Thread for Everything About Occupy Wall Street & Related Protests

[VelociMorte]

Originally Posted by MikeC2W

What you said...

Therein lies the problem: It's an entitlement attitude. Just because someone paid $200K for a degree, does not entitle them to a position as instant CEO of Google, or even a position as a janitor. They gambled, lost, and now expect others to pay for their financial obligations. Had they gambled and won, you can bet your ass they'd be hiring an accountant to lessen their tax burden. The difference between their own greed, and that of the "rich" they seek to eat, is that the "rich", for the most part, have actually worked for what they have.

[NWPTrainer]

I'll be the bad guy here.

I despise dirty, smelly, hippie, communists as much as anyone here. But...
I believe those kids would have been completely justified in a moral sense, in standing up, after that douchebag started pepper spraying them, and beating the living dogfuck out of the cop, in self-defense. Legally? Probably not.

That having been said, I wonder what history would be like if Bostonians had dispersed when ordered to do so by the legal authority on 5 MAR 1770?

I'm not a LEO, but it's my understanding that every sworn officer in this country swears an oath almost, if not totally, identical to the one most of us on this forum swore upon enlistment. So, what part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES," did the officers involved not understand? I'd go so far as to say that every single police officer present who did not step in and stop the battery of those kids is equally guilty through dereliction.

Just as a pre-emption, "They were following orders from the legal civic authority" hasn't been a justifiable defense for abuse of human rights since, oh....at least 1946...

Don't misunderstand me. A lot of you guys know me personally, and anyone that's read my posts on SOCNET over the better part of the last decade is well aware that I'm extremely pro-police, have a large number of good friends that are LEO, and this is not intended as an indictment of LEO in general.

[Ranger5280]

I disagree with the hippies having a moral right to beat the living #$%& out of the cop for spraying pepper spray. If they did that I would agree that the other cops would have the right to put holes in them as they escalated the level of violence.

He could have sprayed the entitled slugs with a little less 'flair'.

It's pepper spray. How can it be worse than patchouli oil? Every time I go to the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder my eyes water from that crap.

[KidA]

Originally Posted by VelociMorte

is that the "rich", for the most part, have actually worked for what they have.

I really am not convinced this is true.

1% own forty % of the Nation's wealth. 40 Percent. Almost half of the Nation's wealth is owned by 1 percent of the population. In terms of INCOME they take in 25% of it. Are they working for those trillions of dollars? Or are they manipulating markets and accounting figures? Shit if they're working they must be the hardest working motherfuckers on the planet. My grandfather, for instance, was an electrician, then enlisted in the Navy at 47 years old to go fight bad people during WWII, then came back and worked two jobs to support his family (12-16 hours a day) and retired from one job and still worked the other and his pension when he retired at 70 was barely enough to keep up with the inflation to feed himself and his wife. But he must not have "worked hard" enough.

It’s money managers in Cleveland managing a few hundred million dollars worth of Ohio teacher pensions. Their mandate is capital preservation of middle class incomes upon retirement. Many of those managers, if not all, are in the 1%.

Those teachers get their pensions, those "managers" playing markets get to be in the 1% from their take.

When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy.

That's not hard work. That's corruption.

[MikeC2W]

Originally Posted by Ranger5280

I disagree with the hippies having a moral right to beat the living #$%& out of the cop for spraying pepper spray. If they did that I would agree that the other cops would have the right to put holes in them as they escalated the level of violence.

It gets right back to BBRs and how far one feels like taking it, good for them if they escalate......but as we all know, better be fucking prepared for that counter attack! :)

[Ranger5280]

Disagree. They're wasting peoples time and our money. Bad for them if they escalate. They'll only continue to secure their image as a hippie flash mob.

[NWPTrainer]

You don't think people in England were saying the same thing about those impertinent colonials?

I'm not comparing these yahoos (I really do think they're fucking retards, but even retards have rights) with the Founding Fathers, but the parallels do make a point.

[ussfpa]

Originally Posted by NWPTrainer

I'll be the bad guy here.

I despise dirty, smelly, hippie, communists as much as anyone here. But...
I believe those kids would have been completely justified in a moral sense, in standing up, after that douchebag started pepper spraying them, and beating the living dogfuck out of the cop, in self-defense. Legally? Probably not.

That having been said, I wonder what history would be like if Bostonians had dispersed when ordered to do so by the legal authority on 5 MAR 1770?

I'm not a LEO, but it's my understanding that every sworn officer in this country swears an oath almost, if not totally, identical to the one most of us on this forum swore upon enlistment. So, what part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES," did the officers involved not understand? I'd go so far as to say that every single police officer present who did not step in and stop the battery of those kids is equally guilty through dereliction.

Just as a pre-emption, "They were following orders from the legal civic authority" hasn't been a justifiable defense for abuse of human rights since, oh....at least 1946...

Don't misunderstand me. A lot of you guys know me personally, and anyone that's read my posts on SOCNET over the better part of the last decade is well aware that I'm extremely pro-police, have a large number of good friends that are LEO, and this is not intended as an indictment of LEO in general.

Dude - you are about 700 posts behind with this line of thinking. It was all covered many MANY pages ago....we needn't re-visit it. It was painful - and very circular.

[Baildog]

Originally Posted by Sniper111

Isn't it ironic... don'tcha think?

Like pepperspray, on your wedding day?

[Matchanu]

Originally Posted by Matchanu

Let's try this (not directed at anyone here, but rather for the OWS protesters).

"I'm mad about ................"

"Here's what needs to change ..............."

"Here's how it should be done ..............."

"This would be the desired result ..............."

"We are aiming for ............. but we will settle for ..............."


Pretty rudimentary really.

Allow me ask the question again.

If you agree with the OWS protests, please answer the questions above.

[MikeC2W]

Originally Posted by KidA

No, you don't, but it is moving in that direction which is the point I am making.



Probably the same way I went from moving furniture to consulting.



Again - it's in the tea leaves. For everyone? No. There are people like you and me who will fight through and make it. You've done it. I've done it. Lots of people have, but when you compare "lots" to all the hundreds of thousands who graduate and there's nothing out there but admin positions, and it isn't because they aren't good students, but more because there are fewer good jobs and so ranks get closed...

I have sat through the hiring process for think tanks in DC - the very first thing they do is cull through all the resumes for the "named" schools. Why? Because it makes their job easier and it is a safe assumption that someone who went to Harvard is "better" than someone who went to Florida State otherwise the person who went to Florida State would have gone to Harvard.


It's not a secret: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/...et-school.html

In the tea leaves? Moving in that direction? Lol Newsflash: They didn't start doing that yesterday bro and somehow we all made it, I even ended up sitting next to a kid from Harvard the last time I went around. He was WAAAY fucking smarter than my dumbass.

And rightly so!! ! Just like going to grad school in the military ie, being a Ranger, SEAL, SF, CAG, etc... Is going to open a few more doors then being a 11b from the 82nd.

That does not preclude someone with desire and effort to make it into and beyond those same Harvard knuckleheads, although the world needs losers too. If it were easy everyone would do it.....TSAF and for good reason. With enough desire, effort and brains one can go fucking anywhere and it doesn't have to cost a million bucks. These fucks want it FREE, they want it NOW and not surprisingly they don't want to work for it. Reminds me of my brother..."can you get me a job doing what you do?"....... Ah.... No, not unless you want to start out installing fences for 9$/hr!

All that said, I don't really think these people are representative of the majority of their generation. I just recently went through a 7 week course that was filled almost entirely with very recent college grads - Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, my GED bud...and to a fucking one of them - hard working well mannered very determined kids. It was actually from that perspective very very refreshing.

[GackMan]

Originally Posted by NWPTrainer

THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES," did the officers involved not understand? I'd go so far as to say that every single police officer present who did not step in and stop the battery of those kids is equally guilty through dereliction.

Maybe they could go petition the government and get the fuck off private property then?

[Steve83]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Sure. We've seen the current way not work out too well. GLB was deregulation, was it not? CFMA was dergulation, was it not? You're certainly not saying there was too much regulation, are you? Brooksley Born proposed regulation, Summers, Rubin, Levitt and Greenspan opposed it.

I saw the PBS front line and Inside Job were that lady you love to bring up, Born, is usually featured. It's crybaby, why doesn't anyone listen to me nonsense. They like to blame OTC derivatives because they sound scary to the uneducated and the typical paranoid documentary watcher.

Derivatives are merely contractual agreements which limit risk. Overly opaque and complicated derivatives, if you want to go that far, emerged after the first Basel accord and all of its ad hoc regulations. Thus, derivatives were the result of new regulations (as opposed to deregulation). Either way, inflation is what caused speculation and the over-valuation of financial assets.

The derivative explanation is pure nonsense created by the economic illiterate left. Business cycles have little to do with regulation, though it may or may not magnify its effects (Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, for example); there were business cycles before derivatives, and there will be business cycles after anyone who severely regulates derivatives (if they ever regulates them at all--Bernanke knows they had nothing to do with this crises).

Originally Posted by Polypro

Obviously, if you think there is stifling regulation, you blame it. I just don't see how any reasonably intelligent person can look at what happened, what was in place, and the result, and say there was too much regulation.

I don't think, I know.

When you talk about the mortgage derivatives you simply have to remember that regulations and rules can allow and even promote the creation of bad debt, but without buyers what the hell is anyone going to do with that debt, much less derivatives/structured products based on it? The Fed provided the buyers, plain and simple. It's an odd application of Keynesianism I think in that people seem to thing "if you produce it, they will buy" which is bullshit. In order for people to buy bad debt they needed and got three things: easy money and credit; the lower interest rates for which also fueled a hunger for high yield, high risk debt; explicit and implicit guarantees of bailout should the debt go tits up.

Originally Posted by Polypro

How about BoA: There is nothing (a regulation) fire walling off the depository to the derivatives market. Do you think that is a great idea? If something happens, the last people on the list that will be made whole, are the depositors. They'll need FDIC and there isn't enough...which means a Congressional bailout of FDIC.

Well, the market will prevent banks from gambling other peoples money into high speculation assets. Without the FDIC, it will never happen. BoA isn't going anywhere, they're screwed up big time. Too much easy money from the Federal Reserve.

Originally Posted by Polypro

We'll never agree, so people can just read our stuff and make up their own minds.

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogs...r-bank-of.html

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/...epositors.html

P

More effects. Still haven't addressed the problems. Not even close....

What's with the websites Polly??? They are pretty far left for sources of info.
No wonder you're so fucked up!

[Sharky]

Less talk......more pepper spray.

[MikeC2W]

Originally Posted by Ranger5280

Disagree. They're wasting peoples time and our money. Bad for them if they escalate. They'll only continue to secure their image as a hippie flash mob.

I concur, but philosophically if they feel strongly enough let them bring it....along as they are willing reap it.

Since we're comparing it to the American Revolution and rebellion in general there is no cost or waste of time more important.......

[MikeC2W]

Originally Posted by Steve83

I saw the PBS front line and Inside Job were that lady you love to bring up, Born, is usually featured. It's crybaby, why doesn't anyone listen to me nonsense. They like to blame OTC derivatives because they sound scary to the uneducated and the typical paranoid documentary watcher.

Derivatives are merely contractual agreements which limit risk. Overly opaque and complicated derivatives, if you want to go that far, emerged after the first Basel accord and all of its ad hoc regulations. Thus, derivatives were the result of new regulations (as opposed to deregulation). Either way, inflation is what caused speculation and the over-valuation of financial assets.

The derivative explanation is pure nonsense created by the economic illiterate left. Business cycles have little to do with regulation, though it may or may not magnify its effects (Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, for example); there were business cycles before derivatives, and there will be business cycles after anyone who severely regulates derivatives (if they ever regulates them at all--Bernanke knows they had nothing to do with this crises).



I don't think, I know.

When you talk about the mortgage derivatives you simply have to remember that regulations and rules can allow and even promote the creation of bad debt, but without buyers what the hell is anyone going to do with that debt, much less derivatives/structured products based on it? The Fed provided the buyers, plain and simple. It's an odd application of Keynesianism I think in that people seem to thing "if you produce it, they will buy" which is bullshit. In order for people to buy bad debt they needed and got three things: easy money and credit; the lower interest rates for which also fueled a hunger for high yield, high risk debt; explicit and implicit guarantees of bailout should the debt go tits up.



Well, the market will prevent banks from gambling other peoples money into high speculation assets. Without the FDIC, it will never happen. BoA isn't going anywhere, they're screwed up big time. Too much easy money from the Federal Reserve.




More effects. Still haven't addressed the problems. Not even close....

What's with the websites Polly??? They are pretty far left for sources of info.
No wonder you're so fucked up!:bigglefty LMAO

Poly, part of what I think most people fail to realize is that everything that has occurred or close to everything is because of regulation. Fannie, Freddie, FDIC, SEC, Dodd Frank, BASEL I,II, Sarbanes Oxley, etc etc...etc... And some people are asking for more of the same thinking we will get different results.

[Steve83]

Originally Posted by MikeC2W

Poly, part of what I think most people fail to realize is that everything that has occurred or close to everything is because of regulation. Fannie, Freddie, FDIC, SEC, Dodd Frank, BASEL I,II, Sarbanes Oxley, etc etc...etc... And some people are asking for more of the same thinking we will get different results.

Mike,

To go even further, a lot of people don't even realize what the Federal Reserve is in charge of being accountable for. Hell, according to it's publications: "The Federal Reserve System: Purposes and Functions," it is explained that "The Federal Reserve has supervisory and regulatory authority over a wide range of financial institutions and activities." . Among the Fed's functions are the regulation of:

* Bank holding companies
* State-chartered banks
* Foreign branches of member banks
* Edge and agreement corporations
* US state-licensed branches, agencies, and representative offices of foreign banks
* Nonbanking activities of foreign banks
* National banks (with the Comptroller of the Currency)
* Savings banks (with the Office of Thrift Supervision)
* Nonbank subsidiaries of bank holding companies
* Thrift holding companies
* Financial reporting
* Accounting policies of banks
* Business "continuity" in case of an economic emergency
* Consumer-protection laws
* Securities dealings of banks
* Information technology used by banks
* Foreign investments of banks
* Foreign lending by banks
* Branch banking
* Bank mergers and acquisitions
* Who may own a bank
* Capital "adequacy standards"
* Extensions of credit for the purchase of securities
* Equal-opportunity lending
* Mortgage disclosure information
* Reserve requirements
* Electronic-funds transfers
* Interbank liabilities
* Community Reinvestment Act subprime lending requirements
* All international banking operations
* Consumer leasing
* Privacy of consumer financial information
* Payments on demand deposits
* "Fair credit" reporting
* Transactions between member banks and their affiliates
* Truth in lending
* Truth in savings

Oi.

Note: I credit professor Tom DiLernzo for this one.

[MikeC2W]

Originally Posted by MikeC2W

Poly, part of what I think most people fail to realize is that everything that has occurred or close to everything is because of regulation. Fannie, Freddie, FDIC, SEC, Dodd Frank, BASEL I,II, Sarbanes Oxley, etc etc...etc... And some people are asking for more of the same thinking we will get different results.

I'll add that I am not advocating laissez faire either. It's common for many to assume that because I'm against big govt or excessive legislation OR more of the same that they have proven time and again unable to do, that I am somehow for zero regulation....that is not true.

[Sniper111]

Originally Posted by Sharky

Less talk......more pepper spray.

And I have a new sig line...

[Sharky]

Originally Posted by Sniper111

And I have a new sig line...

I'm here all day. Youre welcome.