banks,  FBI caps, "Brooklyn Rules" tees...Not even Michael Jackson wind up dolls. People used to be in awe of how cool we were--NYC, DC, the Grand Canyon, Hollywood. Now they come to sneer and feel superior.  Our plunging dollar makes us a cheap date. Our leaders get no respect. After Bush trashed the American brand I thought Obama would turn it around, but his novelty has quickly faded and now I'm stuck with a gross of  "Yes I Can" hoodies.  I'm afraid America will never be cool again. Is this paranoia or fact?

Distressed Peddler
Sunnyside, Queens

Dear Distressed,

This is fact. According to a recent Pew survey,the US ranked 117th on the cool index, right under Tierra Del Fuego. Only Russia, China, the UK and Zimbabwe were considered less cool than the US.

America created the 20th. Century in its own image. Victorious in two wars, innovative in industry and the arts, it was a magnet for the best minds and most energetic workers in the world. Everyone loved Detroit cars, Broadway musicals, Hollywood movies, American cigarettes and Elvis. American Capitalism vanquished Soviet Communism by promising eternal, exponential wealth. 

America was cool.

Now the American financial house of cards has collapsed. General Motors is begging Government handouts, Broadway is ruled by British imports,Hollywood is a limping subdivision of bloated conglomerates, the Marlboro Man died of lung cancer and Graceland is controlled by  Scientology.

Uncool.

In its ascendancy, the US had the coolest leaders. FDR betrayed his class to bring the US out of the Depression. Harry Truman fired MacArthur and stood up to Stalin. Dwight D. Eisenhower, wartime commander and Five Star General, turned on his brethren to warn  about the "Military-Industrial Complex." JFK,  brought hipness, taste and sophistication into the White House and  called Krushchev's bluff in Cuba.  Even Lyndon Johnson had the dignity to withdraw from public life when the people rejected him.

Cool.

During its  slow decline the US has experienced an unbroken chain of bizarre nonentities. Nixon inexplicably recorded his own incriminating statements; Carter, a peanut farmer with delusions of prophecy,  left office with a 19% interest rate; Reagan, an underpaid Warner Bros. contract player, actually believed that the rich would allow a minuscule portion of their wealth to "trickle down" to the working class; Clinton, a glib, small town Lothario, enabled Wall Street to take over the American economy. The Bushes are the greatest argument against ruling class inbreeding since the Hapsburgs. Obama has seen ingratiation turn into antagonism and doesn't know what to do about it.

Uncool.

American celebrities were the coolest in the world. Could anyone top Marilyn or Einstein (he was a citizen), Astaire, Grace Kelly, Jonas Salk, Jackie O, Brando, Duke Ellington, Broadway Joe--the list is truly endless. 

Now you have OJ, MJ, Lindsay Lohan, Elliot Spitzer. You have the dangerous nonentities of reality TV. Sports stars who turn themselves into bionic chimeras with steroids and surgery.

But don't feel too bad, Distressed. At least you can complain. Three quarters of the world must suffer in silence. They live  under the heel of oligarchical thugs who maintain their power by censorship, repression, torture, rape and outright massacre. 

Uncool

China hasn't been cool since Confucius, France since Sartre and Belmondo; the UK since James Bond and he wasn't even real. Italy has a seventy-three year old President who brags to teenage girls about his sexual prowess. Russia was cool with Rasputin, but Putin  poses shirtless like Mr. Universe and  Medvedev,  the little man who wasn't there, makes pronouncements that no one hears.

The entire planet is totally, hopelessly...

Uncool.