There are plenty of ways for citizens to “send a message,” either to their elected officials or any other perceived power brokers. Obvious ways include voting, writing letters to the editor or calling your congressman. In the case of businesses, you may choose to vote with your feet / wallet or participate in a boycott. But somebody who was apparently upset with the recent S&P downgrade decided on a slightly more, shall we say, direct method.
Earlier today, a plane flew over S&P headquarters trailing a banner that read:
Thanks for the downgrade, you should all be fired.
Fortune has learned that the person who paid to fly the banner is a Midwestern broker, who woke up last night with the need to vent at those who she believes are leading the nation into an economic morass.
“I originally wanted to fly it over Washington, D.C., but learned that you can’t do that,” says the broker, who asked to remain anonymous for job security reasons. “So I chose Wall Street instead, but didn’t specifically intend it to fly over S&P. I’m just a mother from St. Louis who feels the only reason we got downgraded was people in politics.”
It seems that whole idea about remaining anonymous to protect her job went out the window fairly quickly, as a later update to the article identifies her as, “Lucy Nobbe, a vice president with Wedbush Morgan Securities.” As plans go, this one seems to have had a few holes in it from the beginning, humorous though it may have been. For starters, who doesn’t already know that you can’t just fly a plane over the White House any old time you feel like it? And if you didn’t intend to fly the plane “specifically” over Standard and Poors, who precisely were you planning on yelling at about the downgrade?
Come on… fess up. Did Geithner help you plan this?
On the plus side, even though the economy may be doing poorly, Ms. Nobbe must be fairly well off. It costs a fair chunk of change to rent one of those planes, not to mention the cost for assembling the banner, etc.
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