Occupy Wall Street better defend its identity

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stilicho said:
The income break isn't surprising at all, Brainster.

The problem is that the 1% is in the first quintile but they only comprise 5% of it. They only comprise 2.5% of the top two quintiles. The people who have the most to gain from some sort of Occupy Everything tax scheme or wealth redistribution are those who are just close enough to the 1% to smell it. In fact, those people are the most likely to insist on the 1% idea and ignore those just short of that bracket. They won't be out tenting on the concrete but they'll gladly go out and press the flesh.
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Good point. Remember Roseanne Barr suggesting that they should take everything over $100 million? Turned out she's worth a mere $80 mill herself.
 
Democracy Simulator said:
Banks knew that this paper was not AAA worthy; the CRAs knew that this paper was not AAA worthy; the pension funds paid heed to the ratings agencies. If rating agencies, whose job it is to assess these securities and give an expert 'opinion' on their status are telling you that something is AAA, does that make you a bumbling idiot for believing it? The pensions had an idea what they were buying, Triple A rated securities, as rated by experts.
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Well, now you are assuming the banks are bumbling idiots. Once again, the purpose of packaging mortgages together was to alleviate the risks of individual mortgages going bad. A, "don't put all of your eggs in one basket" type thing.

These banks who supposedly knew these investments were no good brought themselves to the brink of bankruptcy, needing bailouts to stay afloat, by over leveraging themselves with these securities. A curious strategy if they had insider knowledge that these investments sucked.



Democracy Simulator said:
What's more, the government knew that there was a problem and did nothing about it. In 2004 the FBI warned of an 'epidemic' in mortgage fraud. What happened next?



and



rest of article:

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/25/business/fi-mortgagefraud25
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This was already discussed earlier in the thread.

Democracy Simulator said:
Perhaps you haven't been looking for it.
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Every where I look I keep seeing people do things like claim that the same banks who over leveraged themselves in mortgage backed securities knew that they were horrible investments and absurd misunderstandings about why poor mortgages were included with good ones in bonds. Perhaps you know of some protesters who do understand what happened? I sure haven't seen any.
 
respect said:
I think that Taibbi is an idiot or deliberately dishonest because his articles are routinely full of such errors and/or half stories.
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He is an agenda journalist, as is Coulter. His goal is to sell the agenda, not to enlighten. He's basically a politics writer and appears to have no background to discuss financial matters. Hence I vote for idiot. It's a shame, because I really did enjoy his putdown of the Truthers.
 
respect said:
Well, now you are assuming the banks are bumbling idiots. Once again, the purpose of packaging mortgages together was to alleviate the risks of individual mortgages going bad. A, "don't put all of your eggs in one basket" type thing.

These banks who supposedly knew these investments were no good brought themselves to the brink of bankruptcy, needing bailouts to stay afloat, by over leveraging themselves with these securities. A curious strategy if they had insider knowledge that these investments sucked.
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Felix Salmon writes for Reuters:

This is where things get positively evil. The investment banks didn’t mind buying up loans they knew were bad, because they considered themselves to be in the moving business rather than the storage business. They weren’t going to hold on to the loans: they were just going to package them up and sell them on to some buy-side sucker.

In fact, the banks had an incentive to buy loans they knew were bad. Because when the loans proved to be bad, the banks could go back to the originator and get a discount on the amount of money they were paying for the pool. And the less money they paid for the pool, the more profit they could make when they turned it into mortgage bonds and sold it off to investors.
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http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/10/13/the-enormous-mortgage-bond-scandal/

It turns out that the bankers were a mixture of the inept and the corrupt. The banks were run by bumbling idiots who let the leverage get out of hand and who also turned a blind eye (and were perhaps knowingly complicit) in the on-selling of these bad investments. Now we have banks suing banks over these MBS:

Lenders are now filing suit against each other in an effort to force buy back of mortgage-backed securities that have shown a high rate of default. The latest in the litigation spree is Wells Fargo’s suit against JP Morgan Chase to force the latter to buy back $558 million in bad mortgage-backed securities. JP Morgan refused to voluntarily buy back MBS from its Bear Stearns Mortgage Funding Trust 2007-AR2, otherwise known as the EMC unit. JP Morgan acquired this unit during the financial crisis in 2008. A forensic review by Wells Fargo authorities revealed irregularities in 89% of the representations and warranties in the sample that was studied.
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http://www.rewealthcoach.com/2011/0...nks-over-mortgage-backed-securities-gone-bad/

On what basis is Wells Fargo suing JP Morgan? Surely Wells, a bank, knows that another bank couldn't knowingly package together these bad assets and sell them on? That it was merely a big shock for all concerned when these things turned out to be bad?

But actually it didn't turn out to be bad for the Too Big to Fails as Uncle Sam bailed them out and they were not even broken up.

Perhaps you know of some protesters who do understand what happened? I sure haven't seen any.
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The clue is in the name.
 
Can you imagine the shrieking that the Obamaville Occutards would engage in if their standards of evidence and justice were ever used against them?

The anti-fat cat demonstrators had staged a “people’s trial” of Goldman Sachs at their base in Zuccotti Park, accusing the firm of felony fraud, perjury and “theft of $78 billion in taxpayer money.”

At noon, about 300 marched eight blocks to the firm’s HQ to deliver their “verdict” of guilty and to demand the imprisonment of CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
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Suggested new chant:
"Show me what a kangaroo court looks like!"
"This is what a kangaroo court looks like!"
 
stilicho said:
Who said they were anarchists? Anarchists actually hold a set of identifiable beliefs. These are simply criminals who are a major part of the Occupy "movement".

We appear to be agreeing that between 1% and 5% of the "movement" are simply criminals. The next stage is to ask ourselves what the "movement" is going to do about this growing problem. Will they ask for the assistance of the authorities to identify and remove these people?
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I would say that anarchists have definitely turned their collective attention towards OWS. That's not saying that 'anarchists' are all of the same quilt.

http://www.adbusters.org/
 
manofthesea said:
I would say that anarchists have definitely turned their collective attention towards OWS. That's not saying that 'anarchists' are all of the same quilt.

http://www.adbusters.org/
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Aren't those the same people who promote the concept of one global government to deal with big issues? That sure doesn't sound very anarchistic to me. What they fail to comprehend is that a global government would likely make corporations even more powerful than they are right now.

There's also nothing in there about the massive purges or concentration camps they'd have to establish to deal with those of us who don't agree with their programme.

This "manifesto" is heavily retweeted from and on that site:

http://www.humansphere.org/omniusmanifesto/theomniusmanifesto.pdf
 
Anarchists set fire to stuff and stop other protesters trying to put it out.



They also smashed up a few stores and threw rocks and petrol bombs at police.
 
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daredelvis said:
OMG ACORN members?!?!? What does that matter? Why do you hate using FoxNews as a source (for unsourced allegations of shredding)? It doesn't follow from you're glee about teh ACORN being implicated.

Daredelvis
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I was taking glee in how hard randfan is railing on the SEC for document shredding that occurred when they decided they were not going to do an investigation. It is called hoisted on own petard... that was my glee about it.

I dislike using foxnews or the Wall Street journal as a source, just as much as I dislike using moveon.org or the huffington post or MSNBC as sources because as soon as you introduce one of them into a conversation to support your argument, it automatically gets the source dismissed.

I wish there were other independent outlets which have documented the involvement of ACORN in this "movement" but there doesn't appear to be many out there.
 
RandFan said:
A.) I didn't accuse anyone of being Hitler or a Nazi. B.) Godwin isn't an error in logic. C.) Godwin is a prediction (namely that the longer the thread the more likely someone will accuse someone else of being Hitler or a Nazi. D.) I don't subscribe to the notion that Nazi or Hitler references have any per se meaning or relevance as to the person providing the references.

But thanks for playing. I do like to point out Godwin from time to time.
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and yet you are quoting a nazi to dismiss valid criticisms of this "movement." Seems like a step in Godwins direction to me.
 
TruthersLie said:
So when will they be turning in the vandals to the oakland police with testimony to put them in jail?

Just asking
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As the "vandals", apparently, aren't recognizable OWS participants, how do you suggest they go about it?

Dressing up in black and putting on a black mask appears to make one immune to arrest or any police intervention whatsoever. Perhaps God is on their side!
 
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JihadJane said:
As with homegrown terror groups, all but one of the Oakland Liberation Front are probably FBI plants. They never seem to get arrested , charged or prosecuted, anyway. ;)
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Any evidence of this? Or something you just pulled out of your butt?
 
Democracy Simulator said:
OWS protesters denounce 'Black Bloc' anarchists. Those responsible for the vandalism in Oakland belong to the 'Oakland Liberation Front' and not OWS:

http://occupylosangeles.org/?q=node/1516

....
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Why does "Occupy" find itself so easy to "infiltrate"? Why not just take the pamphlet over to the nearest peace officer and point out the troublemaker before anything even starts? Grab a vidcap of the individual on your mobile phone and show it to the authorities.

Seems pretty simple as a solution to "infiltration".
 
TruthersLie said:
I was taking glee in how hard randfan is railing on the SEC for document shredding that occurred when they decided they were not going to do an investigation. It is called hoisted on own petard... that was my glee about it.

I dislike using foxnews or the Wall Street journal as a source, just as much as I dislike using moveon.org or the huffington post or MSNBC as sources because as soon as you introduce one of them into a conversation to support your argument, it automatically gets the source dismissed.

I wish there were other independent outlets which have documented the involvement of ACORN in this "movement" but there doesn't appear to be many out there.
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ACORN (alleged ACORN since ACORN does not exist anymore) is not the SEC. Alleged ACORN shredding its own documents is not the same as an investigative body shredding documents created during an investigation. Unless the documents shredded by Alleged ACORN are in some way related to a government investigation. Is that the accusation??

Daredelvis
 
This article on the plight of an aspiring Gepetto does not seem to be a joke, yet it sure reads like one:

Like a lot of the young protesters who have flocked to Occupy Wall Street, Joe had thought that hard work and education would bring, if not class mobility, at least a measure of security (indeed, a master’s degree can boost a New York City teacher’s salary by $10,000 or more).
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Joe had a job as a teacher, but was frustrated, so he:

...set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry. Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school.
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Yep, he spent $35 grand to get an advanced degree in puppetology. Sounds like a natural fit for the Obamaville Occutards, and that's where the story ends up:

At one of Arts and Culture’s meetings—held adjacent to 60 Wall Street, at a quieter public-private indoor park that’s also the atrium of Deutsche Bank—it dawned on Joe: “I have to build as many giant puppets as I can to help this thing out—people love puppets!” And so Occupy Wall Street’s Puppet Guild, one of about a dozen guilds under the Arts and Culture working group, was born. In the spirit of OWS, Joe works in loose and rolling collaboration with others who share his passion for puppetry or whose projects somehow momentarily coincide with his mission. With the help of a handful of people, he built the twelve-foot Statue of Liberty puppet that had young and old alike flocking to him on October 8 in Washington Square Park. Right now, he’s working with nearly thirty artists to stage Occupy Halloween, when his newest creations, a twelve-foot Wall Street bull and a forty-foot Occupied Brooklyn Bridge inspired by Chinese paper dragons—along with a troupe of dancers playing corporate vampires—will inject a little bit of countercultural messaging into the annual parade of Snookis and True Blood wannabes strutting down Sixth Avenue.
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Good lord!
 
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