Occupy Wall Street

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

Wall St. is the home of the banking industry though. And while protesting banking is broad brush, it is certainly not false.

Yes, it's entirely false. They are not protesting banking at all. You clearly haven't been paying any attention at all to this protest.

Office space and ready cash will lead to leaders emerging from the group, once this happens they will separate themselves from the rest and start their own little version of the big pyramid that is representative of the country and eventually it will fall apart

Only if they think like you do.

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

Yes, it's entirely false. They are not protesting banking at all. You clearly haven't been paying any attention at all to this protest.



Only if they think like you do.

"We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." Who are the 1%? I lived and worked in NYC and happen to know they are the people running banks. Believe what you want. 1% = Banking.

"We are growing change in the shadow of the wealth, greed, and thievery that is Wall Street"

Power corrupts, thinking otherwise is foolish.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

"We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%." Who are the 1%? I lived and worked in NYC and happen to know they are the people running banks. Believe what you want. 1% = Banking.

"We are growing change in the shadow of the wealth, greed, and thievery that is Wall Street"

Power corrupts, thinking otherwise is foolish.

Yes, that's not being anti-banking. It's being anti-corruption, anti-plutocracy. They want reinstitution of Glass-Steagall, control and regulation over unregulated derivatives markets, they want a tax of 0.1% on all trades (to slow down market volitility) and 0.01% tax on derivatives. They are not "anti-banking".

They are also not anti-government, but want 100% of the corruption and lobbyists out of Washington.

[Clip-Clop]

Originally Posted by Riot

Yes, that's not being anti-banking. It's being anti-corruption, anti-plutocracy.

As long as banks are people (like corporations) they will be evil. Separation of corruption and lending is never going to happen. The acts are intertwined and always have been.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Clip-Clop

As long as banks are people (like corporations) they will be evil.

They also want a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

Separation of corruption and lending is never going to happen. The acts are intertwined and always have been.

They think differently than you do. That is exactly what they are trying to change. You think it is inevitable - they do not.

You can continue to mock their efforts, or you can support them if you believe as they do: that corruption and lending have to be separated.

Add: The Daily Show, Jon Oliver, had a funny segment when he went down to visit Occupy Wall Street, regarding who "comprises" the "movement".

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-epi...calvin-trillin

[Danzig]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act


read up, on glass- steagall. of course you read quite often these days that republicans introduced legislation to repeal G/S, but you don't see many who mention it was clinton who signed it into law. actually, i didn't know who was president when it was repealed, til reading this.

[Danzig]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_201557.html


"Sooner or later, perhaps starting with the next serious economic downturn," he wrote, "the US will have to confront one of the great challenges of our times: how does a sovereign nation govern itself effectively when politics are national and business is global?"

Consumer protection advocate Ralph Nader, meanwhile, was far more succinct in his skepticism. "We will look back at this and wonder how the country was so asleep," he said at the time. "It's just a nightmare."

When the Senate voted to pass Gramm-Leach-Bliley by a vote of 90-8, it reversed what was, for more than six decades, a framework that had governed the functions and reach of the nation's largest banks. No longer limited by laws and regulations commercial and investment banks could now merge. Many had already begun the process, including, among others, J.P. Morgan and Citicorp. The new law allowed it to be permanent. The updated ground rules were low on oversight and heavy on risky ventures. Historically in the business of mortgages and credit cards, banks now would sell insurance and stock.

Nevertheless, the bill did not lack champions, many of whom declared that the original legislation -- forged during the Great Depression -- was both antiquated and cumbersome for the banking industry. Congress had tried 11 times to repeal Glass-Steagall. The twelfth was the charm.

"Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century," said then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."

"I welcome this day as a day of success and triumph," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, (D-Conn.).

"The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown," said Sen. Bob Kerrey, (D-Neb.).

"If we don't pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "There are many reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial firms remain competitive."

Looking back, members of Congress have tried to downplay the significance of their support. One high-ranking Hill aide notes that his boss, who voted for the bill, did so because banks were already beginning to merge with investment houses. It should be noted, additionally, that Dodd and Schumer were able to hammer out, as part of the legislation, the Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to extend lines of credit to predominantly minority areas.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

read up, on glass- steagall. of course you read quite often these days that republicans introduced legislation to repeal G/S, but you don't see many who mention it was clinton who signed it into law. actually, i didn't know who was president when it was repealed, til reading this.

The first minute of this video is very powerful and simplistic and perfectly explainatory, regarding financial regulation and "how we got here" as the US industrialized:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK1MOMKZ8BI

[Riot]

From www.occupywallstreet.com

(other good info with blogs, pictures on Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, etc.)

The Occupy Wall Street movement has galvanized the attention of the world by organizing the largest demonstrations in this country as a response to the Great Recession caused by our financial and political leaders.

Data from a survey of 1,619 respondents from a survey placed on occupywallst.org suggests that there is a huge undercurrent of mainstream dissatisfaction with traditional political party affiliations as well a huge amount of support for radical change in the United States of America.

* 92.5% of respondents either somewhat or strongly supported the protests with most respondents indicating strong support.

* 1/4th of the sample (or 24.2%) participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests as of October 5, 2011.

* 91.8% of the sample thinks that the Occupy Wall Street Protests will continue to grow.

In terms of demographic characteristics of the sample, we found that,

*64.2% of respondents were younger than 34 years of age.

*While the sample is relatively young, one in three respondents is older than 35 and one in five respondents is 45 and older.

* 7.9% of respondents have a high school degree or less.

*92.1% of the sample has some college, a college degree, or a graduate degree.

*27.4% have some college (but no degree), 35% have a college degree, 8.2% have some graduate school (but no degree), and close to 21.5% have a graduate school degree.

*This is a highly educated sample.

*26.7% of respondents were enrolled in school and 73.3% were not enrolled in school.

*50.4% were employed full-time and an additional 20.4% were employed part-time.

*13.1% of the sample are unemployed.

*2.6% of respondents were retired, 1.3% disabled, 2.6% homemakers and 9.7% are full-time students.

*47.5% of the sample earns less than $24,999 dollars a year and another quarter (24%) earn between $25,000 and $49,999 per year.

* 71.5% of the sample earns less than $50,000 per year.

*15.4% of the sample earned between $50,000 and $74,999.

*The remainder 13% of the sample earn over $75,000 with close to 2% earning over $150,000 per year.

*27.3% of respondents considered themselves Democrats, another 2.4% said they were Republican.

*Interestingly, a very large proportion of the sample, close to 70.3%, considered themselves Independents.

*66.4% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use Facebook.

*28.9% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use Twitter.

*73.9% in the sample agree somewhat or strongly that they regularly use YouTube.

*Our data suggest that the 99% movement comes from and looks like the 99%.

Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, Ph.D.