Occupy Wall Street - Page 40

On October 07 2011 10:05 radiatoren wrote:


You are clearly a very opinionated libertarian. Stating professors as marxist and claiming to have listened seem to be rather coloured. Some might say that you might have a personal distrust of them.
You have read some books on economy, but all of the mentioned are extremely selective towards neoclassical economic theory and libertarianism and generally with a very critical opinion on socialism. I think you could gain something by opening up and actually try to understand what Keynes, Woodford and Krugman among others think. However you need a more open attitude to get anything out of it imo.

On October 07 2011 11:38 scaban84 wrote:
The woman at the beginning of the video. I recognize her, is she in Congress? She doesn't know what she is talking about. She failed to create a connection between the mortgage crisis and de-regulation. As a matter of fact, she failed to point out any specific de-regulation. She doesn't understand causation and causality of this crisis. She just says Enron and LTCM should have been a warning. How was that a warning when Enron was a case of accounting fraud and LTCM was just a big hedge fund that blew all their investor's cash? Its just empty rallying cry rhetoric. These little videos dont actually inform and they certainly don't prove occupywallstreet knows what its talking about.

On October 07 2011 10:28 scaban84 wrote:


I would prefer the description, well read or wise libertarian. Opinions are too egoist. I prefer to talk about objective truth, rather than 'the way things should be'.
Keynesian economic theory seems to be the root of all this havoc. The idea that the government should create demand and stimulate the economy has created the boom and bust cycle by not allowing market forces to discover price and interest rates. But in all honesty I havent thoroughly read Keynes because his theories when applied fail so miserably. Just look at the Bush-Obama stimulus.

On October 07 2011 12:46 scaban84 wrote:
@jmack
There is nothing wrong with Credit default swaps. They perform their stated purpose, they offset default risk, someone takes the other side, there is a winner and loser, money changes hands, end of story.
Predatory lending: so if I extend a low-interest line of credit and you take it, that makes me a predator? Or did you just not read the contract?
I know you think that throwing around jargon and quoting regulators/professors is all the ammunition you need to win this argument, you are wrong.
About Elizabeth Warren, now I know why I forgot her. She oversaw the massively failed TARP. She couldn't figure out where the money went, so she's back to rotting in academia.

@radiatoren
Please state the reason for your assumptions so I can have a clue as to what you are talking about. I am not objective because I haven't seen the other side of the isle? Does that mean I am not objective because I haven't accepted Keynesian theory as the truth?

cato.org & reason.com --- Welcome to my side of the isle.

I prefer educational comic relief like this:
Penn Jillette on Capitalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nOgdc5JmYM

On October 07 2011 13:04 jmack wrote:

When you target the uneducated and the poor, knowing that they cannot repay you, and then boldly lie to their faces that the loans are " great " , " solid " investments...

Yea it's your fault, you are betraying your own customers for profits, whats worse is that the banks buried these TOXIC loans into the Credit Default Swaps you love soooooo much; had their Rating agency friends give them AAA ( in case you were wondering thats the HIGHEST level; for TOXIC loans ) and then sold them to MORE innocent people while they had their insurance companies ( A.I.G. ) cover them on the bets they were taking out AGAINST their own loans.

Who are the only ones who got paid off when the bubble burst? CEOs / corporations. And they got to keep their insane tax rate since no politician has the balls to go after them.

And you believe in this, people like you, some do it in the name of jobs; well where are they? Some do it because they believe republicans stand for Jesus; "Blessed are the poor" - Jesus Christ.


They've amassed so much capital and influence by systematically attacking the systems in place to serve the middle class under this guise that they're not personally responsible and it's unfair to ask them to pay a reasonable tax since......


??????

[T]hey have every right to protest. Marches and sit-ins have played an honourable part in American history. The right of the people peaceably to assemble is enshrined in the first amendment. Nothing in the constitution says that you have to have a 12-point policy plan from McKinsey, or the permission of the New York police. If nothing else, these protests highlight the misery of millions during the present slump. But to bring about real change in a real democracy you also have to do real politics. It just takes work—and enough people who think like you.

Several lists of demands have been posted on the Occupy Wall Street website, but ideas and opinions still run the gamut, from scrapping the federal reserve bank to raising taxes on corporations and offering free college education.

“The protest comes first and serves as its own organizational tool,” one poster wrote on an online forum for Occupy Wall Street. “The protesters determine their own demands. Messy, but much more democratic, yes?”

On October 07 2011 10:28 scaban84 wrote:


I would prefer the description, well read or wise libertarian. Opinions are too egoist. I prefer to talk about objective truth, rather than 'the way things should be'.
Keynesian economic theory seems to be the root of all this havoc. The idea that the government should create demand and stimulate the economy has created the boom and bust cycle by not allowing market forces to discover price and interest rates. But in all honesty I havent thoroughly read Keynes because his theories when applied fail so miserably. Just look at the Bush-Obama stimulus.

On October 07 2011 19:12 BlackFlag wrote:


Economics are subjective, there is no objective truth in the field of Economics, just like in every other social-science. You view of Economics (Capitalism, Neoclassicism) is as much an Ideology as is Fascism or Communism. There is no objective truth, it's dependant what you think is the fundamental use of an economic system. Communism is not more true or objective, than any libertarian. They are different views on what the use of the economic system should be.

Edit: But as I see it you will probably even disagree on the thing that Economics are subjective. They aren't a hard science like Physics or Chemistry.

Probably the people sitting there on the street don't have "concrete ideas" because they aren't all economists or whatever.. Unlike on TL were every 3d poster seems to be or think of himself as some expert in a certain field (or a person which did his own unbiased (lol) research)..

People are unhappy with X.
People demonstrate to change X.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me?

The solution may be complex but the problem is simple: an extremely imbalanced distribution of wealth and a system that works to aggravate this imbalance.

On October 07 2011 18:57 Dulak wrote:
I think the unability or unwillingness to rally behind a single demand just underscores the fact that some things are so fundamentally broken in the whole system that there simply isn't any single solution or answer. You can argue about economic theory all day long but if the system doesn't serve the needs of people then it isn't going to work, no matter how noble the ideas or how great the theories. There is no one anymore who can make sense of this convoluted mass that is the finance industry. Slovakia is getting ready to possibly topple the european rescue plan and no one has a clue how it will actually affect the system, just some vague ideas.

On October 07 2011 19:12 BlackFlag wrote:


Economics are subjective, there is no objective truth in the field of Economics, just like in every other social-science. You view of Economics (Capitalism, Neoclassicism) is as much an Ideology as is Fascism or Communism. There is no objective truth, it's dependant what you think is the fundamental use of an economic system. Communism is not more true or objective, than any libertarian. They are different views on what the use of the economic system should be.

Edit: But as I see it you will probably even disagree on the thing that Economics are subjective. They aren't a hard science like Physics or Chemistry.

On October 07 2011 19:44 Traeon wrote:


The imbalanced distribution of wealth didn't just happen all of a sudden. It's the result of a dysfunctional system and that system didn't become dysfunctional over night either. It's going to take a lot of work to change things. I wouldn't agree that we have a simple problem.

The ugly truth is that we live in a plutocracy that wants to loot and abuse the citizen for their own gains, in any way possible.

On October 07 2011 13:22 scaban84 wrote:

No one lied to the poor, the terms of a mortgage or credit card are in the contract. And many of the mortgage brokers truly believed the homes were great solid investment, hell the whole country thought home prices would continue to skyrocket. You cannot ignore the sub-prime borrowers' own greed when they took out these loans. They expected to make a fortune by flipping real estate, so cry me a river. No one cares when a stock speculator loses his shirt after investing in a speculative stock.
Second you ignore the government's role in this great con. You have conveniently left out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Re-investment Act, the Federal Reserve manipulating interest rates. The government was encouraging this behavior.
Remember that the government used taxpayer funds and bailed out AIG and BoA among others; keyword taxpayers, this does not include the poor. There are three guilty parties in this crisis. If you think only Corporations and their CEOs are to blame, you've played into their little game.
And your last sentence makes no sense, it runs on and is mind-numbingly loaded.

On October 07 2011 21:02 how2TL wrote:


The parties on the opposite side of the loan don't have equal power nor knowledge. One has the professional expertise and a fiduciary duty to fully explain the risks to the other, and if they don't then they are irresponsible and should be held accountable.

Do you honestly expect the average citizen to not only read through the entire contract and fully understand it? There's a reason a legal department drafts these things up.

Maybe next time your doctor will just hand you an academic paper on the surgery you are being prepped for and expect you to fully understand the consequences of undertaking the procedure.