canedge
Refugee
so what you are saying is capitalism eats itself.
so what you are saying is capitalism eats itself.
My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters
Hit bankers where it hurts
By Matt Taibbi
October 12, 2011 8:00 AM ET
I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.
But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.
Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.
That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.
No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.
To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant.
My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters | Politics News | Rolling Stone
Lech Walesa is flying to NYC to visit and participate in OWS.
The leader of the solidarity movement in Poland that contributed to the fall of Communism...watch the right now vilify him. Up until today he would have been a valiant freedom fighter against the Commies.
last night, Bill Clinton talked about harnessing the energy of OWS into coherency. this might be a place to start:
and which of these demands would the Tea Party object to?
remember, the Tea Part started with TARP, back in 2008.
This cannot be possibly correct, as it is just a bunch of privileged white hippy students causing aggro and stopping people going to work because the bums have nothing better to do.
I don't think you know just how evil and all-pervasive capitalism is. I support these young people who are trying to right a system that has really gone too far.
I don't think you know just how evil and all-pervasive US capitalism is. I support these young people who are trying to right a system that has really gone too far.
Normally Matt Taibbi irrates the hell out of me in his Rolling Stone diatribes
the iron horse said:The mainstream media have done a great promo on this.
Lets all hold hands and sing "We are the World".
This cannot be possibly correct, as it is just a bunch of privileged white hippy students causing aggro and stopping people going to work because the bums have nothing better to do.
There is no way a respected figure such as Walesa would support these ne'er do wells.
So, the Tea Party think that the Government is pathetic and does not represent them anymore, and that George Soros is the puppateer pulling the strings.
anitram said:I don't think that 99% of the teabaggers have any idea who George Soros is...
everything he said
Likewise, can I say that a majority of these protestors have no idea who, say, the Koch family is, outside of what Rachel Maddow tells them? What's the difference?
2861U2 said:of what Rachel Maddow tells them? What's the difference?
i don't know what #OWS is expecting "wall street" to do.
I certainly know who he is and what he does.
the political parties need to be busted apart. let the tea party splinter the republican party and occupy wall street splinter the democrats, and then the rest of us can all meet in the middle and actually accomplish something.
my number one issue with this entire movement is that i see no end game that doesn't result in violence.
i want them to be organized, to try to become a part of the establishment, to make change from within the system. right now it's just being bastardized by the same political establishment that helped fuck this country up in the first place.
for better or worse... the tea party have gotten people elected and in a position where they can actually effect change. it might not be change that you or i agree with, but they are there. they have also helped fracture the republican party in many ways.
organize. run for office. put the heat on the liberal establishment, who won't be able to publicly support the #OWS movement, and then go back to the same corporate money bags that got them elected in the first place.
the political parties need to be busted apart. let the tea party splinter the republican party and occupy wall street splinter the democrats, and then the rest of us can all meet in the middle and actually accomplish something.