Laurel Papworth

From Sunday Star Times on Stuff.co.nz – and I’m gonna say up front: there is no point being a prophet if you do not use every means available to be heard, and understood.

Wayne Lachore…

… emerged from the Coromandel to warn the world of a looming catastrophic collapse of western economies, and the US in particular.

Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae were disasters waiting to happen, he wrote in a series of email essays to big-hitters from Prime Minister Helen Clark down. The hugely indebted US was effectively bankrupted, sufficient to cause a global financial vortex.

but no one listened to him.

But no one, he says, saw fit to publish his work or even engage him in dialogue, except Fonterra chairman Henry van der Heyden who thanked him for his emails, and then a year ago gave him an hour of his time.

Boo hoo, say I! I’m sorry – and I don’t want to pick on the man – but if you are convinced of something, passionate about it, have a vision, it’s your responsibility to get the word out, be open to ridicule and ignorance and stand up for what you believe in.

Lochore was writing from the perspective of what he describes as an “obsessive” 35 years in and around markets, 20 as a front-line trader, including seven years in London.

If you are that obsessed why aren’t you sharing it with the world? You don’t need to do a boring old text blog, like this one – try:

• sit in front of your laptop camera and do a video blog for YouTube, or 5min.com (howto and tutorials video sharing site)
• self publish with lulu.com
• audio record yourself and make it a podcast, upload it to iTunes.
• create a Facebook group, call it Chicken Little Economies or something and invite in economists and others in your social network to read the discussion groups

Seriously, anyone who waits around these days for a politician to take notice, for a publisher to publish, or someone to read your email essays, is gonna have a long wait:

His series of emails in 2005 spun out of advice he read being given in a newspaper (“not yours”) “encouraging people to take actions I knew, from my background and my continued reading, were plain dangerous”.

“When I read of the sort of gearing that was going on in the US I realised we were in big trouble. There was no way that level of debt can be digested.”

Blogs are the bane of newspapers. I understand that. They think we are nicking their content – consuming it then regurgitating it, vomiting it back up. But maybe we are just doing our civic duty? If you read something and it’s just plain wrong – and you have the experience and foresight to see that – ignore the ‘loser generated crap’ tag and blog some sense into the discussion.

Wayne’s the younger brother (by nine years) of Sir Brian of rugby fame, and therein lies the harbinger of a prophet spurned.

“The trouble with being related to someone famous is that they take up all the oxygen,” says Wayne, 59. “It can be very frustrating.“

Sometimes others are taking up all the pixels. Well, that’s the nature of the beast – being heard as signal above the noise. Whether it’s a pesky younger brother or a 110million other bloggers, you have the same limitations and opportunities to have your voice heard as everyone else.

I think that politicians don’t listen to individuals. They listen to voices – plural. Walk in with a grassroots campaign behind you – a few thousand on a forum, tens of thousands on a Facebook group/fanpage – and you represent the voters. Otherwise you are just another crackpot sending out email essays, or blogging into a void.

He quotes Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, saying that the US had no better than a 10% chance of avoiding economic Armageddon.

“I give them zero chance,” Lochore wrote.

Armageddon? o.O Whether we are spiritual or not, surely we can know that the Messianic impulse now belongs to everyone, not a chosen few with charisma and the ability to sway? Bring passion and commitment and knowledge and a will to change the world – the Democratization of the Prophet. Everyone may apply. Everyone is Chosen. No excuses.

A blog, some podcasts, a few cheap YouTube videos – maybe he couldn’t have changed the world but he would’ve reached those that had the ears to hear him. And felt that he had achieved at least something.

So what is it that you need to tell the world, hmmm?

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