Occupy Wall Street, London and Evereywhere Else

Bullshit. My dad and I drove by it last week and the encampment was sufficiently large and significant that my dad was like "Jesus, what the hell is this?" McPhereson Square is wall-to-wall tents.20 people? It's more like 200. They have a permanent installation with solar panel power generation, apparently.I'll pop down again in a few weeks and post some pictures.

Why do you think we wouldn't get bailouts under a Paul administration?

Well, no, he has taken contributions from big Wall Street banks. And don't you think he takes contributions from somebody who stands to lose if the American economy goes tits-up because no company can short-term borrow the money they need to make payroll and expenses? Don't you think a Ron Paul campaign that had enough money to actually win would certainly have taken contributions from a large number of such businesses? Does that mean it wouldn't happen? How does Ron Paul explain what would have happened when no American corporation would have been able to pay its workers - an impossibility without a functioning banking system?Surely he's not an idiot. A Paul administration would have made the bailouts, because the alternative was clearly economic suicide. That he's opposed to bailouts now is just political opportunism - he knows that he can take a hard line against them because his vote and advocacy can't possibly make a difference. In a world where he has veto power, however, he inevitably signs off on the massive bailouts. Ok, but in what way is a creationist, pro-life, pro-business white male southern Republican an "alternative" to the usual choices? Ron Paul is the same guy the Republicans always run, just shorter and with worse hair.

Here's a website where you can see each candidate's top contributors. Ron Paul's support is mostly vet organizations (and active military, interesting for a candidate who says he favors shrinking the defense budget) but there's some Wall Street fatcat money in there, too. http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N0000590...

Well, you're talking about the police crackdowns. That's the only "destruction of property" I'm aware of at OWS - police destruction of OWS property.OWS protesters should have been carrying guns, I guess. I noticed that when armed, racist Tea Partiers were fomenting treason and armed rebellion against the Federal government all those times, there were suddenly no police to be found.As far as rapes go: 'Oath Keepers' Leader Arrested for Child Rape; Cops Find Stolen Grenade Launcher In His House

People, with their penny-ante checking accounts, aren't the only customers of banks.Your employer is also a customer of a bank. And while your employer may be taking in the day's receipts, he's only paying you twice a month. He's only paying the rent once a month. Those are the sort of cash-flow mismatches - accounts payable and accounts recievable don't move on the same schedule - that companies have to use banks to resolve - they need a place to park cash when they don't have the immediate need for it, and a place to loan money when payday rolls around.When the banks fail, it's not just a matter of being unwound by the FDIC (you should read about how the FDIC closes a bank, it's seriously some super-spy type shit.) The net effect is that all the banks stop making loans to reassess their outstanding risks and corporations can't get the money they need to pay people. It's called a "liquidity trap" and its exactly what we were facing at the end of 2008, which is why the bailouts were absolutely necessary.

A check drawn on what account, though?Seriously, CS, you should look up how the FDIC closes banks. I don't say that to criticize you; I say that because I think you'd really enjoy it, it's seriously some super-spy shit because it has to be a big secret or else the presence of the FDIC causes a run on the bank and embezzlement by the top execs.

I don't entirely disagree, but I think the bulk of the blame has to go to the professional "experts" - including the guy who sold him the mortgage - that told him, over and over again, that he could afford it, that home prices would continue to increase, and who profited greatly because that homeowner did exactly what they told him to do.The whole point of having a mortgage broker is that he's not supposed to be your adversary. You're supposed to be able to trust, somewhat, that he's not trying to screw you. A broker is a middleman who tries to negotiate between competing interests. The mortgage broker who has his own agenda - in opposition to yours - is a direct betrayal of what mortgage brokers are supposed to do. And a lot of those brokers did have their own agenda - pushing homeowners into higher interest rate loans than they deserved, larger loans than they could afford, and so on. (Real quick, CS - what's the largest mortgage you could afford with your current projected income? Could you even figure it out without several hours of going over your finances? I have to generate an Excel spreadsheet just to think about a car loan, and I've taken three semesters of calculus.) Sure, but what if he thought he was preparing himself for a job? What about all the colleges who tell you that a BA comes with a significant wage premium, regardless of your major? What about all the professors who said that it doesn't matter what you study, because the point of a liberal arts education is to make you a better citizen and not a better employee? What about all the parents who told him that working at a McDonalds (or even being a plumber) is demeaning and unworthy of him, and are now telling him what an irresponsible douchebag he is because he won't take a job at McDonalds? Doesn't a culture that demeans trade and vocational school as being for... those people... share any of the blame?I don't see how we can blame kids these days for doing exactly what we told all of them to do if they wanted a good job and security. It's our fault, not theirs, that we live in a world where it's just not enough, now, to have a good education. Why do you think it was a shock? Because all the adults you grew up with were telling you that if you got with the program, followed the rules, you would get handed something - the chance to work, to do something that mattered, and to get some kind of security as a result so that you could raise kids and own a home without every day being a fight for mere survival. Weren't all those adults living in the "real world"? Isn't that exactly how it worked for them; they got the grades, got the degrees, got the job and the house and the yard? The question isn't whether or not "kids today" are going to wake up and see how that isn't true, anymore. I think pretty much everybody knows that isn't true anymore. The question is how we, and our parents, let it stop being true.

If we were talking about your health, and you wanted to do one thing and your doctors - who are experts - wanted you to do another, isn't the "responsible" thing to follow the expert advice of your doctors?I'm puzzled by your notion that it was somehow "irresponsible" for many thousands of Americans to follow the advice of the experts who claimed to be acting on their behalf. You're turning the very notion of "responsibility" on its head. I doubt very much that you're pulling down the cool quarter-mil a year necessary to be in the 1%. Empty platitudes. See if you can answer the question I asked CS. How large a mortgage can you afford at your current income level at 8% APR? See if you can work the numbers on pen and paper.If that's not something even an elite thinker such as yourself can solve without complex calculations, is it really reasonable to expect people, sitting there across the desk from an expert in mortgage brokering, to run those numbers in their head and reject a mortgage because its more than they can afford?Sometimes bad things happen to good people, AE. I know that's a revolutionary thought to a conservative such as yourself, but its nonetheless true (and its exactly what you'll claim is happening every time something bad happens to you. Conservatives love personal responsibility unless they're the ones being asked to take it.)

Right, and that's exactly what I'm talking about. You got the grades, earned the degrees, they qualified you either for a position with an existing company or to run your own business, the wage you made was enough to afford a home at a certain standard of living.You've not contradicted me in the least; that's exactly the path that your generation promised because that's exactly the path that you were able to follow. And its exactly the path I described.You're out of the loop, Buz. The 99% are here to tell you that it doesn't work like that any more. Good grades don't get you a worthwhile degree. A decent degree doesn't seem to qualify you for a job. Graduating with enormous student loan debt doesn't allow you to roll the dice on your own business. And when you finally can find work, generally after years and years of looking, the wage isn't high enough to let you do anything but live with your parents.Nobody's asking for a handout, Buz (well, except for you, now that you live on the government dole and expect your Social Security and Medicare entitlements to rise with the increase in the cost of living. As a taxpayer: you're welcome.) Overwhelmingly the complaint of the 99% is that hard work and self-development don't result in even the scant rewards that they did in your age - a comfortable, if not lavish, standard of living, your own home, the ability to support a family, all undergirded by the promise that you wouldn't starve to death in your dotage. And its overwhelmingly the result of people like you - gaming the system to maximize the redistribution of wealth from the young to yourself - that the system doesn't work like that anymore. Yeah, Buz? And how's your job going?Oh, that's right! You don't work anymore - you've got a cushy living and full medical coverage, paid for by the US taxpayer. Boy, you just don't think about the things you say at all, do you?

So somebody gave you a chance, took a risk on you (since you hadn't demonstrated any kind of proficiency or expertise in anything) and you proved that they were right to do so. Good on you!Is it really so objectionable that the OWS crowd want the same thing? The only thing they're asking for is the opportunity to do work for pay. Have they earned that? Well, you hadn't. They've actually worked quite a bit harder in preparation for their first job than you ever did. And you're here to tell them they don't deserve their shot?Fuck you. Buz, do you understand how Social Security works? It never seems like it. It's not a savings account. It's not your money. Your 50 years of Social Security payments didn't go into an account for you to draw on, they were paid out in benefits to the people of your parents' generation who were retired while you were working.And the sum you paid in for those 50 years is nothing even close to what you'll receive in total - you'll get perhaps two orders of magnitude more in benefits than you paid in payroll taxes. The money you're getting from Social Security comes out of my pocket, and thanks to people like you, Social Security is a benefit that I may not enjoy. Thanks to your generation's endless thirst for suckling at the government teat, your enormous cost of living increases and medical premiums are liable to exhaust the capacity of the Federal government to offer me the same benefits that I'm paying for on your behalf.Social Security isn't a savings account, Buz. You receive those benefits because its part of a social contract - workers pay in to support the retired, then they retire and are supported by a new generation of workers. But watching the people of your generation work as hard as they can to climb the ladder and then pull it up after you disgusts me. Well, right. You failed to plan for your future so now you live off my my taxes. It's funny but you seem to think that proves you're not a government parasite.

I just want to be clear - I'm not opposed to taxes, even higher ones, to support a system so that people don't make it to the age of 65 and then stop being able to work without a source of income to keep themselves fed and sheltered. I'm not old enough to remember the times when seniors ate cat food because its all they could afford, but I know that happened and I'm happy to kick in so people don't have to go through that, even parasites like Buz who work as hard as they can to make sure I don't get the same deal.I don't understand what happened to the Baby Boomers that caused them to turn on their own kids and grandkids, but its pandemic at this point. Generational warfare has already begun; it was declared when we started diverting funding for higher education and public schools to preserve Social Security and pensions.

If you had contributed to a private plan instead of receiving a defined benefit, you probably would have exhausted your fund in the first five years.But, Buz, the point is - you didn't contribute to a defined plan. Nobody stopped you! You could have taken just as much of your paycheck as you wanted to, as you thought was prudent, and placed it in a savings account.But you didn't. And now, rather than make you pay the price for your lack of vision and foresight, all the current workers get together and pay a portion of their income to keep you in herbs and guacamole dip. And rather than exhibit any kind of gratitude to the social compact that stepped in and saved your ass after you dropped the ball all those years ago, you're trying to pull the ladder up after you.Disgusting.

I agree. These things are part of a social compact that exists so that healthy people don't spend their lives contributing to the general prosperity, only to be dumped by the wayside when their failing health left them unable to contribute any further. In fact, we'd let them retire before that happened so that people could have a few years or decades of leisure.That compact needs to be preserved. But the Baby Boomers weren't the only ones who were promised things. You mean retirees? Well, but let's be specific about whose votes they were courting for that. Nobody courts the youth vote, because for all intents and purposes, there is no youth vote. But seniors get out the vote. Of course they do - who else has the time to wait in line at the polling place on a Tuesday? Everybody else is working.So, sure - politicians learned that they could count on aging Baby Boomers to deliver votes if they promised to mortgage their children and grandchildren into bondage to keep that sweet, sweet government teat a' flowin'. Like I said, I have no idea what compelled the Baby Boomers to so overwhelmingly turn on their own children and grandchildren, but you've successfully articulated the means by which this generational warfare has been fought. Is it? How is it coming due? Please be specific. When the government can borrow money at negative real interest rates, isn't kicking the can down the road exactly what we should do?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

So what if you got 50 opinions, then? Remember how there was basically only one guy back then who said that housing prices couldn't go up forever, that the enormous mortgage-backed securities market was a ticking time bomb, that every major financial institution was leveraged up the wazoo thanks to the credit default swaps necessary for those securities to have AAA rating? Remember that guy? Remember how he's the economist conservatives can't stand, Paul Krugman?Now, of course, I think the responsible thing to do is almost always to listen to Paul Krugman because he has a Nobel Prize (sort of). But somehow I don't get the impression that's the kind of "responsibility" you had in mind.Calling average Americans "irresponsible" because they didn't somehow magically turn out to be better and smarter at economics and finance than America's economists and financial experts strikes me as the height of victim-blaming. Sometimes things are other people's fault! I know it's a radical concept to most conservatives that bad things happen to good people but it's nonetheless frequently true. Don't forget to renew your subscription!Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.