Wall Street Protests

[Ulic Qel-Droma]

this is life man. you join the winning side, or try to kill them.

cuz, sure as hell, the winning side aint gonna join you.


you cant tame a wild animal.

you can't remove greed from humans. it's apart of us.


if you could, you might as well remove compassion and love and all that good shit too, cuz we wouldn't be human without any of those.

the people that are really in a rut arent the ones protesting, they're too busy trying to fucking survive.

[Death2Theft]

Well you can sure balance things out when you arm the citizens.

Originally Posted by Ulic Qel-Droma

this is life man. you join the winning side, or try to kill them.

cuz, sure as hell, the winning side aint gonna join you.


you cant tame a wild animal.

you can't remove greed from humans. it's apart of us.


if you could, you might as well remove compassion and love and all that good shit too, cuz we wouldn't be human without any of those.

the people that are really in a rut arent the ones protesting, they're too busy trying to fucking survive.

[Gridlock]

Well, I for one would like to start hearing some ideas from the street as to what they'd like to accomplish.

I think its manifesto time.

[Culverin]

Take the money out of being a politician. Period.
- No kickbacks
- No executive positions with benefiting companies after stuff gets approved.

They have to clean the system down in Washington. Without it, any solutions enacted will just be washed over by congress at a later date.

[taylor192]

Originally Posted by wstce92

If majority of people were right, that would mean majority of people are smart. Come back to reality for a second and realize that intellect is not evenly spread across humanity.
Intellect is rare, ignorance is common.

Originally Posted by Gridlock

Well, I for one would like to start hearing some ideas from the street as to what they'd like to accomplish.

I think its manifesto time.

I've quoted the above in hope that you might put 2 and 2 together.

The street will not come up with ideas, cause if they did, they'd have realized how easy it was to work the system and wouldn't be part of the 99%.

[taylor192]

Originally Posted by Gridlock

Alright man. I give up. You are right. The system is fantastic for all involved and whiny bitches just need to go back to starbucks for a latte.

Another excuse. That's all you have and all you are, a poor excuse.

ow instead of being a whiny bitch, you can go back and try to address ANY of the issues I've raised:
- Do you shop at Walmart or Whole Foods?
- Would you chop you retirement plan in half in exchange for more jobs and fairer wages?
- Why are people bitching when the average inflation adjusted income is the same today as 5 decades ago? and taxes are lower than 2 decades ago? and luxuries much cheaper than decades ago?
- Why do people bitch about Wall Street making money speculating, then line up to buy condos?

You cannot address any of these with an excuse, and pitiful excuses at that. So if you're done, go, I'm tired of your excuses.

Originally Posted by Gridlock

Fuck this shit. No need to multi quote this because I don't fucking care.

Another excuse, and a poor excuse since you bothered to reply.

[taylor192]

Originally Posted by wstce92

Intellect is rare, ignorance is common.

Using an argument like "a million people can't be wrong" is the WORST kind of argument and just shows how in need of education and naive you are.

Thank you, well put.

[Spartacus]

Poll: NYers Support Occupy Wall Street, Taxes On Rich - YouTube

[Death2Theft]

This isn't a hostage situation with 100 demands. All that needs to happen is END THE FED. Thats it nothing more.

Originally Posted by Gridlock

Well, I for one would like to start hearing some ideas from the street as to what they'd like to accomplish.

I think its manifesto time.

[Death2Theft]

To clean out the white house all they need to do is bring back the death penalty but only to politicians convicted of treason.

Originally Posted by Culverin

Take the money out of being a politician. Period.
- No kickbacks
- No executive positions with benefiting companies after stuff gets approved.

They have to clean the system down in Washington. Without it, any solutions enacted will just be washed over by congress at a later date.

[Culverin]

Well, this is sort of a scary story: Marshall Garrett, one of the protesters who was arrested during Saturday’s Occupy Wall Street march for trying to hold a General Assembly in Citibank, told the Village Voice what went down that day. Apparently a plainclothed cop had been very well informed of the situation ahead of time and hidden himself in the crowd.

Here’s what Mr. Garrett told the paper:
But what was unknown to us and to a lot of people that day, including those in Times Square, was that there were undercover cops already there, paid to be disruptive and to be loud. One undercover cop present [at Citi] was louder than the entire group.

Update: Citibank Protester Talks About Undercover Infiltration In Occupy Wall Street | The New York Observer






Stolen from Reddit.

Re-establish and maintain the separation between investment banks and commercial banks. The Glass–Steagall Act kept our country depression free for over 70 years. By maintaining a separation between investment and banking, it allowed banks to effectively serve their clients needs, instead of their own.

It was not until 1999, and the creation of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, that the separation was broken. Within those 12 years, our country has experienced a dot-com bubble and a large financial crisis. Both of these situations where created by commercial banks investing their large quantities of consumer money into speculations. I urge you, President Barack Obama, to bring back sound investment to the United States by re-instating a separation between investment banks and banking.

White House Petition

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petition...banks/ywCMKDfn

[taylor192]

Originally Posted by Culverin

This has been discussed by my favourite economist many many times, and its about time it was done.

[unit]

ron paul said that as president he would take the wage of an average american, 30k/year

i would have LOVED it if he asked the other candidates in an open question, how many others would agree to do that? just try to tell hermain cain to take a 30k/yr salary. he would just dodge the question and go on some 999 bullshit.

[gars]

Occupy Wall Street Is Half Right

What's there to say about Occupy Wall Street? The answer isn't so simple. Some complain about taxpayer bailouts of businesses. Good for them. In a true free market, failing firms would go out of business. They couldn't turn to Washington for help.

But many protesters say they're against capitalism. Now things get confusing. What do they mean? If by "capitalism" they mean crony capitalism (let's call it crapitalism), a system in which favored business interests are supported by government, I'm against that, too.

But if they mean the free market, then they are fools. When allowed to work, the market has lifted more people out of the mud and misery of poverty than any government, ever.

The protesters are also upset about income disparity. Here again we should make distinctions. To the extent the country's income disparity is the result of crony capitalism, it's bad.

Yet even if America had a true free market, there would be income disparity. It's a byproduct of freedom. Some people are just more ambitious, more energetic, and more driven, and some have that ineffable knack of sensing what consumers want. Think Steve Jobs.

But it shouldn't matter if the income gap between you and rich people grows. What should matter is that your living standard improves.

Your living standard many not have improved lately. Over the past decade, median income fell. But that's an aberration largely caused by the bursting of the real estate bubble. Despite Wall Street protesters' complaints about rich people gaining at the expense of the poor, the poorest fifth of Americans are 20 percent wealthier than they were when I was in college, and despite the recession, still richer than they were in 1993.

And income statistics don't tell the whole story. Thanks to the innovations of entrepreneurs, today in America, even poor people have clean water, TV sets, cars, and flush toilets. Most live better than kings once lived—better even than the middle class lived in 1970.

Some protesters say they hate the market process that makes that possible. They call rich people "robber barons." That term was used by American newspapers to smear tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. But Vanderbilt and Rockefeller were neither robbers nor barons. They weren't barons because they weren't born rich. They weren't robbers because they didn't steal. They got rich by serving customers well. As Burton Folsom wrote in The Myth of the Robber Barons, there were political entrepreneurs, who made their fortunes through government privilege, and market entrepreneurs, who pleased consumers.

Rockefeller and Vanderbilt were market entrepreneurs. Vanderbilt invented ways to make travel cheaper. He used bigger ships and served food onboard. People liked that, and the extra customers he attracted allowed him to lower costs. He cut the New York-Hartford fare from $8 to $1. That helped people.

Rockefeller was called a monopolist, but he wasn't one. He had 150 competitors—including big companies like Texaco and Gulf. No one was ever forced to buy his oil. Rockefeller got rich by finding cheaper ways to get oil products to the market. His competitors vilified him because he "stole" their customers by lowering prices. Ignorant reporters repeated their complaints.

In truth, Rockefeller's price cuts made life better. Poor people used to go to bed when it got dark, but thanks to Rockefeller, they could afford fuel for lanterns and stay up and read at night. Rockefeller's "greed" may have even saved the whales. When he lowered the price of kerosene, he eliminated the need for whale oil, and the slaughter of whales suddenly stopped. Bet your kids won't read "Rockefeller saved the whales" in environmental studies class.

I have at least found some common ground with some Wall Street protest supporters. Joe Sibilia, who runs the website CSRWire (Corporate Social Responsibility), told me, "You can't have an environment where people are betting on financial instruments with the expectation that the government is going to bail them out."

So we agree that Wall Street bailouts are intolerable. Now we just have to teach our progressive friends that truly free markets work for the benefit of all.

Occupy Wall Street Is Half Right

[Manic!]

Originally Posted by unit

ron paul said that as president he would take the wage of an average american, 30k/year

i would have LOVED it if he asked the other candidates in an open question, how many others would agree to do that? just try to tell hermain cain to take a 30k/yr salary. he would just dodge the question and go on some 999 bullshit.

It doesn't matter what the President gets paid because everything is paid for. Food, accommodations, vacations are all paid for. The wage is chump change compared to how much they will make after there term is up.

[Death2Theft]

Yeah guys no problem here just move along.
If derivitives are so damned "complex" they should just be illegal. But no the tax payers can just foot the bill on this one again. Anyone else noticing a pattern here from this to the credit default swaps? Ooooh it's too complex to explain so just shut your middle class mouth and foot the bill peon!
FDIC To Cover Losses On $75 Trillion Bank of America Derivative Bets | Problem Bank List


Potential losses on Bank of America’s massive $75 trillion book of risky derivative contracts has just been dumped onto the FDIC by the Federal Reserve.
Derivatives, once described by Warren Buffet as “financial weapons of mass destruction” are complex contracts entered into for speculation or to hedge risks linked to a wide variety of other (derivative) financial instruments such as currencies, commodities, interest rates, bonds, etc. In testimony to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in March 2011, Buffett warned that the trillions in derivatives held by major banking institutions could be “disruptive to the whole financial system” and that the risks were “virtually unmanageable.”
Regulators have fought to rein in risky trading in derivatives by banks under the Volcker Rule, but the banks have fiercely resisted and, so far, have been winning the battle. Derivatives contributed to the financial meltdown in 2008 when the government was forced to bail out giant insurance company AIG whose huge derivative bets exploded, putting the entire financial system at risk. Part of the problem is that due to the immense complexity of derivatives, regulators are unable to formulate rules that would effectively regulate them or reduce risks.

[bing]

nvm read the post wrong.

[gars]

It's insane to think that Bill Clinton apparently made 40 million in public speaking in 2007. Though - it's probably not just because he was president - he is an amazing speaker. I doubt George Bush Jr would ever make that kind of money speaking.

[Spartacus]

croney capitalism ftw???

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks#p/u/14/N_XtXhiekQk

[dinosaur]

Well, Herman Cain has the solution!



That will fix the problem of the rich not getting richer fast enough to create those jobs.

[Gridlock]

And now they are creating "The Streisand Effect" with this:

Occupy Wall Street protesters will not be allowed to bring sleeping bags, tents back into Zuccotti Park - NYPOST.com

Basically, the city, through the police are asking them to leave the park for cleaning, and then they won't be allowed back with sleeping bags or tents-basically, freezing them out.

So full of fail. They should have just let them burn out on their own.

[Culverin]

FYI, that park isn't a public park.
It's a private park.

[Spartacus]

lol this won't end well.

[Death2Theft]

Private? Bought and paid for with whose money?

[Death2Theft]

Cain can go blue in the face with his 9's but thats not going to do shit for 79 trillion his buddies are ramming down the peoples throats. If you TOOK ALL of the "wealth" from the wealthy in the USA thats a paltry 2 trillion. So good luck paying for the derivitives bubble with your 9's.