OCCUPY WALL STREET

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

OMG what a %@*#&@!! <--- ain't gonna say the word that actually came to mind.

I hope this video goes viral and he is hated and picketed for this. He needs to be voted or kicked out of office for verbally abusing his constituents.

Walsh makes me sick and I think he is unstable, I really do. Plus, he ran out on his kids and wife and owes over 100K in back child support. Real family values kind of guy! So tired of GOP/TP hypocrites!! He is more than an arrogant jerk- he's on the edge.

[Cin]

It is interesting how many articles I've read lately with some reference or other to morality.

Pre-Occupied with Fairness: The Moral Crisis of Modern Capitalism
Wednesday, 11/9/2011 - 12:19 pm by John Paul Rollert

There’s no good explanation for why Wall Street continues to suck up vast amounts of money except that there is a flaw in the system itself.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters were not immune to the news of Steve Jobs’s passing. “A ripple of shock went through our crowd,” Thorin Caristo, a leader of the movement’s web outreach, told the Associated Press. He later called for a moment of silence from the stubborn assembly at Zuccotti Park, and the 99% paid tribute to an exceptional member of the other club.

The gesture failed to move some. National Review’s Daniel Foster envisioned “viscera of a thousand heads exploding from the sheer force of cognitive dissonance,” while conservative columnist Michelle Malkin said that the protesters honoring Jobs’s life and work “without a trace of irony” provided the “teachable moment of the week.” The lesson, it seems, is that one cannot critique capitalism without also rejecting every single capitalist, a conclusion that is not only logically flawed but one that was famously rejected by William F. Buckley, Jr., the ideological avatar of the modern conservative movement and a founder of the National Review.

In a column written just a few years before his death, Buckley condemned what he called the “institutional embarrassments” of capitalism, CEOs whose enormous compensation packages defy the gravitational pull of poor stock performance. Buckley was no equalitarian, and he drew a contrast between the “executive plunder” reaped by certain CEOs and the allowances that may be made for the likes of a Thomas Edison. Were such a person alive today, he said, “it would be unwise to cavil at any arrangement whatever made by a company seeking his services exclusively.”

Unwise, but more importantly, unwarranted, for at the heart of Buckley’s argument is an appeal to fairness. It does not seem unreasonable that a Thomas Edison, or a Steve Jobs, be paid a lot more than the rest of us. But when it comes to people who not only fail to create value, but actually supervise its destruction, it seems outrageous that they should make more over a long lunch than most people make in an entire year. Or, as Buckley puts it, “What is going on is phony. It is shoddy, it is contemptible, and it is philosophically blasphemous.”

To be clear, were he still with us today, Bill Buckley would not be occupying Wall Street. His aim was to save capitalism from itself, and he would likely chide the protesters for trying to save us from capitalism. Still, the sense of moral outrage that infuses his column — aptly titled “Capitalism’s Boil” — is not altogether different from that expressed by the weather-weary demonstrators. Doubtless, there are some who want to uproot capitalism altogether and replace it with some other system for distributing scarce goods, but one suspects that most who have turned out are simply looking to air the familiar grievances of the financial crisis (joblessness, soaring poverty, crushing debt) and shame those on Wall Street who cashed in on a crisis they helped create.

The same may be said with even greater confidence for the support the movement is enjoying across the country. It is not the case that a nation of closet communists has finally found a voice; rather, the protesters have come to embody a common sense that something is wrong with American capitalism — that the system simply isn’t working. In this respect, the focus on Wall Street is both apt and overbroad. Overbroad because, if you brush the complex instruments that precipitated the financial crisis, you won’t find the fingerprints of every banker on Wall Street. Apt because the success of the financial sector as a whole not only defies the experience of the last few years, but the story of the American middle class for over three decades.

Sign up to have the Daily Digest, a witty take on the morning’s news, delivered straight to your inbox.

Paul Krugman has famously called this period The Great Divergence. “We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared,” he said in the inaugural post of his New York Times blog. “Between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.” During the same period, the percentage of the nation’s wealth held by the top 1% grew from 20.5% in 1979 to 33.8% in 2007. These trends have helped to set the U.S. apart from other developed countries in terms of wealth inequality. According to the C.I.A World Fact book, the U.S. currently ranks 39th in unequal wealth distribution, edging out Cameroon and Iran but just behind Bulgaria and Jamaica. By contrast, the UK comes in at 91st place, with Canada 102nd and Germany 126th.

The financial sector doesn’t tell the whole story of growing inequality, but it certainly plays a central role. As Simon Johnson described its meteoric rise in a 2009 essay for The Atlantic:

From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007.

The inequality within the financial sector is more striking still, with the most successful managing directors taking home enough to buy and sell a brace of lowly associates. Again, the numbers speak for themselves: In 1986, the highest paid CEO on Wall Street was John Gutfreund of Salomon Brothers, who made $3.1 million. In 2007, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, made just short of $68 million.

To be sure, Americans have always had a high tolerance for economic inequality, particularly compared with their European peers. The quintessential American tale is still the rags to riches story, and for Democrats and Republicans alike, ‘class warfare’ is an accusation to be rebutted, not an open call to arms. Indeed, as the unlikely tribute to Steve Jobs attests, even for those who are willing to roundly object to the growing gap between the very rich and the rest of us, the problem is not inequality per se, but giving a satisfactory account for it. As Bill Buckley well understood, economic systems have to give a moral account of who wins, who loses, and why, particularly insofar as those systems are shaped by democratic choices. It is not hard to give a compelling account for why someone like Steve Jobs grows far richer than the rest of us — his success tends to vindicate capitalism, not undermine it — but the same may not be said for the financial sector in general. The problem isn’t that the average banker doesn’t work hard (the hours are grueling) nor that his work isn’t essential to helping maintain a modern, civilized society (it is); the problem is that the same may be said for an ER nurse or a sixth grade teacher, and it isn’t immediately clear why one should make 10 times as much as the other.

Buckley said of the CEO pay packages he so despised that “extortions of that size tell us, really, that the market system is not working,” meaning that the free market, left to its own devices, does not allow for such gross distortions. This is certainly the account conservatives prefer when they try to explain Wall Street’s inordinate success. According to them, anti-competitive regulations, cheap money from the Fed, and the cozy relationship between the big banks and Washington have allowed the financial sector to prosper not because of capitalism, but despite it.

To liberals, this sounds ridiculous. After 30 years of lower taxes, freer trade, weaker unions, and a general trend toward deregulation, the idea that growing inequality and Wall Street’s exceptional success somehow defy the natural tendencies of capitalism is an astonishing exercise in wishful thinking. The forces of the free market alone may not explain these trends, but they seem hardly at odds.

Increasingly, the Occupy Wall Street movement has been faulted for not taking explicit sides in this dispute, but like Buckley in his column, the aim of their protests is not policy prescription, but moral persuasion. When your house is on fire, you don’t stand around wondering whether faulty wiring or an arsonist is to blame. You raise a hue and cry until your neighbors fill the street.

[atomiczombie]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

It is interesting how many articles I've read lately with some reference or other to morality.

Pre-Occupied with Fairness: The Moral Crisis of Modern Capitalism
Wednesday, 11/9/2011 - 12:19 pm by John Paul Rollert

There’s no good explanation for why Wall Street continues to suck up vast amounts of money except that there is a flaw in the system itself.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters were not immune to the news of Steve Jobs’s passing. “A ripple of shock went through our crowd,” Thorin Caristo, a leader of the movement’s web outreach, told the Associated Press. He later called for a moment of silence from the stubborn assembly at Zuccotti Park, and the 99% paid tribute to an exceptional member of the other club.

The gesture failed to move some. National Review’s Daniel Foster envisioned “viscera of a thousand heads exploding from the sheer force of cognitive dissonance,” while conservative columnist Michelle Malkin said that the protesters honoring Jobs’s life and work “without a trace of irony” provided the “teachable moment of the week.” The lesson, it seems, is that one cannot critique capitalism without also rejecting every single capitalist, a conclusion that is not only logically flawed but one that was famously rejected by William F. Buckley, Jr., the ideological avatar of the modern conservative movement and a founder of the National Review.

In a column written just a few years before his death, Buckley condemned what he called the “institutional embarrassments” of capitalism, CEOs whose enormous compensation packages defy the gravitational pull of poor stock performance. Buckley was no equalitarian, and he drew a contrast between the “executive plunder” reaped by certain CEOs and the allowances that may be made for the likes of a Thomas Edison. Were such a person alive today, he said, “it would be unwise to cavil at any arrangement whatever made by a company seeking his services exclusively.”

Unwise, but more importantly, unwarranted, for at the heart of Buckley’s argument is an appeal to fairness. It does not seem unreasonable that a Thomas Edison, or a Steve Jobs, be paid a lot more than the rest of us. But when it comes to people who not only fail to create value, but actually supervise its destruction, it seems outrageous that they should make more over a long lunch than most people make in an entire year. Or, as Buckley puts it, “What is going on is phony. It is shoddy, it is contemptible, and it is philosophically blasphemous.”

To be clear, were he still with us today, Bill Buckley would not be occupying Wall Street. His aim was to save capitalism from itself, and he would likely chide the protesters for trying to save us from capitalism. Still, the sense of moral outrage that infuses his column — aptly titled “Capitalism’s Boil” — is not altogether different from that expressed by the weather-weary demonstrators. Doubtless, there are some who want to uproot capitalism altogether and replace it with some other system for distributing scarce goods, but one suspects that most who have turned out are simply looking to air the familiar grievances of the financial crisis (joblessness, soaring poverty, crushing debt) and shame those on Wall Street who cashed in on a crisis they helped create.

The same may be said with even greater confidence for the support the movement is enjoying across the country. It is not the case that a nation of closet communists has finally found a voice; rather, the protesters have come to embody a common sense that something is wrong with American capitalism — that the system simply isn’t working. In this respect, the focus on Wall Street is both apt and overbroad. Overbroad because, if you brush the complex instruments that precipitated the financial crisis, you won’t find the fingerprints of every banker on Wall Street. Apt because the success of the financial sector as a whole not only defies the experience of the last few years, but the story of the American middle class for over three decades.

Sign up to have the Daily Digest, a witty take on the morning’s news, delivered straight to your inbox.

Paul Krugman has famously called this period The Great Divergence. “We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared,” he said in the inaugural post of his New York Times blog. “Between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.” During the same period, the percentage of the nation’s wealth held by the top 1% grew from 20.5% in 1979 to 33.8% in 2007. These trends have helped to set the U.S. apart from other developed countries in terms of wealth inequality. According to the C.I.A World Fact book, the U.S. currently ranks 39th in unequal wealth distribution, edging out Cameroon and Iran but just behind Bulgaria and Jamaica. By contrast, the UK comes in at 91st place, with Canada 102nd and Germany 126th.

The financial sector doesn’t tell the whole story of growing inequality, but it certainly plays a central role. As Simon Johnson described its meteoric rise in a 2009 essay for The Atlantic:

From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent. Pay rose just as dramatically. From 1948 to 1982, average compensation in the financial sector ranged between 99 percent and 108 percent of the average for all domestic private industries. From 1983, it shot upward, reaching 181 percent in 2007.

The inequality within the financial sector is more striking still, with the most successful managing directors taking home enough to buy and sell a brace of lowly associates. Again, the numbers speak for themselves: In 1986, the highest paid CEO on Wall Street was John Gutfreund of Salomon Brothers, who made $3.1 million. In 2007, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, made just short of $68 million.

To be sure, Americans have always had a high tolerance for economic inequality, particularly compared with their European peers. The quintessential American tale is still the rags to riches story, and for Democrats and Republicans alike, ‘class warfare’ is an accusation to be rebutted, not an open call to arms. Indeed, as the unlikely tribute to Steve Jobs attests, even for those who are willing to roundly object to the growing gap between the very rich and the rest of us, the problem is not inequality per se, but giving a satisfactory account for it. As Bill Buckley well understood, economic systems have to give a moral account of who wins, who loses, and why, particularly insofar as those systems are shaped by democratic choices. It is not hard to give a compelling account for why someone like Steve Jobs grows far richer than the rest of us — his success tends to vindicate capitalism, not undermine it — but the same may not be said for the financial sector in general. The problem isn’t that the average banker doesn’t work hard (the hours are grueling) nor that his work isn’t essential to helping maintain a modern, civilized society (it is); the problem is that the same may be said for an ER nurse or a sixth grade teacher, and it isn’t immediately clear why one should make 10 times as much as the other.

Buckley said of the CEO pay packages he so despised that “extortions of that size tell us, really, that the market system is not working,” meaning that the free market, left to its own devices, does not allow for such gross distortions. This is certainly the account conservatives prefer when they try to explain Wall Street’s inordinate success. According to them, anti-competitive regulations, cheap money from the Fed, and the cozy relationship between the big banks and Washington have allowed the financial sector to prosper not because of capitalism, but despite it.

To liberals, this sounds ridiculous. After 30 years of lower taxes, freer trade, weaker unions, and a general trend toward deregulation, the idea that growing inequality and Wall Street’s exceptional success somehow defy the natural tendencies of capitalism is an astonishing exercise in wishful thinking. The forces of the free market alone may not explain these trends, but they seem hardly at odds.

Increasingly, the Occupy Wall Street movement has been faulted for not taking explicit sides in this dispute, but like Buckley in his column, the aim of their protests is not policy prescription, but moral persuasion. When your house is on fire, you don’t stand around wondering whether faulty wiring or an arsonist is to blame. You raise a hue and cry until your neighbors fill the street.

Great article. Can you please provide the link to where it's published on the net? Thanks.

[Ebon]

Senior Citizens at Occupy Chicago out and about to fight for their SS and Medicare.



Then later on that day. The old folks get carried off to jail.

[SoNotHer]

The OWS stuff is starting to get to them - and he's a hot mess.

In another part of the state, how cool that seniors got arrested in Chicago!

Thanks for the videos Miss Tick and Ebon.

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Rep. Joe Walsh yells at constituents: Don’t blame the banks

Republican Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois became noticeably upset during a meeting with his constituents in Gurnee over the weekend after it was suggested that financial regulatory reform would be beneficial.

One person in the UNO Bar & Grill pointed out that people in the banking industry often occupied positions at federal agencies charged with regulating the financial sector.

“I agree with you about that,” he yelled. “That’s not the problem!”

“The problem is you’ve got to be consistent,” Walsh said. “And I don’t want government meddling in the marketplace. Yeah, they move from Goldman Sachs to the White House, I understand all of that. But you gotta’ be consistent. And it’s not the private marketplace that created this mess. What created mess this mess is your government, which has demanded for years that everybody be in a home. And we’ve made it easy as possible for people to be in homes. All the marketplace does is respond to what the government does. The government sets the rules.”

“Don’t blame banks, and don’t blame the marketplace for the mess we’re in right now,” he continued. “I am tired of hearing that crap!”



The problem is you've got to be consistent he says. Well he certainly is that as is the republican party in general. They are still spouting the same old bull shit about people buying homes they can't afford being the cause of the financial crisis being heard around the world. I'm sure pressed he would explain about it being the fault of minorities buying those houses they couldn't afford.

I wonder what he means buy saying "your government". Is it no longer his government? He's washing his hands of it I guess.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

Great article. Can you please provide the link to where it's published on the net? Thanks.

Here ya go.

http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/11/09/...italism-64156/

[SoNotHer]

It takes a minute to sign this, and far more to let business interests start "robo calling" your private cell numbers.


From -

http://pol.moveon.org/norobocalls/?i...32-qpZAlCx&t=2

No Robocalls - Protect your minutes and privacy

Corporate interests like the Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association, and a coalition of debt collectors are trying to sneak H.R. 3035 through under the radar. This bill would allow businesses to repeatedly hound you throughout the day, no matter where you are, using up minutes that YOU pay for!

But there's still time to stop it.

If Congress hears an outcry from everyday Americans, they'll hang up on H.R. 3035 before it gets to a full vote. That's why we need a massive petition that people share widely with their friends and through their social networks. We'll deliver the petition to the House committee reviewing the bill, and make sure the media hears about it as well.

Sign the petition and then share it with everyone you know.

A compiled petition with your individual comment will be presented to Congress.

[Cin]

It's hard to believe that we are still here. The puppet masters and their puppeteers are still spouting the same old crap about minorities buying houses they couldn't afford and causing the financial collapse of the world. Congress passed laws in 1977 that simply leveled the playing field. Same standards for all borrowers. That was not the cause of the economic disaster that is still reverberating around the world. It wasn't that Occupy Wall Street made a mistake and occupied the wrong place, whoops they should have occupied congress. They knew and still know exactly who is responsible. And so do Bloomberg and his ilk.

Yes, it is Wall Street’s fault

Bloomberg joins Republicans in claiming Congress "forced" banks to give bad loans. Don't buy the propaganda

So here’s my question: If the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 effectively caused the Wall Street meltdown of 2007 by forcing banks to make bad home loans to improvident poor people (and we all know exactly who I mean), how come it took 30 years for the housing bubble to burst?

Next question: If fuzzy-thinking Democratic do-gooders enacted such laws in defiance of common sense and sound economics, why didn’t Republican Presidents Reagan, Bush I or Bush II do something? Was Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., secretly running the country?

Exactly how did the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in the United States — the investment bankers and corporate execs who host the $1,000-a-plate fundraisers, scoop up the Cabinet appointments and ambassadorships, and party down at White House galas — end up having less power over the U.S. economy than unskilled day laborers in Newark, N.J., or Oakland, Calif.?

Maybe some “resident scholar” at the American Enterprise Institute, or another of the comfortable Washington think tanks devoted to keeping Scrooge McDuck’s bullion pool topped-up, can teach us how things got so upside-down. Because under normal circumstances, the national motto is neither “e pluribus unum” nor “In God We Trust.”

It’s “Money Talks.”

Money was talking big-time last week. Clearly annoyed by the unkempt ragamuffins of Occupy Wall Street, New York’s dapper billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered himself of a conspiracy theory so absurd that it had previously been confined to such dark corners of American life as the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity programs and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

“I hear your complaints,” Bloomberg said. “Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp … [T]hey were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will … And now we want to go vilify the banks because it’s one target, it’s easy to blame them and Congress certainly isn’t going to blame themselves.”

Actually, “annoyed” is too mild to describe a sophisticated Wall Street player like Bloomberg resorting to so crude and poisonous a political lie. He can’t possibly believe it. For all its ragtag, hippie-dippie aspects, Occupy Wall Street must have people at Manhattan’s most elegant dinner parties running scared.

Here are some things Bloomberg certainly knows that make nonsense of this blame-the-victim tale:

First, there was no law forcing or even encouraging banks to make shaky loans. The Community Reinvestment Act merely required FDIC-insured institutions to apply the same standards to all borrowers — i.e., no more “redlining.” It worked fine for many years.

Second, the law applied only to retail banks, never to Wall Street investment houses or mortgage companies like Countrywide that led the 2007 meltdown. As the housing bubble fully inflated in 2006, 84 percent of subprime mortgages were written by private, totally unregulated lenders.

Is this the place to mention that Fannie and Freddie, the quasi-governmental mortgage underwriting companies, don’t actually make loans — as Bloomberg also surely knows? Did they buy worthless mortgage-backed securities along with other victimized investors? Yes, but too little and too late to have caused the crisis. Although far from pristine, they were more victims than perps.

Rolling Stone’s financial MVP Matt Taibbi reminds us how the whole scam worked.

“Bank A (let’s say it’s Goldman, Sachs) lends criminal enterprise B (let’s say it’s Countrywide) a billion dollars. Countrywide then … creates a billion dollars of shoddy home loans, committing any and all kinds of fraud along the way in an effort to produce as many loans as quickly as possible, very often putting people who shouldn’t have gotten homes into homes, faking their income levels, their credit scores, etc.

“Goldman then buys back those loans from Countrywide, places them in an offshore trust, and chops them up into securities … They then go out on the open market and sell those securities to various big customers — pension funds, foreign trade unions, hedge funds, and so on.”

And no, President George W. Bush, busy promoting what he called “the ownership society,” did nothing to restrain the action. Somebody named Bush discipline Wall Street? Get real. Even if he had, there wouldn’t have been anything a minority congressman like Barney Frank — whose actual views are almost the opposite of how Limbaugh describes them — could have done to stop him.

Then there are “resident scholars” like AEI’s Peter Wallison. Today, this guy composes tracts indicting government folly. In 2004, though, he wrote chiding federal bureaucrats for lagging behind the exciting new world of subprime lending. “Study after study,” he wrote, “has shown that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are failing to do even as much as banks and S&Ls in providing financing for affordable housing, including minority and low income housing.”

That’s money. Talking.

[Cin]

Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977 that set the same standards for all borrowers. The Bush administration weakened the enforcement of CRA. The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, when subprime loans performed quite well. It was after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose. One would imagine this would show deregulation as the problem or at the very least stop those blaming the CRA. The Fed did nothing but encourage the wild west of lending of recent years.

If we need targets in government we need look no further than the 2000 law that ensured that credit default swaps would remain unregulated. And then again in 2004 when the SEC decided to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital. And then failed to oversee those brokerage firms in subsequent years. Clearly a failure to regulate is the problem. And only an idiot could imagine that more deregulation would be the answer. That’s like deciding that using gasoline to put out fires is a good idea.

Irresponsible behavior by Wall Street is the cause of this financial disaster. A failure to regulate allowed it to happen. And a continued failure to regulate will further destroy our economy. But unless we can get Wall Street out of Washington the problem isn’t likely to be solved anytime soon.

[Cin]

It’s most disturbing to me that even now we keep hearing about the housing bubble that burst and destroyed the financial universe. It’s crap. What was going on and is continuing to go on is directly caused by those weapons of mass destruction called derivatives. Not some guy or some 5000 guys who over estimated their ability to pay their mortgage and bought houses they couldn’t afford. The fact that this story is constantly spouted as reality just points to a deeper and darker truth. They have no intention of ever stopping.

“Far from being some arcane or marginal activity, financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives, coining phrases like “toxic assets,” “exotic instruments,” and – most notably – “troubled assets,” as in Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP, aka the monstrous $800 billion bailout of Wall Street speculators which was enacted in October 2008 with the support of Bush, Henry Paulson, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Obama Democrats.”

The estimated notional value of the world derivatives is somewhere in the vicinity of $1.4 quadrillion. The GDP of the entire world is around $65 trillion. This shit is way out of control.

Here is some interesting information:

“Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.

This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.

This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.

What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

This is a recipe for Armageddon. Bernanke is absolutely insane. No wonder Geithner has been hopping all over Europe begging and cajoling leaders to put together a massive bailout of troubled banks. His worst nightmare is Eurozone bank defaults leading to the collapse of the large U.S. banks who have been happily selling default insurance on European banks since the crisis began.”

Here’s some articles to check out if anyone is interested.

http://dailybail.com/home/holy-bailo...illion-of.html

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/a...nancial-system

http://dailybail.com/home/william-bl...-americas.html

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

It’s most disturbing to me that even now we keep hearing about the housing bubble that burst and destroyed the financial universe. It’s crap. What was going on and is continuing to go on is directly caused by those weapons of mass destruction called derivatives. Not some guy or some 5000 guys who over estimated their ability to pay their mortgage and bought houses they couldn’t afford. The fact that this story is constantly spouted as reality just points to a deeper and darker truth. They have no intention of ever stopping.

“Far from being some arcane or marginal activity, financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives, coining phrases like “toxic assets,” “exotic instruments,” and – most notably – “troubled assets,” as in Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP, aka the monstrous $800 billion bailout of Wall Street speculators which was enacted in October 2008 with the support of Bush, Henry Paulson, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Obama Democrats.”

The estimated notional value of the world derivatives is somewhere in the vicinity of $1.4 quadrillion. The GDP of the entire world is around $65 trillion. This shit is way out of control.

Here is some interesting information:

“Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.

This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.

This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.

What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

This is a recipe for Armageddon. Bernanke is absolutely insane. No wonder Geithner has been hopping all over Europe begging and cajoling leaders to put together a massive bailout of troubled banks. His worst nightmare is Eurozone bank defaults leading to the collapse of the large U.S. banks who have been happily selling default insurance on European banks since the crisis began.”

Here’s some articles to check out if anyone is interested.

http://dailybail.com/home/holy-bailo...illion-of.html

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/a...nancial-system

http://dailybail.com/home/william-bl...-americas.html

It continues to be "blame the victims."

[AtLast]

http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_19298642?source=rss

Part of article- use link for the rest. There seems to be some heightened discontent going on with Oakland business owners and the City Council in terms of getting demonstrators out of the park.

The mayor's impromptu visit happened at the same time five council members, business people and faith leaders gathered at the Lake Merritt Band Shell to express their frustration with the camp, the violence and the effect on downtown businesses. They promised to find a way to boot the camp if the mayor will not do it.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by AtLast

http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_19298642?source=rss

Part of article- use link for the rest. There seems to be some heightened discontent going on with Oakland business owners and the City Council in terms of getting demonstrators out of the park.

The mayor's impromptu visit happened at the same time five council members, business people and faith leaders gathered at the Lake Merritt Band Shell to express their frustration with the camp, the violence and the effect on downtown businesses. They promised to find a way to boot the camp if the mayor will not do it.

I don't know the truth of it all not being in Oakland but I read some of the comments at the end of the article and people are saying that the movement has helped businesses and that downtown businesses have been hurting for years. They seem to think that saying businesses are hurt is politically motivated and actually untrue. Again I'm not from there so I have no idea the reality of it. Perhaps people from there who read the article and the comments after it will have a much more informed opinion.

[ruffryder]

the occupy movement symbol ??

http://kenburridge.com/occupy-wall-s...pt-symbol/1733

what would it mean? .... A circle .. never ending, ONE - fight against 1 %?

Occupy
Unity
One World
One People
One Love
One
Solidarity

[ruffryder]

UC Berkeley Occupy

[theoddz]

Lookie Lookie Lookie!!!!!

Let's all sing along.



That's too good, huh??

~Theo~

[ruffryder]

Extreme poverty is now at record levels

According to this article one out of every 15 Americans are considered to be very poor. There are more than 20 million Americans living in extreme poverty.

http://www.alternet.org/story/153005...Nl3t&rd=1&t=12

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

I don't know the truth of it all not being in Oakland but I read some of the comments at the end of the article and people are saying that the movement has helped businesses and that downtown businesses have been hurting for years. They seem to think that saying businesses are hurt is politically motivated and actually untrue. Again I'm not from there so I have no idea the reality of it. Perhaps people from there who read the article and the comments after it will have a much more informed opinion.

Yes, there are differing views. I am not supporting the article in terms of "sides", just posting for information on new developments.

From local news, it seems like there are two sides to this and the businesses close to the Occupied park are the ones wanting it moved out and feel that they are being hurt because people are just staying away from the "heart" of the protest after incidences of violence. Also, some don't want a tent city and the sanitation issues around them.

I hope that they can all meet and discuss this whole thing with council members that are getting complaints and come up with solutions in compromise.

I hope that there is no more situations in which anyone gets hurt physically. But, it looked like tempers could flair when the council members that are being pressed by constituents tried to have a press conference about all of this.

This is really interesting in terms of how do we use our rights to assemble and bring our grievances to our government, yet, respect the rights of those that also are part of a community at large? And what responsibilities do bodies like city councils have in terms of representation of ALL of the people they were elected to represent? There are many people demonstrating that are not residents of Oakland or even Alameda County camping in the park. In fact, most of the people camping do not live in Oakland. So, who does the council act for- non-residents are not part of their consituency and also do not pay taxes in the city or county.

How do we address this in terms of a national protest? What is fair and what is not to the people that live and support the public funds of a municipality? Whose rights do we put above someone else's?

I have been thinking a lot about this in terms of a public park near me. It is a great park that is used by lots of groups and people from my city. Schools as well as city groups use the baseball diamonds and our rec department and senior center uses its facilities too. There are numerous activities that go on in it all of the time that are planned in advanced and people have to sign up for use permits. some plan events a year in advance and these are open to the public. There are two great play grounds there that families use every day (unless it is raining) and the fact is that our property taxes go to support this public park. It belongs to all of us.

if all of a sudden a bunch of people that do not even live here decided to take it over and camp, I have to be honest, I wouldn't like it. There is already traffic from 3 schools, a theater, and our community center and several city sports leagues (soccer, baseball- all kids programs) have secured use permits for their activities. So, they should have to give up their events and activities to people that just move in and want to use the park as a camp ground?

Now, having people gather there to protest in the areas not already spoken for to protest is different to me. But, I am talking about day use that does not impact the rightful use for others. Also, there are reasons for permits- sanitation needs and clean-up as well as any emergency services that might be needed. These are all supplied by the city because this is a public park and we all pay for this as residents here.

Frankly, most of the sports activities that go on in this city park are for kids that have few resources and want to participate in a sport or other community activity. There are all kinds of booster clubs that do fund-raisers to help support these programs as well as the city giving use permits to these kids groups. So, what do we say to a group of 3rd graders that have been all excited about the winter league they are in and ready to go play? I see the excitement and joy of these kids as they walk by or their parents park near my home as they go to participate. It is important to them. So are the old rose shows (senior citizens) and holiday children of light festivities that go on in this public park. All of which are open to the public and the park is intended and supported for by residents here.

I think that the OWS movement is important and needs to go on. However, it also has to compromise in terms of public use areas and abide by city and county ordinances of the 98/99%. Wall Street barons do not use public parks for activities like the general population- nor do their kids need to sell candy to buy school supplies.

[Toughy]

Be Afraid..........Be Very Afraid.....

The Oakland Chamber of Commerce and some members of the City Council have done a grand job of making people afraid to go to downtown Oakland and the reason to be afraid is a bunch of folks in a whole bunch of tents camped out in the City Center Frank Ogawa Plaza (renamed Oscar Grant Plaza). Be afraid they are violent. Be afraid they are hurting your business. Be fucking afraid of your fellow Oaktown residents.

I am sure there are some folks who won't go downtown because of OO. I am also sure that many many of the business around Oscar Grant Plaza are doing better business than before OO.

If the Chamber and the Council actually gave a shit about downtown business there would be an ad campaign to bring folks into downtown to eat and shop. There is not a damn thing to be afraid of in downtown Oakland on a normal day and/or evening.....

Be Afraid........they will get you......Be Afraid....

[persiphone]

i extracted this comment from this article that Miss Tick posted:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/a...nancial-system


Understanding the puzzle of derivatives

The Commodity Futures market is one of the largest derivative trading arenas with many commodities; currencies; precious metals; and energy products listed – .

It all revolves around “Price” and “Time”. You will notice that on all traded contracts there are time periods listed noted by contract months going out up to three-years out.

Whatever the price is today (minute by minute as the contracts are traded) someone can buy or sell a contract with a 1% to 3% of the value of the contract in their account (buying or selling on margin)

Most from the public are psychologically conditioned that they have to buy first and then sell to make a profit. In derivatives that is 100% incorrect. You are making a “time” bet for higher or lower prices. If you think the value is going down, you sell a contract. If you think it is going up you buy a contract.

With the markets now primarily being traded electronically, when a buy or sell order is entered and at your price your fill usually is instant. This means you can jump in and out at your choice. If you choose it could be 10 minutes, an hour, a day, a week, or longer that you hold your position. The following is an example of the best profit in the shortest period I personally made:

It was back in 1981 and on on day when I was watching silver towards the close, it looked like it was very top heavy after moving up a few dollars over a couple of weeks. I said to myself: “I think it is going to collapse in the last few minutes before the close. It was 4-minutes to the close and I at that time having an account balance of about $32,000 slapped in two orders; (SELL) 35 DEC SILVERS at Market, and (BUY) 35 DEC SILVERS (Market on Close)

Well, got filled on the 35 sell orders in about 5 seconds and in the next 4-minutes silver collapsed by 42c where my Market on close orders were filled. No more 35 derivative orders held, just accounting of the instant CASH collected on the trade. Here is the accounting: 42c X 35 = $14.7 X $5,000 ($1 value of a silver contract move) = $73,500 + $32,000 (my account balance before the trade)= $106,500 (account balance after the trade) or not bad after a 4-minute derivatives trade. Now those that had the “other side” of the trade got burnt. The commissions I was paying at that time was about $15 per contract X 35 contracts traded = $525 that went to the House and exchange that “cleared” the trade.

Most commodity contracts have active participation in the front months but the further the time goes out participation dries up and thus no liquidity to trade those contracts.

For every contract being that it is a bet on “time” will reach its expiration and delivery day. When that happens all speculators are out and those wishing to take or make delivery stay in to the last day and then the exchanges match up the “real” buyers and sellers to each other on the outstanding contracts where physical delivery of the underling commodity is made.

Come that last day the volume of contracts held dries up to usually less that 1% of what it was a few days earlier (over 99% were speculators and less than 1% actually wanted to take or make delivery)

The 600 trillion notional value is: the value of all the bets.

EXAMPLE: on the commodity futures market has a $100,000 face value of the bet and the margin requirement to hold it over night is $2,500 and day trading margin can be $1,000. As of today the “Net” contract volume is at about 289,000 contracts. So based on notional face value that is 289,000 X $100,000 = $89 billion-dollars but the “margin deposits being used is substantially less.

So that 600 trillion is the “full contract value” of all contracts being traded. That 1.5 quadrillion is when you take into account both sides of the contract. For every buyer holding a contract there is a seller holding the other side. So when counting each side 600 X 600 = 1.2 quadrillion.

Here is the “Bottom Line”:

With 99% speculators, yes it is a casino. But “who” are the primary players that are liquidating tens of billion of dollars a day from the trading activity (remember when the trade is closed in 5-minutes or 5-months it is all a “cash” accounting for the winner’s and loser’s account balances)

Well, those from the general public that tries to play this game, they get their account balances decimated to the tune of 98% of those player that participated in very short periods of time. (bought on highs; sold on lows; got stopped out or force liquidated for not having the proper margin after being depleted from quick adverse market moves)

So who are that 2% factor that takes everyone’s money to the tune of over a few trillion dollars a year (some times in a month as happened at the end of 2008) ?

The answer may surprise you. Now the House and the Exchanges get a small cut from each side. There are a few magnates on the inside track that also make good money: But the “Primary” profiteer for several decades now are: Institutional Government Fund Management.

They in so many words all subscribe to the same News Services and consulting groups. They have the fund resources in trillion dollar collective totals managed from around the globe. They can act in loose concert and roll the markets up; down; sideways and do so as fast or as slow as they wish.

The end of 2008 showed how fast they could move the markets by exercising their multi-trillion dollar trading accounts and massive contract volume they can move in and out.

At the end of 2008 in a month and a half about 25 to 30 trillion-dollars was “sucked” right out of players accounts globally that were on the wrong sides of the trades. Now some government investment funds where they were on the outside track got burnt. The primary government institutional global accounts that “were” on the inside track made a killing of several trillion dollars.
Now here is the definition of arrogance:

Government (USA) global institutional funds now after having liquidating trillions out of the playing loser’s accounts at the end of 2008, (which caused massive defaults from the loser’s who ended up with severe deficit account balances)now uses a trillion here and a trillion there of taxpayer revenue to shore-up their own casino and friendly corporate interests.

Is there a “bubble” in the derivatives market?

As of 2009, Oh yes.. You can not suck so many trillions out of others accounts at the end of 2008 without destabilizing the playing field. Commodity futures contracts back then were settled after weeding out defaults so back to normal there. I note the definition of normal is those government institutional accounts rolling the market up and down, quick and slow; as they liquidate that 98% factions cash on the trades.

The danger lies in those “Mortgage Interest Rate Swaps” where there is a substantially reduced value of the underling commodity and in some cases the contract instrument traded had no underling commodity to back it up at all(real-estate home and commercial properties)

Here the balancing act is precarious to say the least. Offsetting those contract instruments to balance out with “real” underling value market to market is a nightmare for the players.

Those trillions in bailouts to the global banks and financial institutions have primarily gone to that end.

Are they getting closer to balancing the books? Yes..

Are they there yet? No, they are about 60% there and it will take more time to balance the remainder and the beat goes on..

Walter Burien – (CTA) Commodity Trading Advisor) 1978 – 1992 and
commodity Futures Trader of 33 years.


i highlighted some key points.