CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

[Slimprofits]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Let's take a look at the so-called uninvited infiltration (as told by true believers that will do anything to prevent the separation of the financial church and state) into the affairs of innocent corporations as perpetrated by the big bad commies in government:

GAO Report on the Revolving Door from Wall Street to the Fed

The Fed "helps" out Wall St YET again!

[dcarrigg]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

in the case of the state packies in NH: it eliminates the corruption that permeates the liquor biz and has since the time of prohibition - its The Public who 'profits' from sales of liquor, vs organized crime that blossomed during the 'dry age' and gave rise to, not incidently, the kennedy family fortune and political 'dynasty'

if state liquor stores = 'socialism', then i guess i'm a 'small-r socialist' (now if that isnt schizophrenic politix, i dunno what would be ;) but i DONT WANT the 'private sector' to have control over and profit from the booze biz - if for only one simple reason: the booze is _cheaper_ in states that have the 'monopoly' in the hands of The Public vs some politically connected schmoe that owns the distribution 'rights'

You're absolutely right. But, lektrode, you never struck me as the type insists on ideological purity. Others do. The NH liquor store example flies in the face of what a lot of fundamentalist free-marketeers will tell you.

Babbittd's example below also goes to show that it's .gov in tandem with big finance that mess up the world. Not one or the other. Both. Sometimes, life is grey.

[pescamaaan]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

In Massachusetts, it's state law that protects the distributors by making it extremely difficult for brewers/manufacturers to move from one wholesaler to another. this 'monopoly' is effectively state sanctioned.

i've been into the NH stores a few times. i don't buy much liquor, but shopping for wine i can definitely say that NH stores are not definitively cheaper than what i can buy in Mass. Booze is cheaper in states that allow the market to function competitively. Neither MA nor NH are good examples of that.

I love when i approach the MA border and see a sign on the NH Liquor store that says "TAX FREE"....and yet a quarter mile down the road is the $2 toll i have to pay to exit the state.

[lektrode]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

In Massachusetts, it's state law that protects the distributors by making it extremely difficult for brewers/manufacturers to move from one wholesaler to another. this 'monopoly' is effectively state sanctioned.

prime example of CRONY capitalism that MA is famous for: he who is connected best gets the 'monopoly'
and kappy's is one of the _most_ connected

i've been into the NH stores a few times. i don't buy much liquor, but shopping for wine i can definitely say that NH stores are not definitively cheaper than what i can buy in Mass.

that would only be true if the store (in MA) found itself with too much inventory, then they would have to discount it to blow it out the door - and supermarkets (or the big box liquor stores, like kappy's) tend to have cheaper prices on wine, in any case.

>Booze is cheaper in states that allow the market to function competitively. Neither MA nor NH are good examples of that.

dunno how you can lump NH into same sitch as MA - sure, _sometimes_ some particular item can be had at some particular retailer in MA, but day-in, day-out, the prices tend to be cheaper at the state packies in NH - and then there the fact that not only is it cheaper, but its also available on SUNDAYS, since NH doesnt suffer from that anachronism known as The Blue Laws

I love when i approach the MA border and see a sign on the NH Liquor store that says "TAX FREE"....and yet a quarter mile down the road is the $2 toll i have to pay to exit the state.

i cant possibly come up with a _better_ way to pay for the roads than to get them who _uses_ the roads to pay _directly_ for them... can you?

and doesnt the mystic river bridge and the mass pike still have tolls?

sides that, NH cant be lettin all them Mainiacs ride thru on i-95 fer free, since they gouge em even worse on the Maine turnpike...
;)

[Raz]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Gainfully employed. On lunch. Wearing a suit. No piercings or tattoos. Use no drugs (not even prescription). And I was there last Saturday with 50,000 other Americans.

I met firemen, retired soldiers, train drivers, nurses, and people from all ages and walks of life.

Believe what you want. But I saw it with my own two eyes. No propaganda can take that away.



If anyone watched the Republican Debates last night, they saw the difference between sane views and fundamentalist views in this clip:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video...2#.Tp8Ch1Fwc7w

People that follow me know I'm not a Ron Paul fan, never mind a cheerleader. But I do believe the man has principles. Herman Cain on the other hand is just terrible, and Ron Paul did an excellent job juxtaposing a fundamentalist view with a sane one. Kudos.

Your comments made me think of this scene from The Wind and the Lion where Teddy Roosevelt is speaking to his daughter Alice about the Rasuli and J. P. Morgan - his "enemies". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1I6U...eature=related

I wish I could embed it in this post but I can't. (Good movie, though.)

[BK]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Is Occupy Wall Street any different than the French Citizens protesting in 1791 as the issuance of Paper Currency eroded purchasing power, wipe out manufacturing jobs, concentrated power in Cities of Finance and Government, and created great concentrations of wealth and misery for the regular folk....read " Fiat Money Inflation in France" to be reminded that none of this is new. The regular folks always go after the people who benefit from Paper Inflation and rarely direct their attention to the source of the problem.
Qoute from "Fiat Money Inflation in France" - available to Kindle Readers for FREE - similarities to todays world are startling - or at least they appeared that way to me.
"With the plethora of paper currency in 1791 appeared the first evidences of that cancerous disease which always follows large issues of irredeemable currency,--a disease more permanently injurious to a nation than war, pestilence or famine. For at the great metropolitan centers grew a luxurious, speculative, stock-gambling body, which, like a malignant tumor, absorbed into itself the strength of the nation and sent out its cancerous fibres to the remotest hamlets. At these city centers abundant wealth seemed to be piled up: in the country at, large there grew a dislike of steady labor and a contempt for moderate gains and simple living.

White, Andrew Dickson (2004). Fiat Money Inflation in France (p. 24). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

[Ghent12]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

New Hampshire is The Gold Standard on how the states and the fed gov should work[/B]

Indeed, and I hope it stays that way forever. At least long enough for me to move there and live out my retirement there.

Is it so much to ask that a government behave responsibly and be designed and directed towards providing and protecting the liberties of its citizens? Such a thing has proven impossible to maintain when small-d democratic inclinations unfold, giving way to things such as the 15th through the 19th Amendments. Some aspects of that set of Amendments are good, but taken as a whole they refocused the government to act more upon the whims of the people rather than act to protect their liberties, which is ironic given the nature of some of them was to extend liberties. But now we have a messy and bloated federal leviathan that wields an increasingly powerful spotlight that is directed in part by the people and in part by the vested political interests of the country. This spotlight is like a gun being fought over by two men grappling with each other--anyone could get shot.


Some people around here get too caught up making strawmen and labeling everyone as a fundamentalist. The only true fundamentalists I've seen, however, are deep in the woodwork of ronpaulforums.com or democraticunderground.com or etc. It seems that everyone on this forum behaves as a normal human being; that is to say, they are beyond being classified in small, narrowly-defined boxes, and they have complex viewpoints shaped by their experiences. Don't tell that to strawmen wholesalers though.

[oddlots]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Thought this was kind of a good if a little conventional minded report on a day at Zucotti Park:

Classical Insights Afternoon Bullet Points October 16, 2011

I went to Zuccotti Park yesterday and talked with about 20 of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Everyone was polite and happy to chat. I’d say the breakdown between good and bad ideas was a little better than 50/50. Yet the protestors’ core notion -- that average Americans are being screwed by the powers that be -- has plenty of merit. On specific points, the Occupy Wall Street people and the Tea Partiers actually have a fair amount in common.

Here are some of the individual protestors’ ideas:

Replace the existing 535-man congress with direct democracy -- thereby cutting down on corruption. The guy proposing this was in his 20s and carried a sign reading “Waterboard Wall Street.” He was quite eloquent, arguing that today we have the technology to allow all Americans to vote on major decisions, so why not do it? It’s a reasonable point. In fact, author Eric Morse made a similar argument in his recent book Juggernaut. Morse recommends we move to a 10,000-man congress, thereby returning us to the original, 1790s-era ratio of 30,000 citizens per congressperson. This approach would cut down on corruption because 30,000 people are too many to bribe.

“Weak Messianism.” I chatted for a while with a scholarly looking fellow in his late 20s at a table with a couple of books by philosopher Walter Benjamin. The concept behind weak messianism is that small powerless movements can have an inordinately large impact because they embody the sins and problems of the recent past, bringing them into the open and helping to get them resolved. Apparently, this notion has roots in Eastern Orthodox philosophy. “Are there dirty hippies here? Yes,” said the fellow at the table. “Are there people doing drugs here? Yes. But this is all part of the process. It’s a mistake to try to define the goals of the movement too quickly.” The process of airing all the grievances and concerns is itself useful, he said. “The protest has actually morphed several times since it started a few weeks ago.”

Stop the foreign wars and use those resources here at home. This was a big theme. Many protestors are very upset that we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars fighting wars all over the world when our own economy is weak and jobs are hard to find. I was handed a flyer from an outfit called “Veterans for Peace” which contained several noteworthy statistics:

The U.S. military budget is 7x that of China ;
New Yorkers have paid $113 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past 10 years. For that same money, 19 million students could get scholarships to go to college for one year;
$1 billion spent on the military creates 8,500 jobs, whereas $1 billion in tax cuts generates 10,800 jobs. (Not sure about that point but it’s interesting they supplied it.)

End the Fed. A saw one big sign making the case that the Federal Reserve is a non-governmental entity whose primary goal is to empower and enrich bankers, not individuals. It’s a fair point. As G. Edward Griffin wrote in The Creature from Jekyll Island, our current banking system is designed to implode periodically – and for the losses to be socialized when it does. The protesters are rightfully mad about this, though as a practical matter most probably don’t understand the nuts and bolts of it. They simply see that Wall Street banks blew up, taxpayers bailed them out, nobody went to jail, and the bigwigs made millions of dollars. It doesn’t seem right to them. On this issue the protests (as well as the Tea Party protests) should have some impact. We can expect some combination of higher capital requirements and lower tolerance for high-risk trading activities by banks going forward.

“Aggregate demand is too weak.” This was written on a sign carried by a fellow wearing an “MMT” baseball cap. In this case, MMT stands for Modern Monetary Theory. The protester argued that the government needs to increase spending drastically to boost the economy. I disagreed with him on that point, proposing that a combination of tax cuts and nominal GDP targeting via quantitative easing would make more sense. He disagreed and we argued the point for a while. There was another economist type standing next to him (also an MMT-er), who agreed that tax cuts would be an acceptable way to boost aggregate demand.

College is way overpriced and the education is lousy. One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a chunky 22-year-old from Vermont who is $250,000 in debt yet still doesn’t have his bachelor’s degree. He was carrying a sign that read, “Where’s our Robin Hood?” He has attended Hofstra, University of Vermont and (currently) Ramapo College in New Jersey . His degree is costing him about $50,000 per year and he expects to need 5 years to graduate. After graduation he wants to get a master’s degree, at which point he expects to be $500,000 in debt. He is studying business and his goal is to work in the music business for a few years and then start a record company.

“Nobody will take you seriously if you don’t have a college degree,” he explained. “You can’t get a job, and a bank won’t give you a business start-up loan.” He said he doesn’t think any of the schools he’s attended has given him a good education. “I’m sitting in computing classes and they’re teaching us how to use Excel and Powerpoint – things I learned when I was 16. I’m sitting there thinking that I’m paying thousands of dollars for this.” He said his student loans carry a 7% interest rate.

Another guy (with a clearly skeptical bent) joined the conversation and asked, “So why don’t you just go to a cheaper school?” The Vermonter responded that he wanted to get out of Vermont and see new things.

Workers of the World Unite! I chatted with a full-on socialist who argued for nationalization of banks and industries. Such a move would free workers from mind-numbing jobs -- while bringing an end to the capitalist practice of skimming the excess value created by laborers. I argued that a successful business can’t function on labor alone, and that without a visionary running the business labor won’t create any excess value at all. He rejected this notion, arguing that people are motivated to work and create by non-monetary impulses. The engineers at Apple Computer, for instance, would be inspired to do their work even without the profit motive.

Socialists or communists were manning four tables in various parts of the park. Nearly all were older guys. I don’t think they’ll get much traction with the young protestors. For instance, the socialist I talked to cited steel-mill work as an example of a particularly mind-deadening task. Yet most steel mill jobs have been computerized for decades and some are fairly high tech at this point. Smart young people just aren’t going to buy into these old socialists’ vision. The weakness of their sales pitch is magnified by the fact that much of America ’s wealth is now intellectual rather than physical -- and intellectual property can’t be effectively nationalized in the first place.

There’s another issue that rankles down here: CEOs making millions while they downsize their labor forces and move factories to China . That just doesn’t strike people as right. In some cosmic way they have a point, which goes back to the whole notion that man, for most of his history, lived in egalitarian hunter-gatherer tribes. As such, when a few people get super-rich by firing others, it just doesn’t sit well. That’s an emotionally live issue and one that’s not going away.

Who are the 1% that these protestors are so mad at? My sense is that the 1% does not refer to successful people generally, but rather to those few who get rich via collusion between government and business. For instance, defense contractors greasing palms of congressmen would fall into this category, as would bankers who receive billions in bailouts. I’m reminded here of Amity Schlaes’ concept of “the Forgotten Man,” which dates back to the 1930s: When A makes a deal with B, the loser is very often C, who is not even at the table. The Occupy Wall Street people are “C”s to a man. They know this, they are not happy about it – and they have a point. The Tea Partiers also are mostly “Cs,” so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I saw some Ron Paul signs at Zuccotti Park .

I saw a baby wearing a T-shirt that read, “Still waiting for the Great Leap Forward.” I said to the mother, “Um, I’m not sure if you know this, but the Great Leap Forward was a socialist experiment in China in the 1950s that went horribly wrong and killed millions of people.” She said she didn’t know that and had actually gotten the phrase from a Billy Bragg song. A few others nearby also were wearing T-shirts with slogans on them. They’d never heard of China ’s Great Leap Forward, either, and all said they would look it up on Wikipedia when they got home.

End hydraulic fracturing. There were several people around the park with signs calling for an end to fracking, arguing that it poisons groundwater. I am open to convincing either way on this one. I’ve read articles suggesting both sides have a case.

A number of people were carrying signs saying “Tax the Rich” or some variant thereof. I didn’t strike up conversations with any of them, on the assumption they wouldn’t have much interesting to say. Still, “Tax the Rich,” is clearly a popular theme now, even among many Republican voters. No wonder Mitt Romney is not proposing cuts to income-tax rates for higher-income Americans.

Big groups of people were engaged in drum-pounding, chanting, and call-and-response sessions at opposite ends of the park. After I left, I realized that I’d simply blotted them out, probably on the unconscious assumption they were all idiots. Later on, though, it occurred to me that these people likely were the real occupiers – i.e. the ones sleeping out in the park every night. It also occurred to me that many of the people I talked to probably were just down there during the days.

Later Saturday evening, some of the occupiers moved to Times Square and created a real mess. I was walking down 7th Avenue trying to catch a train at Penn Station when the cops shut down a couple of blocks. That cost me 10 minutes of extra walking and I almost missed my train. My empathy for the protestors declined substantially at that point. When protests start inconveniencing regular people just trying to walk down the street, you’re into Third World territory. The cops were everywhere around Times Square but just focused on directing traffic and channeling the people flow.

Feel free to forward this as there are no investment themes contained.
MIKE CHURCHILL

[dcarrigg]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Socialists or communists were manning four tables in various parts of the park. Nearly all were older guys. I don’t think they’ll get much traction with the young protestors.

I think that this is exactly right. It strikes me funny that the MSM tries to brand kids that were born after the wall fell as communists. It was already a dead ideology by the time they were born. I have never talked to a 20-something or teen from this era who truly thinks that communism is the solution (that being said, I'm sure there are a handful, but they will be very few and far between).

[dcarrigg]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Your comments made me think of this scene from The Wind and the Lion where Teddy Roosevelt is speaking to his daughter Alice about the Rasuli and J. P. Morgan - his "enemies". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1I6U...eature=related

I wish I could embed it in this post but I can't. (Good movie, though.)

You know, I've never seen the movie. I'll see if I can arrange to watch it this weekend or next. How this country could use a Roosevelt about now...(either one).

[dcarrigg]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Is it so much to ask that a government behave responsibly and be designed and directed towards providing and protecting the liberties of its citizens? Such a thing has proven impossible to maintain when small-d democratic inclinations unfold, giving way to things such as the 15th through the 19th Amendments. Some aspects of that set of Amendments are good, but taken as a whole they refocused the government to act more upon the whims of the people rather than act to protect their liberties, which is ironic given the nature of some of them was to extend liberties.

Ghent, you picked the amendments, not me. So I will go off a bit now. I don't mean to make any personal attack, and I will endeavor to refrain from doing so. But you struck a deep nerve here. Coming from someone who has lived in NH, I can tell you 15 and 19 are alive and very well there.

You maybe struck on the crux of the old North/South political divide. I think we're mostly past it now. But I am sure that there are some who still want to restrict voting to only white men. You do know that a political battle was already fought over this, right?

And it was decided it by the barrel of a gun. And many people on both sides suffered. As it happened, some of the winning guns came from NH.

So as far as I'm concerned, the argument's over. To wit, here are the bookends to your unwanted amendments:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Yup, some 'volks' have been trying to get rid of that one forever. Perhaps you should go to Baltimore and start a petition?

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Let your wife and daughters know your stance on that. Perhaps you could telegraph me from the doghouse with the results?



P.S. The other amendments in your list include the 18th, which prohibited alcohol and was repealed, the 17th, which calls for popular election of Senators rather than appointments by state legislatures and the 16th, which is far more controversial because it allows for income tax. If you took issue with 16, that would be one thing.

But you picked 15 through 19 for a reason. Since both 15 and 19 are about allowing someone other than white men to vote, I'm unimpressed.

Particularly since they are very simply worded amendments that cannot be taken to have a 'positive and negative' side or any grey area whatsoever.

Since 18 has been repealed, I'm even less impressed. It means you had to skip over the repealed one to get to 19 just because you don't like the idea of women voting.

Maybe you should keep your arguments to 16 and 17. At least there's a philosophical argument to defend those two that doesn't turn people into property.



P.P.S. I use the term non-white purposefully because it wasn't just about color. My ancestors didn't fit the bill for the Brits, and were nearly genocided for it. Then we had to deal with the Know-Nothing's on this side of the pond. Generations later, most of us have not forgotten.




P.P.P.S. This is like 100 years ago now. Can we just get over it already? Or must we always face the specter of some old englishman thinking he owns everything and everyone around him? I think society's too soft and politically correct now. I'm not an annoying liberal like that. But hating on the 15th and 19th amendments (funny you left out 14) is too much for me. These are not even debatable anymore. Poll test it if you don't believe me.

[*T*]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Or must we always face the specter of some old englishman thinking he owns everything and everyone around him?

The irony being that segregation was never established in the UK, and slavery was abolished a full 30 years before the states.

[dcarrigg]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

The irony being that segregation was never established in the UK, and slavery was abolished a full 30 years before the states.

You're correct. It was a broad generalization and unwarranted. I was thinking of the folks on this side of the pond. Regardless, I apologize.

[jiimbergin]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

Some people around here get too caught up making strawmen and labeling everyone as a fundamentalist. The only true fundamentalists I've seen, however, are deep in the woodwork of ronpaulforums.com or democraticunderground.com or etc. It seems that everyone on this forum behaves as a normal human being; that is to say, they are beyond being classified in small, narrowly-defined boxes, and they have complex viewpoints shaped by their experiences. Don't tell that to strawmen wholesalers though.

+1

[dcarrigg]

Re: CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About...

This is one of the best articles I have seen that "explains" things in an understandable format.

Here's another good one:

– Bank profits are highest since before the recession…: According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., bank profits in the first quarter of this year were “the best for the industry since the $36.8 billion earned in the second quarter of 2007.” JP Morgan Chase is currently pulling in record profits.
– …even as the banks plan thousands of layoffs: Banks, including Bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse, are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers.
– Banks make nearly one-third of total corporate profits: The financial sector accounts for about 30 percent of total corporate profits, which is actually downfrom before the financial crisis, when they made closer to 40 percent.
– Since 2008, the biggest banks have gotten bigger: Due to the failure of small competitors and mergers facilitated during the 2008 crisis, the nation’s biggest banks — including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo — are now bigger than they were pre-recession. Pre-crisis, the four biggest banks held 32 percent of total deposits; now they hold nearly 40 percent.
– The four biggest banks issue 50 percent of mortgages and 66 percent of credit cards: Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup issue one out of every two mortgages and nearly two out of every three credit cards in America.
– The 10 biggest banks hold 60 percent of bank assets: In the 1980s, the 10 biggest banks controlled 22 percent of total bank assets. Today, they control 60 percent.
– The six biggest banks hold assets equal to 63 percent of the country’s GDP: In 1995, the six biggest banks in the country held assets equal to about 17 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. Now their assets equal 63 percent of GDP.
– The five biggest banks hold 95 percent of derivatives: Nearly the entire market in derivatives — the credit instruments that helped blow up some of the nation’s biggest banks as well as mega-insurer AIG — is dominated by just five firms: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo.
– Banks cost households nearly $20 trillion in wealth: Almost $20 trillion in wealth was destroyed by the Great Recession, and total family wealth is still down “$12.8 trillion (in 2011 dollars) from June 2007 — its last peak.”
– Big banks don’t lend to small businesses: The New Rules Project notes that the country’s 20 biggest banks “devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfolios to small business.”
– Big banks paid 5,000 bonuses of at least $1 million in 2008: According to the New York Attorney General’s office, “nine of the financial firms that were among the largest recipients of federal bailout money paid about 5,000 of their traders and bankers bonuses of more than $1 million apiece for 2008.”


Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EconF...#ixzz1bR61kI8Q