Wait a second. Are you telling me that all of a suddent investment bankers and traders just became super greedy?
Yes. Why should regular people just going about their business have to suffer because a bunch of dirtbag hippie wanabees who probably wouldn’t be working anyway regardless of the state of the economy feel like blocking traffic?
My dad loves your shit.
Whats, to quote someone else, amattawityou? You’re asking totally irrelevant questions again.
The answer to your first question is, of course, the ones complaining. The percentage has nothing to do with what I’m saying. You’re trying to fight a totally irrelevant point.
Let’s turn this around. What do YOU think? do YOU think that we should have some sort of law saying, “it’s okay to block traffic as long as you’re doing it as part of a protest”? How would you phrase such a law?
They can only do that if you’re protesting in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. Put your feet on places designed for feet, not on places designed for tires, and they can’t stop you. Again, it’s as if your kindergarten teacher woefully failed in his duties to you.
They don’t offend me. They’re insubstantive. Do YOU think you’re arguing substantively?
Substantive enough for you to evade the point by claiming irrelevance. You are upset at the hypocrisy of compaining about being arrested. Well, OK, how many are doing that? Enough to discredit the entire gathering? Or no? And if there is no such point, no number of whiners that would discredit their actions, then isn’t your point irrelevent, rather than mine?
And even were it true, so what? Even if the vast majority are whining tittybabies, they don’t have the same rights as persons of sterling character and stoic resolve, like you and I?
First you claimed that none of them said they were tricked, I showed you that was wrong. Reasonably enough, you say if that is true, you will withdraw some of your criticism. May one ask, ever so politely, what effort you have made to determine the truth of that? And what is the result of your investigation?
Really? I guess you’re right, the cops have to obey the law, they’re the cops! I wonder who Tony Bologna’s kindergarten teacher was?
Your perception of the market is markedly different from mine–I’ve seen the price of industrial gold rise significantly (doesn’t affect my company directly, but affects our largest clients directly), and everyone who’s got any qualifications to talk about it has been discussing the steep rise in demand for consumer gold and gold securities in the last few years. Part of it driven by increasing jewelry demand overseas, and some smaller portion from goldbugs. I’d characterize that as steadily rising demand, which absolutely will produce a bubble in some cases.
Not only super greedy, but virtually devoid of any benefit to the broader economy!
This has got to be the dumbest logic in the history of dumb logic. No, my claiming your point is irrelevant is not evidence of the point’s substantiveness. Just no.
This, however, is such cavalier disregard for the truth that I consider it a lie (or, if you prefer, a Dubya lie). What I actually said was
You responded by showing a protestor who vaguely claimed that the police seemed to be leading them onto the bridge. Oooh, tricky tricky! The cops in their Machiavellian fiendishness WARNED THE PROTESTORS NOT TO WALK ON THE BRIDGE as part of their scheme to get the protestors to walk on the bridge!
You continue in this fundamentally dishonest vein of misrepresenting what I’m saying. Show a little integrity, please, and maybe we can continue this discussion.
And no, that’s not a rhetorical flourish. You’re being dishonest, and it’s shameful.
What could be a “refuse to move to the back of the bus” or “sit at the whites only lunch counter” moment in this movement?
That is what I would like to see.
We’ve seen the firehoses (well, pepper spray).
I’ll defer to your expertise on the matter of gold.
You think wrongly. It is no fun getting arrested in a demonstration. It is not done on a lark. You recognize the danger when you decide to join. You hope your march will send the prez a message that the people want action taken against the people who caused the financial mess. It is projecting your vote with your feet. It is telling the politicians how you feel about their policies. They ignore emails and phone calls.
If you think getting brutalized by the police is fun. you haven’t had the thrill. It is not fun. It is not a game.
People who think there are a bunch of shallow kids marching should go look at a march. it is people like you taking risks to help you .People who are too comfortable and chicken to take risks.
I take back what I said about your taste in science fiction. You’ve probably got bookshelves full of Andre Norton, Dean Koontz and Heinlein. Feh!
Yeah, I know, pretty rough, but he called me a liar. There is some shit I will not eat.
Kind of a serious question, but why do you think now? I mean the mortgage crisis was in 2008. This is almost 2012.
The executive suites of most of the large banks have been swept out, some several times. Merrill went through two CEOs and the B of A went through two more. If you look through the annual reports, basically none of the guys that you can hold responsible for '08 are running anything.
What you have left are the guys holding the bag, trying to right the wrongs and rebuild the companies after they’ve lost 90% or more of their value.
It seems… Late.
Also, the idea that its like 5-6 guys or corporate america, or what have you. In some cases here, you got bad judgement and culpability from the top of the food chain in Congress, through the GSE’s the investment banks, the mortgage banks, the mortgage originators, and the guys signing their names two loans they can’t pay.
There are a lot of fucking people that fucked up. And, a lot of them have paid some serious consequences.
So now, 3 + years later when we’re still trying to rebuild, when we are facing serious economic problems that may well exceed the mortgage crisis in their scope and capacity for damage coming out of Europe… now? Now these yahoos want to protest?
I saw tape on Jimmy Kimmel and photos today. Yesterday they were chanting “What do we want?” “We’re not really sure!” “When do we want it?” “Right now?”
Today, i saw pictures of guys dressed up like zombies. People are dancing having a good time. Even CNN has remarked at the lack of purpose.
I find the manifesto laughable. I mean seriously, they left out saving the whales, but that’s about it, and if they don’t save the whales, I say fuck 'em.
I guess what I am saying is that there is already a couple of reasons why I find it hard to take them seriously. The fact that they don’t seem to be taking themselves seriously doesn’t help either.
3+ years later? Really?
Scylla-I’m days late and pages behind but I wanted to briefly address your notion that I’m some kind of young dewy idealist. I’m a farmer and I have very limited computer time which is why I generally prefer to lurk. Not that I think you’ve been waiting breathlessly for my reply or anything.
Although I didn’t get anything as impressive as a degree in finance, my husband and I have built a modestly sucessful pastured poultry business in central Texas-humanely raised meat broilers that are antibiotic and hormone free. Chicken that won’t kill you that actually tastes like chicken.
We have one fulltime employee that we pay a living wage.
(I can’t afford to give him health insurance yet but someday I hope to make that happen.)
We are keeping a local feed store in business-we’re 45% of his total weekly sales right now.
Most of our money goes directly back to the local economy.
Nobody gets exploited in my business, fossil fuel usage is minimum, our rotating pasture model sustains the land, people get fed.
And I can use a screwdriver, eviscerate a chicken in under a minute, drive a tractor, use a drill, build a field pen, track a predator, and direct market chickens to some of the best restaurants in Austin.
I can’t offer up a sophisticated analysis of the economy like you can.
All I know is this:
I know friends my age, people that have spent their lives working for major corporation,have watched their retirement account vanish in the last five years.
I know that a lot of my farmers market clients are struggling to find fulltime work.
I know that the vets I’ve met through the peace movement with PTSD have been fucked six ways to Sunday on their benefits.
I do know that schools are closing in Austin or slashing programs.
I know hardworking people that have lost their health insurance.
I could go on but I think you know these people too.
I didn’t have much hope for the junior senator from Illinois after he screwed us on public finance and FISA but I saw a lot of young people work their asses off for him only to become completely disillusioned.
Now I see them taking to the streets and it makes me glad.
And LHOD, I’m sorry that the current protestors aren’t organized enough for you.
I’m sorry that their demands aren’t coherent enough.
But ya gotta start somewhere.
And I suspect that you’re the sort of person that would prefer a revolution you can’t dance to.
Did you know that the Selma to Montegomery march wasn’t supposed to happen either?
Yeah, and my mother dresses me funny, too. Got any more of them?
I’m happy to have a revolution I can dance to. I don’t, however, mistake the afterparty for the main event.
luci, if you won’t put up with being called a liar, have some fucking integrity, stop misrepresenting what I say so egregiously, and apologize. Then maybe we can talk. Until then, forget it.
How did you know it’s the afterparty and not the beginning of a real movement to take back our republic?
Maybe the start of some real hope and change?
Over 1,500 people in serious business garb with serious credentials got arrested a few weeks ago with almost zero media coverage.
At least Occupy Together is getting a little attention.
As a counterexample, a well-thought-out bit of protest looks like this. After some planning involving media outreach, a clear message, and a well-chosen couple to spearhead the protest, a local organization that promotes GLBT rights in the South got two of its members–a longterm lesbian couple–to apply for a marriage certificate in a local courthouse. They’ve followed up with more couples doing the same thing. This is in the middle of a drive to create an anti-gay-marriage amendment in the state.
I’m not saying it’ll succeed, but look at what they’re doing:
These are all key elements of an effective protest. It may be that at some point OWS will achieve some of these elements, but so far they’re failing on all four counts.
Devastated.
The distinct lack of rubble or fires. You can’t smash the state by playing hacky sack.
I have to assume you’re being facetious.
The state won’t be smashed-hell, it won’t even be dented-by any sort of violent protest.
That just opens the door for swift and bloody suppression.
I think what the head of the teacher’s union in NYC,President Michael Mulgrew, is quoted as saying sums it up rather nicely:
It begins with a dialogue.
Who knows where it may end?
Could fizzle out two days from now.
Could become the start of a third party movement.
Could be the beginning of real global change.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that we can’t go on devastating the planet and exploiting peoples and waging wars and expect to remain unaffected for much longer.
I can’t speak to the question of who got swept out and who got to stay just yet; no time to look up 10-Ks before I get ready for work. But:
Maybe it’s late because people really did expect the President and Congress to fix the economic system beyond just a Band-Aid on the banking system. Finally, after 2.5 years of 9+% unemployment, some people are realizing that the cavalry isn’t coming, and if they want infantry, it’s gotta be them.
As Barry Ritholtz notes, a big reason for the drop in value of the Big Banks is the opacity of their balance sheets. They leaned on Congress to get rid of mark-to-market, so they’ve got piles of what Atrios used to call the Big Shitpile whose real values may or may not have anything to do with what they could have gotten in a sale anytime over the past coupla years. Investors are afraid that they’ve just covered up their problems rather than dealing with them, and the valuations reflect that fear.
Some suppiorting cites on this would be worthwhile. And more than just a magazine article saying there’s a new top dog at Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs, at Citigroup or B of A.. If 2/3 of the top 15-20 guys from 2007 are still there, then that hardly qualifies as sweeping out the executive suites.
If you can’t give us something to show that there really has been a clean sweep of these guys’ top floors, there’s no reason for us to believe it.
Cites, please.