You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The New Declaration of Independence looks more like a Declaration of Total Dependence. They demand immediate debt relief! For independence. Probably one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a long time. But it illustrates exactly what’s wrong with the 99%.
November 2nd, 2011 at 11:12 am
Put together by the Salon Staff? Isn’t this the same outfit that made it’s Rep by sucking up to those “1%”? I wonder how these Yahoos would feed themselves if they lost ALL their Ad Revenue? Never heard of a Homeless Man placing an $5,000 Advertisement to sell a Used Shopping Cart, have you?
Millionaire Marxist Meatheads.
November 2nd, 2011 at 11:44 am
Tried to read it, got nausous. Please keep these whiny morons away from me.
November 2nd, 2011 at 12:46 pm
If you picked on corrupt bankers and how those idiots are fleecing the country for billions as much as you picked on the 99%, you might actually be in a position to actually have an opinion about the 99%.
But it seems pretty clear you’re just interested in picking on people you think are “hippies” and more or less sweeping what’s wrong with the financial industry under the carpet, and as such…it just seems like a financial version of PSH–focusing on tangential nonsense hoping that nobody will notice that something is really, really wrong on WS, and the OWS folks actually do have some pretty good points.
The problem is those good points have really, really bad implications for the “all regulation is bad” religion. Keep the faith if you must, but that sort of thing frankly makes me think you’re not really in a position to be picking on them.
If you’re enabling and abiding the people who honestly did cause the problem, nobody really should care what you make of the politics of people looking for a solution.
November 2nd, 2011 at 12:49 pm
No, I can have an opinion about whatever the fuck I want. The bankers fleeced the public with the help of the .gov. A pox on them both.
November 2nd, 2011 at 12:52 pm
You can have an opinion on whatever you want, but in this case you’re flaming hypocrite.
Your pox seems to only really be directed at one half of the equation, and is a paper tiger in re: the bankers. You’re saying it, but you don’t really mean it.
November 2nd, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Oh, do enlighten me.
November 2nd, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Perhaps you missed the above:
You’ve been bitching a ton the past few weeks about the OWS, and your insistence that you’re mad at the bankers too, in an effort to appear “balanced” and to have taken a circumspect look at the issue,is transparently obviously nonsense.
You can’t complain about OWS wanting debt relief beig part of the problem and say “gee, I’m mad at the bankers too”…but also essentially ignore their role in all this and advocate continuation of the very set of policies that got us into the mess in the first place.
Shorter version:
OWS = evil socialist hippies!
Bankers = evil socialist fat cats…but we’ll just let keep keeping on and basically ignore them.
Well…I guess you can, one of the perks of the free speech we enjoy in this country. But you can’t do it without a whole lot of cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:02 pm
LOL. Yeah except the time to bitch about the banking failures was back when they were getting bailed out, which I did. To no avail.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:13 pm
I don’t think that gets you off the hook. It’s not just that the bailouts were bad.
If you’re in favor of the deregulatory mess that lets banks game the system and drain a fifth of the economy out of existence without consequence, you’re basically (well, not basically…you ARE) in favor of the same thing happening again.
It’s not enough to say “privatized gains, socialized losses” isn’t a good arrangement. Everyone from CPUSA to Ron Paul agrees with that statement.
If you’re actively in favor banks being allowed to game the system, engage in fraudulent practices, and basically do as they please, then I can’t see how you can complain about OWS being the dummies here or be upset at people who want handouts. Ignoring and abetting malfeasance in the financial sector while pitching a fit about a kid who wants his student loan forgiven and a trip to the doctor paid for isn’t just silly…it’s willfully oblivious.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Apparently, you’re having a conversation with someone else. I’m not on the hook for a thing. And I’ve never favored banks gaming the system. I no longer have any idea what you’re talking about.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:17 pm
To be fair…you could argue that “well, there’s no more money to bail them out, we’re totally out and the Fed should be dissolved anyway.”
An argument in spirit I’m 100% behind.
But in reality the political will to set up such an arrangement isn’t anywhere near close to existing–and as such, we may as well concede that govts aren’t going to let banks fail wholesale. They’re just not. We’re all going to be on the hook for what banks do at the point of a gun, and that’s just reality, like it or not.
As such, people have every freakin right in the world to be A) mad at banks and B) busy telling them NEVER AGAIN YOU FUCKING BASTARDS.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Which is too bad, as it’s not that hard to follow.
But before you cast aspersions about the people who are mad at WS, shouldn’t you pay a bit of attention to the issue? It’s kinda like all those people who struggle with F=ma and long division insisting those pointy headed scientists are full of shit about evolution and climate change.
I know it’s easier to boil the issue down to bumper sticker platitudes about hippies and welfare queens. But that’s not a very useful way to consider the issue, and this one kinda is important.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:29 pm
If you don’t like banks, don’t do business with banks. Seems to me these kids liked banks just fine when the money was traveling from the banks to themselves. Now that the banks expect them to honer the return part of the contract they think banks are evil.
Entitelment mentality.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:32 pm
A lot of people are pulling their money out of the big banks.
I’m all for it.
But you can’t just “not do business with banks”. The financial sector accounts for about four dollars in ten in our economy.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:58 pm
They have now stated that they are going to occupy the offices of all GOP members, which basically shows their partisan ignorance. I am not giving the GOP a pass, but until these children learn that the one party system on both sides of the isle are responsible I have no love for them.
November 2nd, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Jeffersonian nailed it.
November 2nd, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Uncle:
No, I can have an opinion about whatever the fuck I want.
Strictly speaking, true. Maybe not a valid, informed opinion, or one worth paying attention to, but you’ve clearly demonstrated that you can, in fact, have one.
Seb:
But before you cast aspersions about the people who are mad at WS, shouldn’t you pay a bit of attention to the issue?
Can’t do that, because as you point out, that might involve a recognition/acknowledgment that they have legitimate beefs. And then it’s so much harder to trivialize them as a bunch of dirty communist hippies.
November 2nd, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Man, I took October off from reading the news and I missed a lot.
There were SWAT teams forcing hippies to apply for loans against their will? HOLY CRAP!
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:36 pm
“We’re all going to be on the hook for what banks do at the point of a gun, and that’s just reality, like it or not.”
Too late. It’s been happening and only getting worse thanks to the actions of the Federal Reserve and the economic policies of several Presidents including Obama.
My biggest complaint with the OWS movement in general is they seem to blame the GOP for everything. When in fact, the Republicans and the Democrats share the blame for this economic mess. The policies and actions of our government as a whole are at fault. Of course, much of our problem is rooted in corporate influence in politics (corporatism).
The big banks suck. But they are playing the game with the rules they got congress to pass. Where does the buck stop?
I hate to see us (Americans) get divided along party lines.
November 2nd, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Notably absent from the list of people OWS blames for their high student loan debt with no prospect for employment: Their colleges.
November 2nd, 2011 at 4:14 pm
SayUncle – Don’t be a dick. Yes, it’s your website and yes it’s a free country, but don’t be a dick. Just don’t. The sarcasm and dismissiveness you show towards Sebastian is poor form from someone who otherwise makes a point of keeping above the muck.
I think Jeffersonian and, to a lesser extent, SayUncle are missing the point of OWS or are just applying trite stereotypes to anyone with a different opinion. Maybe SayUncle and Jeffersonian are just completely unaware of the back story to our current economic situation. I, however, was both alive and paying attention more than three years ago, so I’ll fill you in:
Read up on the Glass-Steagall Act. It was all about de-regulation and free capitalism, which most people here are for. The problem is that when you give someone the opportunity to steal and get away with it, chances are really good that they’ll take you up on it, and that’s exactly what happened. (This, by the way, is the reason why de-regulation and entirely unencumbered capitalism and free markets will always collapse. Remember, at one point in history there were no rules about commerce, lending, and borrowing. The reason we don’t still have that system is that people got screwed. Only then were laws enacted to keep people from screwing each other. Before you rain troll-hate, go read up on the Glass-Steagall Act. Go. Do it now).
This law, the Glass-Steagall Act, was pushed by red-blooded American capitalists and enacted by pro-free-market Republicans, and is pretty much the whole reason we’re in this quagmire now. The disastrous consequences of the Glass-Steagall Act are what I understand to be the main tenet of OWS. I’m sure there are whiney hippies wanting handouts among the OWS folks, but to dismiss them all as whiney hippies betrays that you’re both not paying attention and have no idea what you’re talking about.
November 2nd, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Sebastien, you seem to think that the anarchist OWS “movement” has something to say. It doesn’t. If you are trying to hang on the OWS “movement” some other goals, which you seem to spend no time articulating, then that’s the reason we are paying no attention to you.
November 2nd, 2011 at 4:19 pm
JohnHancock, you seem to have as little understanding of Glass-Steagall as the OWS spokesman who referred to the “Glass-Steengold tax”.
First of all, your claim that “pro-free-market Republicans” enacted the repeal of Glass-Steagall is a gross misrepresentation. The bulk of it was removed under the influence of Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers et al during the Clinton administration. And in fact, that group of Citigroup/Goldman Sachs connected people show up in Democratic circles more than Republican.
Glass-Steagall had nothing to do with “stealing”. It had to do with isolating different kinds of investment risk from retail bank customer deposits. And its repeal had very little to do with the recent financial system collapse, and in fact its repeal was actually helpful in allowing certain investment banks to be saved by merging with retail banks.
The Glass-Steagall refrain is just a bumper sticker slogan long divorced from real issues.
November 2nd, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Some reminders for JohnHancock:
http://biggovernment.com/cstreet/2011/11/02/corzine-firms-bankruptcy-reminds-us-dems-repealed-glass-steagall-opened-derivative-market/
And a more leftwing version:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/12-8
November 2nd, 2011 at 4:57 pm
@JohnHancock.
You are absolutely right. I did not consider the effect of the Glass-Steagall act on the lives of the OWS protestors. I would guess they have not either.
The Imperial Federal Gov’t had absloutely no right to “bail out” major banks and wall street brokerage houses. None whatsoever.
They did anyway.
The Imperial Federal Gov’t also forced banks to loan money (sub-prime mortgages) to people who could not afford to pay the money back.
No one forced any of these people to borrow money they oculd not afford to repay.
OWS has a legitimate gripe about Tarp and the bank bailouts. That is not really what the movement is about.
November 3rd, 2011 at 8:17 am
@19
“Of course, much of our problem is rooted in corporate influence in politics (corporatism).”
Perhaps corporations and banks would spend less capital influencing governemnt if it didn’t show the constant desire and ability to pick the winners and losers in Corpaorate America.
I suspect Boeing wishes it did more to influence The Obama Administration.
November 3rd, 2011 at 8:18 am
Please forgive the typo “Corpaorate”. My eyes aren’t awake yet.
November 3rd, 2011 at 9:36 pm
You’re right. Nobody up there is saying anything like “gee, bailing out banks that tanked our economy with tax dollars creates a moral hazard and is bad policy” or “banks that bet against the very securities they were selling are breaking the law”.
The Senate and the People of Rome called–they want an idiot like you to cute misappropriating their name, you fucking goon.
I could care less who your knuckledragging illiterate ass pays attention to.
The fact is, they’re getting people to talk about the financial sector chicanery that has shitcanned our economy. I know you don’t want them to because it has really bad ramifications for your braindead “all regulation is bad” politics, but the reality is the conversation is ongoing, and the OWS folks are way more popular with the general public than the TP, so you’ve already lost.
Start getting over it any time now.
And your mischaracterization of Glass Steagall is hilarious and revealing.
What it allowed is investment firms like Merrill Lynch toxic assets like CDOs they knew to be worthless into FDIC insured banks like BOA, so the taxpayer could take the hit on their lousy bet instead of the execs at ML.
That’s socialized losses in a nutshell, and while you’re correct that the Dems are just as dirty in the Republicans in this regard, the reality is it was a deregulatory move that allowed WS banks to engage in behaviors that the average Series 7 holder would go to jail over.
I know, as I have a 7 and a 66 on my license, and thus its been drilled into me that you can’t short stocks you’re telling people to buy and you can’t pretend something like a CDO written against predatory bullshit loans is “an asset”.
Grow up, you fucking child.
November 3rd, 2011 at 9:42 pm
(Couldn’t).
November 4th, 2011 at 11:54 am
I think the “7” on your license is your age, Sebastian.