Occupy Wall Street better defend its identity

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eeyore1954 said:
Did the buyers of these loans do any due diligence? ...

I know several people in the industry and this is not how they tell it. It was more of a feeling that prices would never go down
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A feeling? Mass delusion perhaps. By a LOT of indicators we had a big bubble going on. If it's legal to bundle all these mortgages and flip them to the next sucker, then financial institutions will do what's legal. They will always push the envelope, whatever the law. That's their job - creating "innovative finance solutions" to keep pushing the law.

So if there isn't any law, well hey. It self-organizes into a Ponzi scheme.

Semi-off-topic, at BofA there's always someone standing there as you get in line to direct you to the line. Has anyone else noticed this?
 
eeyore1954 said:
Did the buyers of these loans do any due diligence?
Minoosh said:
So if there isn't any law, well hey. It self-organizes into a Ponzi scheme.
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Which reminds me, there is an important and unanswered question out there. I'll add another.

  1. Should Bernie Maddoff be in jail? I mean, had his investors done "due diligence" then they would not have lost money. Right? That seems to be what you are implying.
  2. Is anything okay so long as you can find a sucker that is too lazy or stupid to check?
  3. Is Caveat Emptor truly the only good regulation?
I sure hope not. It seems to me to be a very cynical view of society.
 
Engineer Explains Taxes at Occupy Wall Street



Damn dirty hippie beatnik (same thing right?).
 
"Occupy Oakland" was evicted from the park next to city hall early yesterday morning.

Evidently a march was organized for this evening in response, which has turned into a standoff between police and the protestors.

This event comes with a live feed.
 
Nothing has changed...

...except Paul Volker moved from a conservative to liberal just by supporting the free market.



Thank you sir, may I have another? They keep screwing us and we keep letting them while we argue amongst ourselves about whether or not we are even getting screwed, have you looked around lately? .... {sigh}
 
theprestige said:
If I'm selling statements of fact that are not actually factual, then I'm committing fraud. Free speech doesn't even enter into it.
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As an auditor for nearly a decade no one ever told me, faghetabout it, just tell the investigators it was an opinion and stand on the first amendment. BS.

A report must have supporting financial data. If the report does not conform with the data you most certainly can be subject to prosecution for fraud. If you state your opinion is that a company is healthy and in truth they are heavily in debt with declining receivables and mounting payables then you my friend are are exposed. If it can be shown that you cooked the numbers for your report then you can kiss your ass good bye. Trust me, auditors take that stuff very seriously. Now, there are a lot of tricks to be played and some leeway for plausible deniability if you are a smart auditor and a lot of that crap goes on but that doesn't mean it's all up for grabs.
 
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RandFan said:
Which reminds me, there is an important and unanswered question out there. I'll add another.

  1. Should Bernie Maddoff be in jail? I mean, had his investors done "due diligence" then they would not have lost money. Right? That seems to be what you are implying.
  2. Is anything okay so long as you can find a sucker that is too lazy or stupid to check?
  3. Is Caveat Emptor truly the only good regulation?
I sure hope not. It seems to me to be a very cynical view of society.
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What I said should not imply to you that people guilty of fraud like Bernie Madoff should not be punished. I blame the purchasers more than the bundlers does not mean the bundlers should not be punished if there was fraud.

Personally I blame the purchasers more than the bundlers except in cases where it can be shown there was fraud which I suspect is a small fraction of the cases.
 
eeyore1954 said:
What I said should not imply to you that people guilty of fraud like Bernie Madoff should not be punished. I blame the purchasers more than the bundlers does not mean the bundlers should not be punished if there was fraud.

Personally I blame the purchasers more than the bundlers except in cases where it can be shown there was fraud which I suspect is a small fraction of the cases.
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"Suspect"? I'm not impressed with your suspicions or your opinion. But that's fine, you are welcome to it. I suppose we should do background checks on our taxi companies, bus driver, mechanic, bank teller, doctor, grocery store, barber, butcher, tax accountant, etc. We shouldn't trust anyone right? It's our responsibility to keep everyone honest. right. What a cynical world view.

NO! I don't want to live in that world. There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism and I would encourage people to be prudent but to say never trust anyone because if some a-hole screws you then it's a damn piss poor society that says to the criminally minded we don't hold you as culpable. No, they are more by far.
 
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RandFan said:
"Suspect"? I'm not impressed with your suspicions or your opinion. But that's fine, you are welcome to it. I suppose we should do background checks on our taxi companies, bus driver, mechanic, bank teller, doctor, grocery store, barber, butcher, tax accountant, etc. We shouldn't trust anyone right? It's our responsibility to keep everyone honest. right. What a cynical world view.

NO! I don't want to live in that world. There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism and I would encourage people to be prudent but to say never trust anyone because if some a-hole screws you then it's a damn piss poor society that says to the criminally minded we don't hold you as culpable. No, they are more by far.
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But do you understand how what I said does not imply fraudsters should not be prosecuted?
 
RandFan said:
As an auditor for nearly a decade no one ever told me, faghetabout it, just tell the investigators it was an opinion and stand on the first amendment. BS.

A report must have supporting financial data. If the report does not conform with the data you most certainly can be subject to prosecution for fraud. If you state your opinion is that a company is healthy and in truth they are heavily in debt with declining receivables and mounting payables then you my friend are are exposed. If it can be shown that you cooked the numbers for your report then you can kiss your ass good bye. Trust me, auditors take that stuff very seriously. Now, there are a lot of tricks to be played and some leeway for plausible deniability if you are a smart auditor and a lot of that crap goes on but that doesn't mean it's all up for grabs.
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are you suggesting that there is a moral, ethical and legal way to handle financial transactions??
i'm sure this would come as a shock to many bankers.
 
The level of due diligence done by a business in a deal worth hundreds of millions should be higher than my dealings with the barber or a mechanic. Not just because of fraud but because you want to see the soundness of the deal.

Btw I do not live in that cynical world I trust most everybody.
 
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bikerdruid said:
are you suggesting that there is a moral, ethical and legal way to handle financial transactions??
i'm sure this would come as a shock to many bankers.
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I would say the opposite most bankers do try to act in a moral,legal and ethical way.
 
You see RandFan. This movement you're supporting is not made up of average Joes, driven to protest by the abuses of Wall Street, with a few radicals on the fringe. It was a big, fat fib when you said it was. Its core consists of people like Bikerdruid. Radical leftists that don't want capitalism to exist at all. The same people who come out for all the other protests like the ones against the WTO, G8, ect.
 
Virus said:
You see RandFan. This movement you're supporting is not made up of average Joes, driven to protest by the abuses of Wall Street, with a few radicals on the fringe. It was a big, fat fib when you said it was. Its core consists of people like Bikerdruid. Radical leftists that don't want capitalism to exist at all. The same people who come out for all the other protests like the ones against the WTO, G8, ect.
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i'm honoured to be held in such high esteem.;)
globalist capitalism, in it's current state is immoral.
simple.
 
Guilt by location fallacy:

Three men are wanted for threatening to kill a 24-year-old Occupy Wall Street protester because she was pressing charges over an assault at the group's Zuccotti Park encampment.

The young protester was roughed up at the Downtown sit-in by a man named Garfield Leslie, 19, police said Tuesday.

Leslie offered to sell the woman drugs, and when she declined that offer and his romantic advances, he punched her in the face and dished out more blows to two friends who had come to her defense, police said.

The woman filed a complaint with police, and Leslie was arrested at Zuccotti Park about 8 p.m. on Saturday.
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