Uhh…cite?
Detroit is not evicting their Occupiers tonight. The city government has so far been downright friendly to them and will decide Tuesday whether to renew the permit. They’ve got at least one strong advocate on the city council itself. According to articles I’ve read, some there say they’ve been offered the use of private land but there aren’t any specifics.
Actually they were given a 2 week stay. They can not erect anything and have to be out by 10, but they can use the park for the next 2 weeks. They may even get to march in the Thanksgiving Day Parade.
They are cleaning it up for bleachers and lights now.
http://www.occupy-detroit.us/category/press/
Am I the only one feeling slightly vindicated?
Who’s formenting class warfare NOW, eh?
Not by a long shot.
Now? How about always? It’s just being exposed to the light of day now.
It’s a few weeks old, but Matt Taibbi wrote an utterly brilliant piece in Rolling Stone about the sheer craven hypocrisy of the Right Wing who constantly scream about so-called “personal responsibility” towards their fellow citizens, then scream even louder to elect bought-and-paid for politicians so they can continue to prop up the unbelievably irresponsible banks.
Wall Street Isn’t Winning – It’s Cheating
CREDIT AMNESTY. If you or I miss a $7 payment on a Gap card or, heaven forbid, a mortgage payment, you can forget about the great computer in the sky ever overlooking your mistake. But serial financial fuckups like Citigroup and Bank of America overextended themselves by the hundreds of billions and pumped trillions of dollars of deadly leverage into the system – and got rewarded with things like the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, an FDIC plan that allowed irresponsible banks to borrow against the government’s credit rating.
. . .
STUPIDITY INSURANCE. Defenders of the banks like to talk a lot about how we shouldn’t feel sorry for people who’ve been foreclosed upon, because it’s their own fault for borrowing more than they can pay back, buying more house than they can afford, etc. And critics of OWS have assailed protesters for complaining about things like foreclosure by claiming these folks want “something for nothing.”
This is ironic because, as one of the Rolling Stone editors put it last week, “something for nothing is Wall Street’s official policy." In fact, getting bailed out for bad investment decisions has been de rigeur on Wall Street not just since 2008, but for decades.
Time after time, when big banks screw up and make irresponsible bets that blow up in their faces, they’ve scored bailouts. It doesn’t matter whether it was the Mexican currency bailout of 1994 (when the state bailed out speculators who gambled on the peso) or the IMF/World Bank bailout of Russia in 1998 (a bailout of speculators in the “emerging markets”) or the Long-Term Capital Management Bailout of the same year (in which the rescue of investors in a harebrained hedge-fund trading scheme was deemed a matter of international urgency by the Federal Reserve), Wall Street has long grown accustomed to getting bailed out for its mistakes.
Stop and think about that for a second. Really, really think about that.
I highly recommend reading the whole thing. He slams this one over the center field wall.
Shayna:
I would really like to see factual, accurate, and cited articles. The one you’ve cited is none of those.
The reality is that this is a pretty complex subject. I keep seeing simplistic analysis that is more interested in its conclusions than its facts.
Something kind of interesting, which I think is a good way of getting a handle on the subject is Monday’s XKCD, “Money.”. Here’s a guy who made the effort to get a grasp on the issue, and I think he’s made several legitimate points.
The other thing that I find odd about the kind of articles you’re citing is that they seem to be attributing views to the occupy crowd which they don’t seem to actually have. What I’ve been doing is actually taking some time and reading the literature of the occupy group. Google “occupied wall street journal.”
My analysis is that these are some pretty financially ignorant neo-Bolsheviks whose goal seems to be to tear down the entire capitalist system and build a communist one it’s place.
Some quotes:
“Mubarak is Berlusconi is Bloomberg is Quan is Walker is pepper spray is broken politics bound to the past and we make no demands of them because free people constitute governments, not the other way around.”
“Even now, three weeks later,the elites and their mouthpieces inthe press continue to puzzle overwhat we want. Where is the list ofdemands? Why don’t they presentus with specific goals? Why can’tthey articulate what they need?The goal to us is very, veryclear. It can be articulated in oneword: REBELLION.”
“We have notcome to work within the system.We are not pleading with the Congress for electoral reform. We knowelectoral politics is a farce. We havefound another way to be heard andexercise power. We have no faith inthe political system or the two majorpolitical parties. And we know thecorporate press will not amplify ourvoices which is why we have a pressof our own. We know the economyserves the oligarchs. We know thatto survive this protest we will haveto build non-hierarchical communalsystems that care for everyone.”
That’s them in their own words. It’s a little bit different than what your article is claiming.
This is a strawman. Who says this? It needs a quote.
This actually isn’t Wall Street’s official policy. I don’t know why you would ask a Rolling Stone editor what Wall Street’s official policy is, or why they would be a credible source.
Ok. I will think about it. Hmmmm. It seems to me that the Mexican currency issues had everything to do with an incoming Mexican President foolishly reversing the longstanding responsible fiscal policy of his predecessor. Clinton thought (correctly) that the value of Mexico as a trading partner warranted our intervention. I don’t see how you lay this one at Wall Street’s feet.
I also don’t see how the Russian currency debacle can be laid at the feet of Wall Street. Russia is on the other side of the world and they run their own economy.
Finally, IIRC correctly the long term capitol “bailout” was accomplished 100% with private funds.
I highly recommend reading the whole thing. He slams this one over the center field wall.
[/QUOTE]
Seeing no options left the Federal Reserve Bank of New York organized a bailout of $3.625 billion by the major creditors to avoid a wider collapse in the financial markets.[23] The principal negotiator for LTCM was general counsel James G. Rickards.[24] The contributions from the various institutions were as follows:[25][26]
$300 million: Bankers Trust, Barclays, Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, J.P.Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Smith Barney, UBS
$125 million: Société Générale
$100 million: Lehman Brothers, Paribas
Bear Stearns declined to participate."
From the Wikipedia article on ltc.
I honestly could not guess why. I mean, here is this group that is attacking this other group politically, and the other group is trying to make a plan to defend themselves.
What am I missing? What is damning here?
Shayna:
I may have omitted some context there. I read the whole article. He says that OWS isn’t against banking,it’s against corruption. No. It seems like they are against banking. At least according to their own words.
So is it Scylla’s contention that the USA and France have not bailed out banks? Repeatedly?
Suuure.
I love it when he bats the big brown innocent eyes.
What you’re missing is that your first paragraph also works if you plug in the two groups the other way around.
When one group (like the 1%) attacks another, it’s damnable.
When that other group retaliates in a measured manner (by forming something like OWS), it’s understandable.
When the first group then decides to escalate the fighting, it’s called a war.
Hi
We always welcome your insights, Scylla.
Regards,
Shodan
I think you are confusing “laughable hyperbole” with “war.”
The problem is that of perception, my man. If the majority perceives themselves to be under attack, it doesn’t matter if they are actually not.
Y’all bankers need to get yourselves some PR people, and actually follow their suggestions, IMHO.
:smack:
That’s what they were doing… That you were complaining about… And calling war.
You’re not the brightest light in the autumn sky, are you?