Nope, it's central banking.

 

The key to reform is getting representation back in our hands, that takes removing the undue influence of a few with huge sums of money from buying politicians.

Just look at the top donors to candidate races today - there's Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and the list goes on and on - tell me, if that isn't a direct buy-in, then what is it?? How can we bring about accountability and regulation over the markets when they rig the system to prevent such things from happening?

This morning Amy Goodman was in Kansas City interviewing former financial regulator William Black (who served under President Reagan), and this is what he had to say about the mess we're in:

"If you look [at the Occupy protests], not just nationwide, but worldwide, you will see some pretty consistent themes developing," Black says. "Those themes include: we have to deal with the systemically dangerous institutions, the 20 biggest banks that the administration is saying are ticking time bombs, that as soon as one of them fails, we go back into a global crisis. We should fix that. There’s no reason to have institutions that large. That’s a theme. That accountability is a theme, that we should put these felons in prison... That we should get jobs now, and that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis. So those are four very common themes that you can see in virtually any of these protest sites... I think, over time, you won’t necessarily have some grand written agenda, but you’ll have, as I say, increasing consensus. And it’s a very broad consensus."

And why is it that deregulation has been happening all these years, until finally the train wreck happened?

I think it's clear - those who pay in and succeed by using the indirect bribes to help most politicians get into office get what they want in return - a system with weak oversight and even weaker rules, which oversees a process where strong independent oversight and effective rules are essential to keeping the wost behaviors in check.

While we rethink how businesses are organized, in the meantime we have to deal with what we have in place.

Former Financial Regulator William Black: Occupy Wall Street a Counter to White-Collar Fraud

Just look at the top donors to candidate races today - there's Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and the list goes on and on - tell me, if that isn't a direct buy-in, then what is it?? How can we bring about accountability and regulation over the markets when they rig the system to prevent such things from happening?

 

First off, let me say that I think we did a better job of articulating goals than Occupy Wall Street has since it began. And that's frankly an embarrassment for the protestors.

 

Now let's assume for a second that campaign finance reform is their only goal. Banks still aren't the only ones contributing $$$ to politicians so why are they making this about bankers? The AARP, which represents the interests of people in the 99%, spent $9,680,000 in 2011 alone. Why aren't these protestors occupying the AARP offices? Why not occupy offices of pharmaceutical companies? The fact is, the majority of bankers who work on Wall Street are in the 99% and they're being unfairly vilified for no reason

Notice how Chuck can't address the Federal Reserve issue and instead throws up the same BS the "progressives" have been blabbing about since the early 1910's - regulation and taxation.

 

It's because he's aware that without the Federal Reserve, his precious welfare state would crumble. He wants to have it both ways.

 

Progressives are like the beaten wife, and the government is the abusive husband - "Maybe next time he won't hit me... I can change him."

Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis

 

The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price, the price of time. Attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control.

 

By RON PAUL

 

To know what is wrong with the Federal Reserve, one must first understand the nature of money. Money is like any other good in our economy that emerges from the market to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers. Its particular usefulness is that it helps facilitate indirect exchange, making it easier for us to buy and sell goods because there is a common way of measuring their value. Money is not a government phenomenon, and it need not and should not be managed by government. When central banks like the Fed manage money they are engaging in price fixing, which leads not to prosperity but to disaster.

 

The Federal Reserve has caused every single boom and bust that has occurred in this country since the bank's creation in 1913. It pumps new money into the financial system to lower interest rates and spur the economy. Adding new money increases the supply of money, making the price of money over time—the interest rate—lower than the market would make it. These lower interest rates affect the allocation of resources, causing capital to be malinvested throughout the economy. So certain projects and ventures that appear profitable when funded at artificially low interest rates are not in fact the best use of those resources.

 

Eventually, the economic boom created by the Fed's actions is found to be unsustainable, and the bust ensues as this malinvested capital manifests itself in a surplus of capital goods, inventory overhangs, etc. Until these misdirected resources are put to a more productive use—the uses the free market actually desires—the economy stagnates.

 

The great contribution of the Austrian school of economics to economic theory was in its description of this business cycle: the process of booms and busts, and their origins in monetary intervention by the government in cooperation with the banking system. Yet policy makers at the Federal Reserve still fail to understand the causes of our most recent financial crisis. So they find themselves unable to come up with an adequate solution.

 

In many respects the governors of the Federal Reserve System and the members of the Federal Open Market Committee are like all other high-ranking powerful officials. Because they make decisions that profoundly affect the workings of the economy and because they have hundreds of bright economists working for them doing research and collecting data, they buy into the pretense of knowledge—the illusion that because they have all these resources at their fingertips they therefore have the ability to guide the economy as they see fit.

 

Nothing could be further from the truth. No attitude could be more destructive. What the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek victoriously asserted in the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s—the notion that the marketplace, where people freely decide what they need and want to pay for, is the only effective way to allocate resources—may be obvious to many ordinary Americans. But it has not influenced government leaders today, who do not seem to see the importance of prices to the functioning of a market economy.

 

The manner of thinking of the Federal Reserve now is no different than that of the former Soviet Union, which employed hundreds of thousands of people to perform research and provide calculations in an attempt to mimic the price system of the West's (relatively) free markets. Despite the obvious lesson to be drawn from the Soviet collapse, the U.S. still has not fully absorbed it.

 

The Fed fails to grasp that an interest rate is a price—the price of time—and that attempting to manipulate that price is as destructive as any other government price control. It fails to see that the price of housing was artificially inflated through the Fed's monetary pumping during the early 2000s, and that the only way to restore soundness to the housing sector is to allow prices to return to sustainable market levels. Instead, the Fed's actions have had one aim—to keep prices elevated at bubble levels—thus ensuring that bad debt remains on the books and failing firms remain in business, albatrosses around the market's neck.

 

The Fed's quantitative easing programs increased the national debt by trillions of dollars. The debt is now so large that if the central bank begins to move away from its zero interest-rate policy, the rise in interest rates will result in the U.S. government having to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in additional interest on the national debt each year. Thus there is significant political pressure being placed on the Fed to keep interest rates low. The Fed has painted itself so far into a corner now that even if it wanted to raise interest rates, as a practical matter it might not be able to do so. But it will do something, we know, because the pressure to "just do something" often outweighs all other considerations.

 

What exactly the Fed will do is anyone's guess, and it is no surprise that markets continue to founder as anticipation mounts. If the Fed would stop intervening and distorting the market, and would allow the functioning of a truly free market that deals with profit and loss, our economy could recover. The continued existence of an organization that can create trillions of dollars out of thin air to purchase financial assets and prop up a fundamentally insolvent banking system is a black mark on an economy that professes to be free.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204346104576637290931614006.html

First off, let me say that I think we did a better job of articulating goals than Occupy Wall Street has since it began. And that's frankly an embarrassment for the protestors.

 

Now let's assume for a second that campaign finance reform is their only goal. Banks still aren't the only ones contributing $$$ to politicians so why are they making this about bankers? The AARP, which represents the interests of people in the 99%, spent $9,680,000 in 2011 alone. Why aren't these protestors occupying the AARP offices? Why not occupy offices of pharmaceutical companies? The fact is, the majority of bankers who work on Wall Street are in the 99% and they're being unfairly vilified for no reason

>> First off, what I hear from sources like Democracy Now! and Thom Hartman is that the corporate media cherry-picked ding-a-lings to interview, intentionally to give the impression that the protesters were all naive and inept. Now I did hear some very articulate quotes of protesters on these news programs, but none on the corporate networks, who are all incidentally controlled by bigger entities like GE, Westinghouse, etc. The newsrooms know how to please the bosses, that's what they did in the run up to the Iraq wars, and I suspect they would see profit in doing the same this time as well. All that said, it is good to hear your praise of posters here, something which boosts our esteem even more so! ;)

I think they're articulating issues, not all solutions as of yet, so naturally campaign finance reform, though it is the elephant in the room, goes largely unseen. I'm sure Russ would agree, were he here to give his opinion on the matter.

I think they're making this about the bankers because of the financial mess we're in - the Wall Street financial tremor led to the near collapse of the financial system and widespread panic, which soured the economy, throwing millions of Americans out of work (unemployment visibly is around 10%, the added chronically unemployed may put it more towards 17%+), and over three million home owners lost their homes in 2009, & not much rebound.

Housing Forecast: More Foreclosures, Home-Price Declines - TIME

Now since a lot of the loans put out there were baited with honey on TV, sold to unsuspecting buyers with the terms as clear as mud, and are aptly termed by Black as "liars loans", and even if it was up to the buyers to think "gee, that sounds too good to be true, I better be careful!", it still happened and pulled the economy close to complete collapse. Unfortunately many were pulled in, many completely befuddled by the variable nature of the loans, and hence, this is what you get when the top investment "banks" invest heavily in politicians.

AARP is, yes, the biggest lobby on the hill, but without AARP, seniors would be, as they were in the past, unable to muster the capital to keep their pensions secure and secure their social security retirement income. So when the name of the game is money in politics, and we haven't a better option, then yes, even the masses of average Americans do get organized to fight for their benefits, lest even the crumbs be stolen away by the fat cats. If campaigns were publicly funded, airwaves made available for all, take the big money out of it, then AARP may not be so necessary as a bulwark against poverty in old age.

And the pharmaceutical companies are quite rightly to blame as well, given their cozy relationships and revolving doors with Washington. But even they did not cause this recession, and then Wall Street side-steps prosecution like they own the club called government, which is what pisses so many people off.

The majority of bankers who work beneath the top fat cats may be in the 99%, but as we all know from what ENRON did, the top floor was a ceiling to all below, and boy, what a ruse did they pull on everyone! Hence, the need for a full investigation, full disclosure of the facts, a full accounting of the nature of the derivative markets and the liars loans that were sold dripping wet with honey to so many unsuspecting Americans.

Pardon my rant, but I just feel that we all need to recognize that what must be done is first a consideration for those harmed, how deep it is, and what concerns they have - we're talking about millions of people affected in some very serious ways, and this recession may be around a while...

Now since a lot of the loans put out there were baited with honey on TV, sold to unsuspecting buyers with the terms as clear as mud, and are aptly termed by Black as "liars loans", and even if it was up to the buyers to think "gee, that sounds too good to be true, I better be careful!", it still happened and pulled the economy close to complete collapse.

 

And this is what it comes down to for me. A lot of what Occupy Wall Street protestors are complaining about is NOT the fault of Wall Street. Banks didn't force anyone to sign a ARM mortgage or purchase a home they can't afford. Banks didn't force you to take out loans that you have no chance of repaying. Banks didn't force you to go to college where tuition is $40k annually and rack up student loans. Banks didn't force you to max out your credit cards and spend recklessly.

 

At the end of the day, it seems these people want handouts and are looking for scapegoats instead of looking back on their own choices. You're mad you don't have a job? Then stop sleeping on the streets and look for a job. Or use your $2000 Macbooks and start a small business.

At the end of the day, it seems these people want handouts and are looking for scapegoats instead of looking back on their own choices. You're mad you don't have a job? Then stop sleeping on the streets and look for a job. Or use your $2000 Macbooks and start a small business.

 

Here's another pervasive meme I see a lot, mainly coming from the "conservative" side of the Hegelian Dialectic. "Work hard, and success will come to you. If you are not successful, clearly you aren't working hard enough, or you're not smart enough."

 

There is such a thing as systemic unemployment. Misallocations of capital caused by government moneyprinting destroys the ability of the lower classes to get ahead in life.

 

Watch this video for an explanation of why fiat currency hurts the poor:

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm7Z3sOqE84]Fiat Money: Explained in less than 4 minutes - YouTube[/ame]

 

If you imagine life being like a videogame, currently we're playing on "hard" mode. When you don't have "legal tender" laws (meaning people can choose the money they want to use), it's far easier to have a good quality-of-life.

Protestors got props from Thom Yorke today:

 

"(office chart) Chosen for and WARMLY dedicated to the brave souls PEACEFULLY sleeping on concrete OCCUPYing Wall Street and the City and elsewhere in the world,

attempting to express the anger and disgust most humans feel for the institutions that have failed to serve the needs of all but a few of the human beings of this planet.

Now yet those same institutions demand that we bail them out and in so doing sacrifice our own and our children's chances of a reasonable and safe financial future.

 

'Bangin Motherfuckers........'

 

now i need to go and do something fluffy"

 

/excellent contribution to thread

Oh wow, I expected a socialist rant and Thom Yorke actually said something I agree with. I think I'll listen to some Radiohead now.

And this is what it comes down to for me. A lot of what Occupy Wall Street protestors are complaining about is NOT the fault of Wall Street. Banks didn't force anyone to sign a ARM mortgage or purchase a home they can't afford. Banks didn't force you to take out loans that you have no chance of repaying. Banks didn't force you to go to college where tuition is $40k annually and rack up student loans. Banks didn't force you to max out your credit cards and spend recklessly.

 

At the end of the day, it seems these people want handouts and are looking for scapegoats instead of looking back on their own choices. You're mad you don't have a job? Then stop sleeping on the streets and look for a job. Or use your $2000 Macbooks and start a small business.

>> Oh sure, bankers didn't force anyone to sign ARM loans and such, but they created the perfect trap for unsuspecting citizens, making it all sound like "when banks compete, you win!" in the TV ads, and creating financial terms so complicated, even many in the field couldn't explain it well. Catches buried within the loans that after so many months, some loans reverted to marked increases in rates, suddenly making those who could afford it unable to make payments. Loans without collateral? Why was that ever allowed? Deregulation run amok, that's what I see. This at a time when workers have seen their real earnings stay flat, while real-estate skyrocketed in price.

So to allow these things to happen and to have pulled so many in risked not only those who took the bait, but those who bought these AAA rated securities made up of these shaky loans (even investors in Hong Kong got burned), imagine that - a ratings agency allowing these shaky loans to be bundled and sold as AAA rated securities, the highest rating available, these things were supposed to be as rock solid as granite. And they were the exact opposite. Then, the derivatives that were tied to these things suddenly began to shake as well, a bizarre market worth 20X what the real market is worth, it's like a casino on a casino, bets on the betting, and if that ever collapsed, who knows what might have happened. Big Risk: $1.2 Quadrillion Derivatives Market Dwarfs World GDP - DailyFinance

> Sure banks didn't force anyone to go to college where tuition is high, but to earn a descent salary, this is where young citizens are encouraged to go, and if that burden is too great, then it slows the economy since it dampens spending, life choices are delayed, thus so are purchases. Shouldn't we ease the costs born by students, who after all are busting their buns to get their degrees and working on top of it? They're willing to give it their all, are the future leaders, thinkers, inventors, technologists, technicians - the heart and soul of the high tech economic future - I believe too much burden is being put on their shoulders, and it's dampening down the number of applicants to places of higher education, not where we ought to be as we rely on well educated citizens for our modern society to function. I think partly this is a general political issue, since those with great wealth continue to press for further reducing their own taxes from an already low, low tax level, and then the burden for costs shifts to everyone else who hasn't the money to buy into politics. That is undemocratic and is undermining our future.

At the end of the day, these people are asking for justice and fairness in the system in which we all exist in, and ending the handouts and corporate welfare to the super-wealthy.

And since the Citizens' United case opened the floodgates of cash into politics, we need to restore our democracy by wording and supporting an unambiguous amendment to the Constitution - money is not free speech, corporations are not people, elections must be fair for citizens to rule their own government. Public Citizen Home Page We the People

I love the idea of people starting small businesses, preferably worker-owned democratic enterprises! But there has to be enough money in people's pockets to buy the goods and services being offered, and those currently working ordinary jobs, the 99% who are not the pure investor class, need to be paid better, and the tax costs shifted more towards the wealthy, plain and simple. The government can help stimulate the restoration of the economy, since it is the purchaser of last resort, and purchasing things that actually improve our infrastructure as well as money spent on peace initiatives pays back in ways that cannot be quantified by money returned alone - less suffering and more prosperity, less anger and more love results from these sorts of expenditures. No more bridge collapses in Minneapolis, aid for watering the dry places where people are in need elsewhere in the world. We make more friends with real improvement measures - Peace Corps over War any day, jobs and contentment are the bridge to lasting peace.

edit: I had posted a link to a life stream to the Occupy whatever city movements in the US, but after watching it for a lengthy period decided to take that down again.

The streams themeselves were OK, but in between is melodramatic, almost violent filth, which doesn't help the cause at all.

Occupy Amsterdam

 

Bankers are ******s :lol:

 

W*nker Bankers is so 2008.

The Netherlands is also very 2008

I enjoyed Groningen when I was there a few weeks ago.

 

You know the elites have to be pissing themselves with laughter right now. The government schools didn't teach the masses how money and finance works, so they don't know the solution to the problems they face, or where to direct their anger. It's all "Herp derp bankers" BS.

There's even one here now, let's see how they handle occupying when it's -50 lolz.

I don't think it's very large though, and our police are being cool cats.

^ Are you insinuating that the people freezing their asses off are idiots, too?

Haha, funny, when people who demonstrate for a fair world freeze, haha.

Uhm, but you are a fan of Jesus, aren't you?

 

What's wrong with you guys. You are actually driving me insane. Is the world you live in so great? Is what we have the best we can do? You watch this man, he's called Chris Hedges, he doesn't wear dreadlocks, nor Ralph Lauren shirts, (if it's those outer things, which hold you back from listening to the content) he's been covering a lot of recent world history as a war-correspondent, which you can learn when watching this clip. I'm still reading these threads, because what's happening at the moment bears a lot of potential for me, no matter if it will change anything in the end or not. Even a twelve year old can understand that this isn't something to lolz about. But keep lolzing, lolzing is so much better than trying to change the world.

 

Watch this seriously. And stop making fools of yourselves, kids. You mustn't support this, but being sarcastic about it is obscenely immature. Imho.

I never insinuated anything like that. O___o :c

 

edit: lol 5 hours later and i'm still upset and frustrated about this

I was at Occupy Melb on Friday morning when we were forcibly removed from City Square.

 

I can honestly say I'm traumatised. Lots of police brutality. Tazers. Attack dogs. Riot squad. Capsicum spray. My friends were kicked and punched as they were dragged from the square. One of my dear friends was arrested twice for "breach of the peace" when he was only taking photos, and both times released with no charge.

The whole square became barricaded off. Those who wanted to get out couldn't have at that stage, I can only imagine they had no choice but to be assaulted.

When those whom had been evicted peacefully reassembled on the intersection, we were charged at with horses and riot squad, when just days earlier doing the same thing police officers stood by merely monitoring the situation.

 

I am missing about $400 worth of valuables. I had forgotten to grab my belongings when I voluntarily left the square of my own accord. Despite being assured I would be able to collect anything seized at a council depot afterwards, only a small percentage of what was seized made it to the depot. Workers there told me everything else was sent to landfill. Since my belongings weren't there, I can only assume council put it in the trash.

 

The city mayor has called us liars, self-indulgent, pointless. All manner of things.

 

The same sort of thing happened this morning at Occupy Sydney. They were evicted at 5am with the same approach and methods.

 

I am safe and unscathed physically, but I can't forget what I've seen and experienced, so I'm going back next Saturday to fight for my rights along with countless friends I've made.

Never thought I'd legitimately say this, but fuck the police.

Don't forget it was the city council that ordered all of this.

I'm sorry to hear that Melbourne also has authoritarian police. As far as I know, Australia is actually one of the most-free economies in the world, so it was relatively unscathed in this latest recession. There really does need to be more widespread education about economics at these "Occupy" protests, though, because people don't take them seriously when they propose the same old solutions that didn't work in the past.

 

We live in a time when corporations employ massive numbers of people, so if any of these corporations goes bankrupt, thousands (if not millions) instantly lose their jobs. So it's political suicide for a democratically-elected politician to NOT bail them out with printed money.

 

The "occupy" people need to understand this, and they need to accept that things must get harder before they can get easier. Ending central banking/bailouts, and letting the big banks/corporations go bankrupt is the only way out of this depression. Only then can the economy "move on" and start producing the stuff people want again.

Hm, it seems the problem is in the process, where exactly though and perhaps on multiple levels, the problems exist.

Jay, just send yourself up there, and help inform the protesters then!

However you look at it, the problem exists, and it has damaged the global economy, set up great inequities as well. I think things are hard enough for a good 20% of the population or more, Pressure mounts when that many people are hurting, that many are unrepresented and the income inequalities are so extreme.

If bankruptcy was the option, I wonder if the psychological effect would have sent all the markets crashing hard, as fear and panic is not easily quantified? Perhaps though hitting bottom would have spurred on a press for answers and a real press for change like never before, but at a huge toll on us all.

I found one interesting sources of news on the topics at hand: Hot News & Views | AlterNet

The protesters need our help, if anyone has the ability to bring peanut butter down to them on the street:

Occupy Wall Street Needs Your Peanut Butter

 

 

I stopped by Zuccotti Park this afternoon to drop off some drop off some clothes and other supplies, and asked what the folks down there were short on. Here are some needful things you can bring by to show your support (here or in your town’s Occupy site):

 

• peanut butter (the vegetarians need protein)
  
• any pre-made dish with beans (same reason)
  
• sliced bread (unsliced loaves are a pain as they have to be cut)
  
• utensils/paper cups and plates
  
• blankets
  
• socks
  
• dog food (canine occupiers have to eat, too)
  
• thermoses
  

Find out what it's all about, go beyond the news and get the real scoop: Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for American Revolution

There's even one here now, let's see how they handle occupying when it's -50 lolz.

I don't think it's very large though, and our police are being cool cats.

 

I never insinuated anything like that. O___o :c

 

edit: lol 5 hours later and i'm still upset and frustrated about this

 

Then I'm honestly sorry, Crests! :(

What you'd written looks like you made fun of your demonstrators, though.