Anonymous to Occupy Wall Street and Create Megathread

[Distruzio]

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So, what else should they do?

The flip side would me asking you why you use a road when you're against the coercion which paid for the road.

What else? Engaging in counter-economics comes to mind. Planning for the uncertain future comes to mind. Something other than asking the powers that be that we'd appreciate if they robbed and murdered us a little less obviously next time comes to mind.

Addressing the flip side; I paid for it, I use it. What I use it for... however, is something entirely different. Counter-markets and planning implied.

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You're missing the point...
You're acting like there is an alternative.
This argument is the same as the statist argument that says "if you don't like the government, paying taxes, etc you can leave."

There are alternatives, TA. It just seems like a bunch of disaffected entitled middle class folks demanding the promises made during the 90's come true. Seems like a bunch of folks yelling "I'm angry," and "I want shit!" I grow instantly suspicious of such initiatives. It isn't that I'm not angry as well, I'm just not going to go to the hand that slaughters me to ask for more.

Someone ought to warn him that he's going to be driving home on government roads tonight in an automobile manufactured in a government-inspected plant based on government-approved designs by people educated in government schools.

Addressed above.

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So unless you're a nudist luddite, you have no right to complain?

Not if you've spent your whole life buying into the system that now offends your sensibilities and continue to look to it for answers. No, you have no right to complain. Those people voted for the asshats in office who did this to them. They vote more asshats just like that into office every election cycle. They have no right to bitch. They are self-righteous children wondering why they didn't get the toys they were promised when dad "borrowed" their savings 5 years ago.

In other words, they are suddenly aware that the American dream they were promised never existed b/c they were asleep the entire time. That's the only way any one could believe that tripe... unless they're a child. I'm sorry people are finally waking up and finding all their shit gone. But the answer is not to go hold up a sign.

[Wikipedia and Universe]

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Just to be a buzzkill, it should be noted that not all of the demonstrators support the destruction or downfall of corporations.

On another note, the typical response you'll get is that whole "they will sell us the rope we use to hang them" crap.

[Distruzio]

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Just to be a buzzkill, it should be noted that not all of the demonstrators support the destruction or downfall of corporations.

On another note, the typical response you'll get is that whole "they will sell us the rope we use to hang them" crap.

It really wasn't a post made to spite the protestors, but as an expression of my cynicism about the "movement." The few news interviews I've seen have involved socialists (Cornell West and others) and anti-corporatists conflating corporatism with capitalism.

[Shofercia]

If you think that it's just kids with student loans, oh boy, are you misinformed. As for the banks on Wall Street doing what works - yeah - that's bullshit.

No, you deliberately misinterpreting what I said is.

Wall Street people do what they think will work. They don't know the future any more than anyone else does. They make guesses about it. The point is that Wall Street is not idealistic. And as such policy suggestions that are obviously based more on idealism than on likely being able to work will not resonate there.

Certain things aren't that hard to predict. If you invade Russia, your army will be fucked. That's not hard to predict. If you give loans to people that you know can't pay them back, you will fuck the economy if you do it on a massive scale. That's not hard to predict. If you drop bombs on people's heads, some of the survivors will be pissed off. That's not hard to predict. You can follow the basics and common sense to predict certain economic outcomes. Wall Street lost common sense, and started acting like a bunch of greedy bastards. Hence the protests. It's not about what Wall Street thinks. Few give a shit about that anymore. It's about what Wall Street does. And their actions, as of late, (since Bush's 2nd term,) have been screwing the economy. That's what the protesters are upset about.

Cut the crap with the fanch-shmancy terms, apologetics, etc. It's really common sense. You don't give out loans to people that can't pay back the loans. Period. If you can't figure that out, you shouldn't be running leading institutions in the Djiboutian Economy, but somehow they're still at the helm of US Economy.

No, we are talking about structured finance here. You don't get to change the issue to one you've got a better answer to. The whole loans thing is not the reason they did it. Misjudging the credit risk is not the core of the problem. Have a read and we'll keep going then.

From the first paragraph of the article:

The essence of structured finance activities is the pooling of economic assets (e.g. loans,
bonds, mortgages) and subsequent issuance of a prioritized capital structure of claims, known as
tranches, against these collateral pools. As a result of the prioritization scheme used in
structuring claims, many of the manufactured tranches are far safer than the average asset in the
underlying pool. This ability of structured finance to repackage risks and create “safe” assets
from otherwise risky collateral led to a dramatic expansion in the issuance of structured
securities, most of which were viewed by investors to be virtually risk-free and certified as such
by the rating agencies.

Translation: Structured financing is a fancy term we at Harvard use for the pooling of economic assets, such as loans bonds and mortgages,) that are insured by companies like AIG.

To simplify even more: you have bad mortgages, that have good insurance; in essence it's like taking a fire insurance on a house, when the forest all around it is already one fire, and expecting said insurance to be good. The article then explains at length how structured finance is at fault, and bad mortgages are just a mere symptom, of this risk taking structure.

In essence, they're superimposing a system, to cover up the fact that banks didn't follow common sense, and gave out loans to people who couldn't pay these loans, (bad mortgages).

NL, I can see straight through bullshit, and I'm undaunted by fancy names. I'm sure you'll be able to provide many more links, but none of them will be able to prove that the so-called system of "Structured Financing" would've still failed, if the mortgages weren't bad, that is if the banks followed common sense and didn't give loans to people that couldn't pay them back.

Oh, and you don't gamble with other people's money, by betting that the housing price will always increase, especially when said price is already inflated.

Mind you, when you didn't gamble on this, you got in trouble too...

When X is following the road rules, and X gets rear-ended, does that mean that X can now say "fuck the rules" and drive like the maniac that hit her?

1) Making risky short-term investments without thinking about the long-term outcome. Like in the housing crisis. Banks made a short term profit by selling houses to people that couldn't afford the loans, but didn't realize how badly said sales were going to hurt the banks in the long term.

Again, I think that's a pretty serious misunderstanding of what happened. But fair enough - I take it that you believe regulators are able to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

It's fairly easy to prevent: don't give loans to people that can't pay back said loans, and expect superbly inflated prices to deflate. That can be achieved by regulation.

2) Holding the Board of Directors, CEOs, CFOs, and other leading individuals, criminally and civilly accountable for actions that were just plain reckless. Any of the chairmen of the three companies responsible for the Gulf Oil Spill arrested? Or is it pragmatic to leave those, whose lobbying efforts damage an entire gulf, in charge? Troy Davis is executed, while Bernie Madoff gets house arrest, instead of jail. And when the corporation goes bust, the Government bails them out with taxpayer dollars, and the board gives itself a nice bonus. Clearly that's "pragmatic".

I'm not entirely sure how to respond to this. You seem to be aiming for an appeal to emotion, but I'm just confused. Firstly, I agree with you that the people responsible for the Gulf spill should be held responsible. I also agree that Bernie Madoff should not be getting an easy ride and that white collar crime should not be treated differently in terms of the actual treatment post-conviction. I don't see how either is relevant to our argument though, because you're throwing in these examples alongside claiming that the banks did wrong and that bank CEOs should be punished for losses incurred through bad investments.

And can you find me an example of this whole bail out/bonus thing? Because I have this feeling that most of the cases you might be thinking of actually involve banks after they had paid back the bailout funds, or contracts that had been made previously that they were not legally able to break (which is also something I disagree with in most cases). If there are other cases more like what you describe, I'll join you in the outrage. Ken Lewis' and ML management's fleecing of BofA/ML shareholders deserves a special kind of hell, in my view, for example.

It's a direct policy that should be used to send a message to those that are grossly irresponsible: "the law is the same for everyone". As for the bailout/bonus thing - AIG. If you can't see that, take your blinders off. Ken's fleecing of BofA is petty child play in comparison to what AIG pulled.

In terms of the issues with the current banking system, six banks control the US banking sector. The bank CEOs need to know that there will be punishments if they act irresponsibly. I haven't read enough about banking CEO actions to see what role they played in the initial crime, but they need to get the message that the law is equal for all, the rich and the poor. If they're found innocent, I'm fine with that. If they haven't committed a crime, I'm fine of that. But the law must apply equally to everyone, and most of the top executives of AIG should be in jail.

Legal Reforms: Lessen the requirement for declaring a class action. Pass laws that provide for safe working conditions, with reasonable break time. Limits on offshore banking and tax evasion techniques. Pass laws that hold media accountable for deliberate lies. See Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" for an example. Make corporate privacy laws less strict.

Some of these make sense, others I very much disagree with. But I don't think a single one of these has anything to do with the housing market...

If we were able to get fair media reports on the housing deflation, once it started, instead of Jim Cramer's "buy, buy, buy" routine, the American people wouldn't have been as fucked over, as they were. If you don't see that, you might want to take those blinders off.

Election Reforms: Require that all media broadcasters allow all candidates airtime during elections, and pay for said airtime with non-political advertisements.

I don't think that's going to make as much of a difference as you'd like. And you'd need some sort of screening system for candidates still - especially if you're going to require that all candidates get equal airtime (would you?). As I said before: "rent too high" guy getting the same airtime as a more serious candidate doesn't seem quite right, especially if you allow many, many candidates to run.

So what if the "rent too high" guy runs and gets airtime? We'll all listen in to a major issue - renting prices. It's how the little guy can get a voice, and it'll cause other candidates to react to the "rent too high" policy. In order to run, candidates would need to gather thousands of signatures, so it's not like any Joe Shmoe can just run.

Education Reforms: Free education for all - and raise the teacher salaries in the K-12 system. Everyone in the K-12 system is reasonably compensated, except teachers. Kind of hard not to see why that's fucked up. By free education for all - I mean that you should also include colleges and universities.

Good teachers yes, all teachers no. Free education is silly - there is no such thing. You'd have to cut spending elsewhere or raise taxes to do so, which turns it into a cost-benefit thing. I don't think the benefit of free education for all outweighs the cost: corner solutions are rarely the best. And there are quite a few indications that making tertiary education costless combines with people's myopia to lengthen the average time people take to finish degrees, which I don't see as beneficial to the economy at all.

I certainly believe that schools should be able to easily fire bad teachers, but how are you going to attract quality teachers with mediocre pay? During the Bush Administration, the real wages of teachers actually declined! By free education, I mean make it free to the students, and have the taxpayer pay. You can require a nice course workload, and good grades for attendance, and a four year finish. Bottom line is that an educated workforce is better than an uneducated one, and that most people can't afford education without being indebted, or going to state schools.

Other Reforms: End participation in wars abroad, unless it's US Allies. (Pull out of Iraq, Libya, stop having basis in 50+ countries, etc.) Invest in new forms of alternative energy.

As you may know, I very much disagree with you on Libya. Otherwise, yeah, sure. Alternative energies is also good, though I have a feeling that the US has already lost that one - the Chinese are getting on top of large-scale applications of these technologies very quickly. Might end up being better to just buy Chinese.

Still, no relation to the housing market.

The housing market crash, along with rising unemployment, helped trigger the protests, but once the protests get going, why not demand common sense from the government and Wall Street?

[Shofercia]

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Nice

Wait, someone tell me, are they mad about the government bailouts?

Da!

Wow you mean large groups of people with alot of money can do things with their money that people without money can't? How scandalous and unprecedented!

The group with the largest amount of money should not have the largest amount of influence in politics. Politicians need to be elected on merit not who has the best advertising budget.

Excuse me. You aren't allowed to use common sense when debating with government and/or Wall Street. If you do, you'll be accused of being a Communist. Especially with that flag

Wage is tied to your value. If government sets it to $20 hr then unemployment would skyrocket more because alot of people aren't worth $20 hr so those people would be out of a job. Why not set the minimum wage to 10,000,000$ per hour ? Then maybe only Bill Gates will land a job.

Economic ignorance. The higher the wage is set, the more who will be unemployed.

Actually, it's cruel to the poor people who need a job. Blame the government for outpricing your labor.

Australia proves you wrong
Compared to the us dollar, their minimum wage is about $15/hr, and they half our unemployment

Minimum wages causes unemployment is provably false.
Stop lying. and tell us your real agenda.

Sometimes the agenda's in the name

:palm:

what happened to the Journalist adage about reporting the news and not becoming the news?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/rep ... 50896.html

He's already on the prick list, under the heading "first reporter to lose journalistic integrity during the riots.

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I make 174,000 dollars a year.
I wrote the bill that cut your benefits.
I am personally responsible for every aspect of government you hate.
I am part of the 99%.

Fuck I hate these trite slogans.

I could make money off of vets, but I prefer to help them instead.
I helped several vets our of poverty.
I don't think those cutting vet benefits know what true responsibility means.
I support the protests, even if they have silly slogans.

Fuck I hate those who cut veterans benefits.

If you hate slogans - why not simply use logic, instead of inciting language to point that out?

Well now they're going to march on the Mansions apparently.

Police are really going to hammer them then, can't have them losing sleep from chanting.

Trying to pick a fight somewhere else.

If they can't do it in the most public of places, they'll try to do it in a comparatively private place.

They were going after the governor's home, so it's not exactly "ebul protesters harassing poor citizens".

[Des-Bal]

You're conflating the actually existing system with a free(d) market.

Except the present system makes sure you're being paid what is hypothetically a living wage.

[Neu Leonstein]

-snip-

It's not about what Wall Street thinks. Few give a shit about that anymore. It's about what Wall Street does. And their actions, as of late, (since Bush's 2nd term,) have been screwing the economy. That's what the protesters are upset about.

I recall that we were talking about the protests having some sort of effect on Wall Street itself. But never mind.

NL, I can see straight through bullshit, and I'm undaunted by fancy names. I'm sure you'll be able to provide many more links, but none of them will be able to prove that the so-called system of "Structured Financing" would've still failed, if the mortgages weren't bad, that is if the banks followed common sense and didn't give loans to people that couldn't pay them back.

I'm going to assume that you just haven't had the time to use your bullshit-seeing ability, or read the document.

The point I was trying to get across, and which apparently has to be spoon-fed, is that these bonds were shit because the correlation between the performance of the underlying mortgages was higher than anticipated. That is not the same thing as assuming that nobody will default on their loan. The correlation was what brought down these instruments as their credit ratings fell apart, way, way before they took credit losses. AIG's role was merely providing raw materials to provide synthetic versions of them - mortgage-backed CDOs that didn't even require a mortgage to be written in the first place.

And so I reiterate: does it all seem insane now? Yes. But you're talking out of your arse if you run around and say it would have been that obvious because some people were likely to default on their mortgages.

When X is following the road rules, and X gets rear-ended, does that mean that X can now say "fuck the rules" and drive like the maniac that hit her?

That's not what I mean. What I mean is this little controversy here:

Carl Levin, US Senator: “You had significant shorts in 2007 against residential mortgages didn’t you?”

David Viniar, CFO of Goldman Sachs: “Only because we had significant net longs as well. Our short position was not large.”

CL: “I guess 'large' is in the eye of beholder.”

CL: “What was the amount of the short?”

DV: “It’s very hard to quantify.”

CL: “Try. Was it over three billion dollars?”

DV: “I really don’t know.”

CL: “Was it a big short?”

DV: “Not in net terms.”

CL: “I’m not asking about the net, I’m asking about the big short”.

It's fairly easy to prevent: don't give loans to people that can't pay back said loans, and expect superbly inflated prices to deflate. That can be achieved by regulation.

How? I don't think it can.

It's a direct policy that should be used to send a message to those that are grossly irresponsible: "the law is the same for everyone". As for the bailout/bonus thing - AIG. If you can't see that, take your blinders off. Ken's fleecing of BofA is petty child play in comparison to what AIG pulled.

You mean the contracts I explicitly mentioned in my post?

In terms of the issues with the current banking system, six banks control the US banking sector. The bank CEOs need to know that there will be punishments if they act irresponsibly. I haven't read enough about banking CEO actions to see what role they played in the initial crime, but they need to get the message that the law is equal for all, the rich and the poor. If they're found innocent, I'm fine with that. If they haven't committed a crime, I'm fine of that. But the law must apply equally to everyone, and most of the top executives of AIG should be in jail.

And you really think that they committed a crime, and yet all these Congressmen, Senators, Attourney Generals and so on didn't do anything about it? I mean, they couldn't even convict Angelo Mozilo of anything (yet) and that guy is as much of a rat as they come.

If we were able to get fair media reports on the housing deflation, once it started, instead of Jim Cramer's "buy, buy, buy" routine, the American people wouldn't have been as fucked over, as they were. If you don't see that, you might want to take those blinders off.

The Anglo-American fascination with real estate and housing as investment transcends borders, governments, decades and even TV shows.

So what if the "rent too high" guy runs and gets airtime? We'll all listen in to a major issue - renting prices. It's how the little guy can get a voice, and it'll cause other candidates to react to the "rent too high" policy. In order to run, candidates would need to gather thousands of signatures, so it's not like any Joe Shmoe can just run.

Meh, fair enough. That topic bores me. Nor do I think it particularly fair to the voters of the world not to credit them with the ability to inform themselves even as it is.

Bottom line is that an educated workforce is better than an uneducated one, and that most people can't afford education without being indebted, or going to state schools.

Agreed. But we have an answer, and it doesn't require free education.

The housing market crash, along with rising unemployment, helped trigger the protests, but once the protests get going, why not demand common sense from the government and Wall Street?

No reason not to. But plenty of reasons not to act like we live in a world in which corporate personhood, miscalculated correlations and aiding a rebel group in Libya are somehow part of the same thing.

[Andaluciae]

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Nice

Wait, someone tell me, are they mad about the government bailouts?

Da!

The group with the largest amount of money should not have the largest amount of influence in politics. Politicians need to be elected on merit not who has the best advertising budget.

Excuse me. You aren't allowed to use common sense when debating with government and/or Wall Street. If you do, you'll be accused of being a Communist. Especially with that flag

Australia proves you wrong
Compared to the us dollar, their minimum wage is about $15/hr, and they half our unemployment

Minimum wages causes unemployment is provably false.
Stop lying. and tell us your real agenda.

Sometimes the agenda's in the name

:palm:

what happened to the Journalist adage about reporting the news and not becoming the news?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/rep ... 50896.html

He's already on the prick list, under the heading "first reporter to lose journalistic integrity during the riots.

I make 174,000 dollars a year.
I wrote the bill that cut your benefits.
I am personally responsible for every aspect of government you hate.
I am part of the 99%.

Fuck I hate these trite slogans.

I could make money off of vets, but I prefer to help them instead.
I helped several vets our of poverty.
I don't think those cutting vet benefits know what true responsibility means.
I support the protests, even if they have silly slogans.

Fuck I hate those who cut veterans benefits.

If you hate slogans - why not simply use logic, instead of inciting language to point that out?

Trying to pick a fight somewhere else.

If they can't do it in the most public of places, they'll try to do it in a comparatively private place.

They were going after the governor's home, so it's not exactly "ebul protesters harassing poor citizens".

Ah. I thought "The Mansions" was a neighborhood. I don't know NYC, and am happy to never go there again.

[Belvadaire]

Good, change needs to take place in the USA, to bad they voted in a change that really screwed up everything, Odrama, he really do know how to humbly stare up discrimination problems, a few words, people start to get angry, it's only the Devil hiding behind a dark skin, just milking the dicrimination groups, and civil right activist, that thing don't have a skin color, that's right I said thing. Just him being in office has a lot of people scrammbling around on how to come at with challenging question and statements without looking racist, that's why those freemason evil scumbags put him in their, so people can feel sorry for challenging real power. he can go back to hell where he came from.

Wait...what? Are you on thorazine? What the hell.

Sure do know the medicen, must be your favorite drug. before you bash someone be prepare to take a bashing

[Des-Bal]

Sure do know the medicen, must be your favorite drug. before you bash someone be prepare to take a bashing

Nobody can tell what the fuck your saying.

[Shofercia]

-snip-

It's not about what Wall Street thinks. Few give a shit about that anymore. It's about what Wall Street does. And their actions, as of late, (since Bush's 2nd term,) have been screwing the economy. That's what the protesters are upset about.

I recall that we were talking about the protests having some sort of effect on Wall Street itself. But never mind.

I think Wall Street's actions will show whether protests have an effect on Wall Street or not. Saakashvili never said that he was terrified of Putin, but boy oh boy, did he run like mad from that scout plane, that didn't even have machine guns. I prefer judging Wall Street by their actions, you prefer judging Wall Street by their thoughts. That's the difference between us.

NL, I can see straight through bullshit, and I'm undaunted by fancy names. I'm sure you'll be able to provide many more links, but none of them will be able to prove that the so-called system of "Structured Financing" would've still failed, if the mortgages weren't bad, that is if the banks followed common sense and didn't give loans to people that couldn't pay them back.

I'm going to assume that you just haven't had the time to use your bullshit-seeing ability, or read the document.

The point I was trying to get across, and which apparently has to be spoon-fed, is that these bonds were shit because the correlation between the performance of the underlying mortgages was higher than anticipated. That is not the same thing as assuming that nobody will default on their loan. The correlation was what brought down these instruments as their credit ratings fell apart, way, way before they took credit losses. AIG's role was merely providing raw materials to provide synthetic versions of them - mortgage-backed CDOs that didn't even require a mortgage to be written in the first place.

And so I reiterate: does it all seem insane now? Yes. But you're talking out of your arse if you run around and say it would have been that obvious because some people were likely to default on their mortgages.

Your assumption makes an ass out of you. "The correlation between the performance of the underlying mortgages was higher than anticipated" - well duh! If you give people loans that they can't pay back, and pretend like it's business as usual, you're bound to have a correlation that's higher than anticipated. That's like deciding to ignore all defensive tactics in sports, and claim that the other team scored more goals than anticipated. It seems insane now, and it sure was insane back then, and anyone still denying that, or accusing others of talking out of their arse for stating the obvious, is nothing but a petty corporatist.

One has to look no further then fucking Wikipedia and verify a source, because it's that fucking obvious, that the bankers not only saw it, but attempted to cover it up: http://www.businessinsider.com/deutsche ... ils-2011-4

He = Greg Lippmann

"This bond blows" (regarding a subprime RMBS security issued by Long Beach) - 2/24/2006

"Yikes didn't see that. Half of these are crap and rest are ok... Crap-heat pchlt sail tmts." (The acronyms refer to "Home Equity Asset Trust" "People's Choice Home Loan Securities Trust," "Structured Asset Investment Loan," and "Terwin Mortgage Trust.") - 4/5/2006

At times during 2006 and 2007, he referred to CDO underwriting by investment banks as the workings of a "CDO machine" or "ponzi scheme."
“I don’t care what some trained seal bull market research person says this stuff has a real chance of massively blowing up.”

Greg Lippmann is a trader who worked for Deutsche Bank. Meanwhile NL boldly declares:

you're talking out of your arse if you run around and say it would have been that obvious

Poor NL, trying to defend the corporations at all costs. Let's check in with another source, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, who studied the economic crashes around the World, and warned that the US was about to have one, back in 2006. For this, the NY Times affectionately called him, "pessimist" and Dr. Doom:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/magaz ... ist-t.html

In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was blatantly obvious to the experts, not to the corporate cocksuckers. I went through a similar scenario with military simulators and the Ossetian War. How anyone could not have predicted that the Russians would've won the war within a month, is beyond me. Main battle was predicted to be fought in either Tskhinvali or Java, which are Ossetian cities, similar to Vladikavkaz, meaning that Russians knew the soil like their own. They had the aid of the majority of the local militia. It was a counterattack campaign, something that Russians are the best in. And on top of everything, they had city fighting experience from the two Chechen Wars. And yet, there were corporate cocksuckers pretending that Russia was going to lose, or that Russia had "grave losses", or that Russia couldn't have won without overwhelming force, blah, blah, blah.

Same exact case here. Anyone who studied the issue, and was honest, was able to predict it. Greed caused the corporations to ignore it. From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_c ... eline#2005

The Securities and Exchange Commission ceases an investigation of Bear Stearns "pricing, valuation, and analysis" of mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations. No action is taken against Bear.
Robert Shiller gives talks warning about a housing bubble to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He is ignored, and would later call it an incidence of Groupthink. That same year, his second edition of Irrational Exuberance warns that the housing bubble might lead to a worldwide recession.

And I could just go on and on. All of this is sourced, otherwise I wouldn't be copy-pasting stuff from Wikidorkia. And here's the Subprime Mortgage Industry criticized, by an expert, working for the Fed:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/f ... lich_x.htm

During a panel discussion on housing, Gramlich said mortgage brokers, who make about half the subprime loans, might not have incentives for careful underwriting.

Subprime lenders offer higher-interest loans to borrowers with poor credit ratings who may not qualify for prime financing. Most subprime loans are resold on the secondary market.

"The subprime incidence of mortgage brokers without a lot at stake in the game is getting pretty high," Gramlich said.

It's fairly easy to prevent: don't give loans to people that can't pay back said loans, and expect superbly inflated prices to deflate. That can be achieved by regulation.

How? I don't think it can.

By banning the practice of giving loans to people that can't pay back the loans! Duh! Do you want me to spoon feed you on how to do that effectively? You have three independent sources verify that a person can pay the loan, before giving out the loan, and you ensure that the commission is paid with the same efficiency of the loan - i.e. if ten percent of the loan are paid back during the first year, the seller gets 10 percent of the commission. Once the entire loan is paid back, the seller gets all of the commission.

In terms of the issues with the current banking system, six banks control the US banking sector. The bank CEOs need to know that there will be punishments if they act irresponsibly. I haven't read enough about banking CEO actions to see what role they played in the initial crime, but they need to get the message that the law is equal for all, the rich and the poor. If they're found innocent, I'm fine with that. If they haven't committed a crime, I'm fine of that. But the law must apply equally to everyone, and most of the top executives of AIG should be in jail.

And you really think that they committed a crime, and yet all these Congressmen, Senators, Attourney Generals and so on didn't do anything about it? I mean, they couldn't even convict Angelo Mozilo of anything (yet) and that guy is as much of a rat as they come.

You do understand that those with the money help the politicians get elected, right? That's why the US desperately needs an election system where money and negative advertisements don't steal the show.

So what if the "rent too high" guy runs and gets airtime? We'll all listen in to a major issue - renting prices. It's how the little guy can get a voice, and it'll cause other candidates to react to the "rent too high" policy. In order to run, candidates would need to gather thousands of signatures, so it's not like any Joe Shmoe can just run.

Meh, fair enough. That topic bores me. Nor do I think it particularly fair to the voters of the world not to credit them with the ability to inform themselves even as it is.

A bit hard to inform yourself if the media lies on behalf of the corporations, and the politicians are masterful at bullshitting. Not everyone has a degree in political bullshitting, err political science, or economic bullshitting, err economics.

Bottom line is that an educated workforce is better than an uneducated one, and that most people can't afford education without being indebted, or going to state schools.

Agreed. But we have an answer, and it doesn't require free education.

I'm going to disagree. I like it when the extreme majority don't have to graduate with loans in order to receive proper education.

The housing market crash, along with rising unemployment, helped trigger the protests, but once the protests get going, why not demand common sense from the government and Wall Street?

No reason not to. But plenty of reasons not to act like we live in a world in which corporate personhood, miscalculated correlations and aiding a rebel group in Libya are somehow part of the same thing.

Oh my, how well you spin. Rupert Murdoch would be proud. First, NTC took over Tawerga, and left it in charge of a group that's committed/committing ethnic cleansing. Second, NATO fought the a large part of the rebels' war for them, by doing all the heavy lifting, literally and figuratively. Third, if you want corporate personhood, you need corporate accountability. A citizen has rights and duties. You don't get one without the other, and that's the primary problem with corporate personhood. Fourth, the correlations were "miscalculated" due to greed.

All of this is driven by greed, and the faulty belief that everyone must love the "values" that flow out of the government and/or Wall Street, which you seem to do quite well. The first two problems were caused due to greed. As for the rebel group that has/had ethnic cleansing on their territory, that too was predictable, but Obama and Clinton decided to play a bit of cowboy white, ignoring past mistakes in Kosovo and Bush's mistakes in Iraq. Specifically, these mistakes were not trusting the Kurds/Berbers enough, and not taking out the gangster/Thaci equivalents in Libya.

They're not all part of the same thing, They're all driven by the same people. And these people need to learn that other Americans have opinions, which also count. If protests are the only way to deliver the message, so be it.

[The Islands of United Caribbean Colonies]

He is so ridiculous I stopped reading his posts a while ago, get used to just having to skim over them. I have never met someone so inflammatory with their ACTUAL beliefs.

You've known me for less than two days; and stop with the libel. I'm sorry (well, not really) if my beliefs offend you; but get used to it. Not everyone's a leftist.

Look, quick background story, , I go to very conservative school, in a conservative part of Texas, they kick you out of my school if they find you are gay, and some teachers will seriously clash with you if you try and argue Christianity. I was a conservative up until about a year ago, I started using MJ, and my entire life changed. My eyes opened to a world I had never seen before, the cracks in our entire society seemed to glow. A total revelation that my entire life up until that point was a life of brainwashing and lies, yet when I confronted key individuals on the subject, my life was overturned via their punishment of my new opinions, just adding fertilizer to the already growing plant, so to speak.

These same people thoroughly bitch about Obama and our government everyday, yet I show them real answers to their bitching, and they turn their back, and claim it to be lies. Infuriating that they will not even give a thought to the information given to them because of the film over their eyes, and I was there too at one point, but I was "saved". So its not that I am leftist or right wind, I just offer my opinion based on the real world experience that I have had, and what position that has lead to me to. I would prefer to put a label on it.

I see you stuck in the same rut, stuck, wanting answers, but unable to accept the ones given to you. Perhaps you too need a change of heart, and a change of perception.

A example, say a there is a car crash a intersection, and the police officer (you) goes around to the 4 different witnesses at the different street corners. The one on the right bottom says the car ran the stop sign, but the witness on the left top says that there was no stop sign, but the witness on the top right says that the car tried to stop but the brakes didn't work, and the witness on the left bottom says the opposite car ran the stop sign.

Your views are not necessarily wrong by the information presented to you, but maybe if you change your point of view to allow more information you may come to a conclusion that the car ran over a nail and went into the opposing traffic because of that (at the example).

Just a thought, your views are very extremist, and you need to allow yourself to think more outside the box if you want to be taken seriously, if you are going to advocate dictatorship in the USA, then your opinion is practically wasted. My 2 cents, on how I see you, in the last 2 days as you put it.


End Rant: Not trying to anger you at all, just saying maybe consider some other peoples opinions instead of just injecting your own automatically, like Socrates.

[Andaluciae]

Wait...what? Are you on thorazine? What the hell.

Sure do know the medicen, must be your favorite drug. before you bash someone be prepare to take a bashing

Your incessant use of hyperbole, insane conspiracy theories, bizarre and inexplicable renaming, and this odd fixation on the freemasons, in a situation where they don't seem even remotely relevant leads me to inquire you are on your medications, or if you've gone off.

[Hydesland]

Anyone who studied the issue, and was honest, was able to predict it.

I can almost list the major experts who predicted the crisis on my hand, you're going to have trouble finding anyone else other than Baker, Roubini, Schiller (and it’s not like people even cared about Roubini, before the crisis he was just a regular economics professor consistently prophesying doom and consistently being wrong about it, until now) and a few other financial experts and traders who actually prophesised the crisis – because I cannot stress this enough, the vast majority of experts in finance and economics, especially including those not tied to any business or corporation, failed to identify the bubble. Because that is what it’s about: your main problem is that you’ve framed the debate in an obviously obnoxious and hyperbolic diagnosis of the crisis, it’s more than simply deliberately “lending money to people that cannot pay back”, because no bank can EVER really know if anyone can pay that their mortgage for sure without spending a huge amount of resources on investigation and accounting of each individual. So what banks typically instead do is have a set of filters you must go through to be ‘credit worthy’, similar to how an insurance company determines its premiums, while accepting that these filters are not perfect and will inevitably lead to a proportion of people defaulting – this cost being determined to be less than the cost of thoroughly auditing every single individual.

However, a lot of people both left and right, complained that the lending standards were unnecessarily strict. Even liberals for instance would argue that the standards were unfair to the working class or minorities. However, for technical reasons too, it wasn’t just for political reasons, some financiers came up with models and ideas about how to loosen standards and even accept a higher rate of default whilst still making money and not becoming insolvent. It was deemed less important if a higher proportion of borrowers would default because house prices were inflating continually so the bank can simply refinance/use the house as collateral, so riskier mortgages without so many strict standards (sub-prime) started happening, and these were diversified and packaged into securities and traded. This model of banking would work so long as house prices would continually rise, or at least not suffer a sharp fall, so basically it’s not about identifying whether “lending to people that cannot pay back” is bad but identifying whether we are in a housing bubble or not. Most banks seemed to think that real estate prices would continue to rise for decades, and I’m not talking about your typical trader/analyst here, I’m talking about quants with PHD’S IN PHYSICS (http://plus.maths.org/content/how-maths ... n-brothers ) thinking this. And many many experts not employed by any bank did not think there was a housing bubble either, and they had an array of technical reasons to think the movement in house prices represented something fundamental (e.g. land becoming more scarce). I remember reading debates in the economist about whether there was a housing bubble, and to me it certainly wasn’t obvious at the time (although I suppose this was before I was at college studying econ) that we were, I think the claim that anyone could have seen it coming is just plain false, if not a deliberate lie to make reality more politically convenient. In fact, we’re not absolutely sure it is even possible to identify a bubble UNTIL after the bubble has burst for a number of technical reasons (for instance, the argument that if it was ‘obviously’ overvalued, everyone would have already shorted the asset to make a profit causing it to return to an equilibrium price), this is the sort of thing nobel laureates in economics debate over, it can get very complicated, I would not expect any trader or analyst to have special knowledge on this issue compared to non-banker academics. Of course I’m not letting bankers off the hook, there was a lot of fraud and lousy data/record collection that made the value of many mortgage backed securities completely ambiguous.

Regarding the ‘banning’ of lending to people who cannot pay back their loan, this is not feasible literally since as I said before banks cannot have certain knowledge of something like that and there will always be a proportion of defaults from your assets even with very strict lending standards. So in practical terms what you really want is to see tougher lending standards, but this is exactly what is being done already. In fact regulations on lending standards so enraged the CEO of JP Morgan that he publicly accused Bernanke in a press conference of stifling the economy by making it so hard for banks to lend. I’m not saying banking is completely adequately regulated, but it’s not like nothing is being done.

[Terra Agora]

There are alternatives, TA.

If not from a corporation then where are they to get those things?

It just seems like a bunch of disaffected entitled middle class folks demanding the promises made during the 90's come true. Seems like a bunch of folks yelling "I'm angry," and "I want shit!" I grow instantly suspicious of such initiatives. It isn't that I'm not angry as well, I'm just not going to go to the hand that slaughters me to ask for more.

Not everyone there is a spoiled brat.
EDIT: See this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFz1VVXsWRU

[Apocal]

Occupy Wall Street is bullshit and does nothing other than bitch and moan. They all are hypocrities who need to grow the fuck up.

[Occupied Deutschland]

Occupy Wall Street is bullshit and does nothing other than bitch and moan. They all are hypocrities who need to grow the fuck up.

Now now, while I disapprove of the vast majority of what they are saying SOME part of the country has to be grown up and civil about these things.
I've been going on the assumption that some of these people are legitimately concerned people angry about the Wall Street bailouts (I'm confused why they're occupying Wall Street and not Pennsylvania Avenue, but that's another matter) but they are getting buried under a layer of unemployed idiots who just want to fight the system and smoke some dope.

[Apocal]

Occupy Wall Street is bullshit and does nothing other than bitch and moan. They all are hypocrities who need to grow the fuck up.

Now now, while I disapprove of the vast majority of what they are saying SOME part of the country has to be grown up and civil about these things.
I've been going on the assumption that some of these people are legitimately concerned people angry about the Wall Street bailouts (I'm confused why they're occupying Wall Street and not Pennsylvania Avenue, but that's another matter) but they are getting buried under a layer of unemployed idiots who just want to fight the system and smoke some dope.

*nods* Exactly. The only reason why the government is really paying attention to that is the protestors themselves. I mena, 3/4s of them look like they just graduated college and looked for job for about 5 minutes and said "THERE ARE NO JOBS FOR ME? LETS GO BLAME WALL STREET!!!"

[Genivaria]

Occupy Wall Street is bullshit and does nothing other than bitch and moan. They all are hypocrities who need to grow the fuck up.

Now now, while I disapprove of the vast majority of what they are saying SOME part of the country has to be grown up and civil about these things.
I've been going on the assumption that some of these people are legitimately concerned people angry about the Wall Street bailouts (I'm confused why they're occupying Wall Street and not Pennsylvania Avenue, but that's another matter) but they are getting buried under a layer of unemployed idiots who just want to fight the system and smoke some dope.

Because the secret service would start shooting.

[F1-Insanity]

It would take days to list the millions of people who have lived shit lives because they never went to college. The exception proves the rule.

Maybe one can do something that would not require to list millions, but thousands at most.

List all government advisers, investment bankers and the likes who have set up these irresponsible/unsustainable (else: no bailout needed) business models for their companies or are the ones who gave all that advice to the government that piling on debt and a humongous deficit were just great ideas.

I think the result would be pretty one sided, not too many in there with 'no college degree'.

[Bottle]

(I'm confused why they're occupying Wall Street and not Pennsylvania Avenue, but that's another matter)

Can't speak for OWS, but personally I wouldn't bother marching on the White House. Why bother? That's not where the power is any more. Hasn't been for a long time. It's like Buckingham Palace as opposed to Parliament.

[Keronians]

(I'm confused why they're occupying Wall Street and not Pennsylvania Avenue, but that's another matter)

Can't speak for OWS, but personally I wouldn't bother marching on the White House. Why bother? That's not where the power is any more. Hasn't been for a long time. It's like Buckingham Palace as opposed to Parliament.

A sad reality.

Why Americans let lobbyists buy their government for so many years I will never know.

[Natvia]

A sad reality.

Why Americans let lobbyists buy their government for so many years I will never know.

Wow.

I have no idea where you're from, but I'm getting the "condescending European" vibe.

[Sane Outcasts]

Occupy Wall Street is bullshit and does nothing other than bitch and moan. They all are hypocrities who need to grow the fuck up.

Now now, while I disapprove of the vast majority of what they are saying SOME part of the country has to be grown up and civil about these things.
I've been going on the assumption that some of these people are legitimately concerned people angry about the Wall Street bailouts (I'm confused why they're occupying Wall Street and not Pennsylvania Avenue, but that's another matter) but they are getting buried under a layer of unemployed idiots who just want to fight the system and smoke some dope.

The movement has spread enough to several cities and most groups seem to manage their own activities independently. Occupy Wall Street marched up to Manhattan today past the homes of the wealthy, including several CEOs, but Occupy DC seems to be more aggressive about their protests. A thrown shoe got one arrested a few days ago, today six more were arrested while demonstrating inside the Hart Senate Building. Occupy Boston also had a hundred members arrested today for trespassing, according to the city officials, after the protestors ignored warning to leave a greenway they were camped near.

Watching the movement and trying to figure out what they're about, I'm thinking the lack of a central message or political agenda helps to draw a lot of different groups, like the unions that added support to OWS, based on a shared sense of frustration and anger with the status quo in business and politics. There isn't anything radical about these groups, as far as I can tell, they seem to want change within the system rather than something entirely different. All they are able to do now is get attention, but unless some sort of leadership shows up, that's all they'll ever get out of this movement.

[Sremski okrug]

Can't speak for OWS, but personally I wouldn't bother marching on the White House. Why bother? That's not where the power is any more. Hasn't been for a long time. It's like Buckingham Palace as opposed to Parliament.

A sad reality.

Why Americans let lobbyists buy their government for so many years I will never know.

No idea.

You can see it when you compare the funding of the recent elections.

2010 UK Election - 25 million pounds
2008 US Presidential Election - 5.3 billion dollars