Page 2 of 9 FirstFirst 123456 ... LastLast
Results 31 to 60 of 247

Thread: Occupy Wall Street

  1. #31
    Mr Self Important Senior Member Beskar's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Albion
    Posts
    15,930
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit View Post
    Just because we don't have socialist politicians doesn't mean we don't have a few socialist people, especially in a country of 300 million+ people.
    Bernie Sanders is a Socialist Politician.

    I am just being nit-picky, but I think he is simply a "scumbag". He just happens not to be the typical-"Hi, I am on Fox!" variety such as Glenn Beck.
    Last edited by Beskar; 10-11-2011 at 15:59.
    Days since the Apocalypse began
    "We are living in space-age times but there's too many of us thinking with stone-age minds" | How to spot a Humanist
    "Men of Quality do not fear Equality." | "Belief doesn't change facts. Facts, if you are reasonable, should change your beliefs."

  2. #32
    Bureaucratically Efficient Senior Member TinCow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Washington, DC
    Posts
    13,729

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Sorry, I know this is spammy, but I couldn't resist...



  3. #33
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street




  4. #34
    Old Town Road Senior Member Strike For The South's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
    Location
    Between Louis' sheets
    Posts
    10,369

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    The problem is the left in America has no voice.

    You are forced to choose between a hollowed out Trotskyist like Chomsky or some underemployed fool who parrots Chomsky but can't even begin to comprehend the subject he's talking about.

    The left in America is infatuated with the abstract, not the tangiable. Everything has to be some giant black & white struggle. So kudos for excersising your rights as citizens but [...] shave the beard, put on a suit and speak coherntly you hippie . Clamoring on with no clear agenda other than "hurr derr kill the bankers" is asinine.
    Last edited by Ser Clegane; 10-12-2011 at 19:20. Reason: language
    There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford

    My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

    I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.

  5. #35
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Strike For The South View Post
    Everything has to be some giant black & white struggle.
    Look, I don't much sympathize with hippie drum circles, but they're reacting to a real problem. The financial sector is overpaid, overgrown and out of control. They privatize profits and socialize losses, as the bailout showed. It's almost a textbook-perfect example of a rigged game. The rest of us work hard and play by the rules; not so the securities folks.

    Again, I hypothesize that the average investment banker or stock broker is more parasitic and destroys more wealth than a welfare mother. (Some numbers: Annual cost of all means-tested entitlements (Medicaid, food stamps, family support assistance (AFDC), supplemental security income (SSI), child nutrition programs, refundable portions of earned income tax credits (EITC and HITC) and child tax credit, welfare contingency fund, child care entitlement to States, temporary assistance to needy families, foster care and adoption assistance, State children's health insurance and veterans pensions) is around $354.3 billion; estimates for true cost of financial bailout vary, but $4.6 trillion seems to be a not-unrealistic number.)

    Not to mention this absurd and counter-factual meme that the financial crisis was created in Washington rather than Wall Street. Read up.

    Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.

    During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie, according to a number of specialty publications that track this data.

    Fueled by low interest rates and cheap credit, home prices between 2001 and 2007 galloped beyond anything ever seen, and that fueled demand for mortgage-backed securities, the technical term for mortgages that are sold to a company, usually an investment bank, which then pools and sells them into the secondary mortgage market.

    About 70 percent of all U.S. mortgages are in this secondary mortgage market, according to the Federal Reserve.

    Conservative critics also blame the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods.

    Congress created the CRA in 1977 to reverse years of redlining and other restrictive banking practices that locked the poor, and especially minorities, out of homeownership and the tax breaks and wealth creation it affords. The CRA requires federally regulated and insured financial institutions to show that they're lending and investing in their communities.

    Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote recently that while the goal of the CRA was admirable, "it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — who in turn pressured banks and other lenders — to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity."

    Fannie and Freddie, however, didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market.

    What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.

    These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.


    Last edited by Lemur; 10-12-2011 at 18:54.

  6. #36
    Enlightened Despot Member Vladimir's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    In ur nun, causing a bloody schism!
    Posts
    7,906

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    So you're saying that if securities industry counts on government bailouts? What do you do when your children steal cookies? Do you give them more or cut their hand off?

    Well, neither, I hope, but it looks like you're saying the (federal) government is the problem but it's Wall Street's fault. Is Wall Street a branch of the government?

    It also seems like you agree with me that too big to fail is an oxymoron. Time for a little AT&T action!
    Last edited by Vladimir; 10-12-2011 at 20:01.


    Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
    Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
    How do you motivate your employees? Waterboarding, of course.
    Ik hou van ferme grieten en dikke pinten
    Down with dried flowers!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  7. #37
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
    So you're saying that if securities industry counts on government bailouts?
    I don't see how that is arguable. See moral hazard.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
    t looks like you're saying the (federal) government is the problem but it's Wall Street's fault. Is Wall Street a branch of the government?!
    If a rhetorical question falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a noise?

    I do not believe "government is the problem," and did not make that argument. The really crazy sub-prime lending mostly happened in a three-year period and was the majority preserve of private banks and investment firms. They did this for the same reason a dog licks its privates; because they could. And after they cashed in and took their bonuses, they demanded that the public bail them out. If that doesn't make you angry you're not breathing.
    Last edited by Lemur; 10-12-2011 at 20:05.

  8. #38
    Enlightened Despot Member Vladimir's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    In ur nun, causing a bloody schism!
    Posts
    7,906

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
    I don't see how that is arguable. See moral hazard.
    It's not, but you're blaming someone for subsidized bad behavior. Admit that the government is the problem and end the hypocrisy.

    Are you overpaid? Who makes that determination?


    Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
    Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
    How do you motivate your employees? Waterboarding, of course.
    Ik hou van ferme grieten en dikke pinten
    Down with dried flowers!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  9. #39
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
    It's not, but you're blaming someone for subsidized bad behavior.
    It's the golden rule: him with the gold makes the rules. A politician usually does what s/he's paid to do. I think it's more accurate and useful to examine the role of the paymaster than the employee.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
    Are you overpaid? Who makes that determination?
    Very possibly. But I haven't endangered the entire economy of the world and demanded trillions in guarantees, so that's really between me any my employer, now isn't it?
    Last edited by Lemur; 10-12-2011 at 20:24.

  10. #40
    Enlightened Despot Member Vladimir's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    In ur nun, causing a bloody schism!
    Posts
    7,906

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
    Very possibly. But I haven't endangered the entire economy of the world and demanded trillions in guarantees, so that's really between me any my employer, now isn't it?
    Well I am. Time to go foreclose on some endangered species.


    Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
    Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
    How do you motivate your employees? Waterboarding, of course.
    Ik hou van ferme grieten en dikke pinten
    Down with dried flowers!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  11. #41
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Well, if you're going to wander off spouting nonsense, my only answer would be this.

  12. #42

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    But what's the point of protesting at the bankers? So that they can enjoy the show from their penthouses? To say "I hate people getting away with crimes and that's why I'm pinning large numbers of police at a protest?"

  13. #43
    Mr Self Important Senior Member Beskar's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Albion
    Posts
    15,930
    Blog Entries
    1

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
    Well, if you're going to wander off spouting nonsense, my only answer would be this.
    Very nice article.

    But what's the point of protesting at the bankers? So that they can enjoy the show from their penthouses? To say "I hate people getting away with crimes and that's why I'm pinning large numbers of police at a protest?"
    They are trying to draw attention to the issue. Is it the most appropriate and best way? Perhaps not, but it a loud and vocal way to do it, to make sure that opinion is heard at least.
    Days since the Apocalypse began
    "We are living in space-age times but there's too many of us thinking with stone-age minds" | How to spot a Humanist
    "Men of Quality do not fear Equality." | "Belief doesn't change facts. Facts, if you are reasonable, should change your beliefs."

  14. #44

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Beskar View Post
    Very nice article.



    They are trying to draw attention to the issue. Is it the most appropriate and best way? Perhaps not, but it a loud and vocal way to do it, to make sure that opinion is heard at least.


    Draw attention to it? It's not like people didn't watch the news.

  15. #45

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro View Post


    Draw attention to it? It's not like people didn't watch the news.
    Usually people are too lazy to do anything unless they see others doing it as well. So maybe seeing people actually protest will motivate others as well.


  16. #46

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name View Post
    Usually people are too lazy to do anything unless they see others doing it as well. So maybe seeing people actually protest will motivate others as well.
    Motivate to what?

  17. #47

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro View Post
    Motivate to what?
    Idk, write a congressman. Run for local election. Change from a bank to a credit union. Doesn't really matter. As long people take their own individual steps against wall street, then the protest was success.


  18. #48

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name View Post
    Idk, write a congressman. Run for local election. Change from a bank to a credit union. Doesn't really matter. As long people take their own individual steps against wall street, then the protest was success.
    Basically, as long as they go through the motions enough to make the protesters feel good about themselves.

    Is there a way to prevent financial criseses? You can regulate against some things but the financial system is always changing. You could fix it in place but change is a good thing on the whole. People's attitudes towards risk and uncertainty and their grasp of what is going on in the economy is not going to change much.

    What's needed is exactly the opposite of a vague protest. It's not enough to pass a law with more "restrictions" or "oversight", attempts at those laws can easily fail. The larger the issue and the more difficult legislating a solution, the more need for care instead of kindergarten chanting...and if legislating isn't the solution, then what should be done has to be figured out and related in a clear way (and, I might add, in a way that doesn't politicize the solution--if you want the attitude of the country to change don't do hippie protest things).

    If anything gets done it will be people writing articles:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    The Great Bank Robbery


    NEW YORK – For the American economy – and for many other developed economies – the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. For banks that have filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion. Extrapolating over the coming decade, the numbers would approach $5 trillion, an amount vastly larger than what both President Barack Obama’s administration and his Republican opponents seem willing to cut from further government deficits.

    That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools, and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees. Such transfers represent as cunning a tax on everyone else as one can imagine. It feels quite iniquitous that bankers, having helped cause today’s financial and economic troubles, are the only class that is not suffering from them – and in many cases are actually benefiting.

    Mainstream megabanks are puzzling in many respects. It is (now) no secret that they have operated so far as large sophisticated compensation schemes, masking probabilities of low-risk, high-impact “Black Swan” events and benefiting from the free backstop of implicit public guarantees. Excessive leverage, rather than skills, can be seen as the source of their resulting profits, which then flow disproportionately to employees, and of their sometimes-massive losses, which are borne by shareholders and taxpayers.

    In other words, banks take risks, get paid for the upside, and then transfer the downside to shareholders, taxpayers, and even retirees. In order to rescue the banking system, the Federal Reserve, for example, put interest rates at artificially low levels; as was disclosed recently, it also has provided secret loans of $1.2 trillion to banks. The main effect so far has been to help bankers generate bonuses (rather than attract borrowers) by hiding exposures.

    Taxpayers end up paying for these exposures, as do retirees and others who rely on returns from their savings. Moreover, low-interest-rate policies transfer inflation risk to all savers – and to future generations. Perhaps the greatest insult to taxpayers, then, is that bankers’ compensation last year was back at its pre-crisis level.

    Of course, before being bailed out by governments, banks had never made any return in their history, assuming that their assets are properly marked to market. Nor should they produce any return in the long run, as their business model remains identical to what it was before, with only cosmetic modifications concerning trading risks.

    So the facts are clear. But, as individual taxpayers, we are helpless, because we do not control outcomes, owing to the concerted efforts of lobbyists, or, worse, economic policymakers. Our subsidizing of bank managers and executives is completely involuntary.

    But the puzzle represents an even bigger elephant. Why does any investment manager buy the stocks of banks that pay out very large portions of their earnings to their employees?

    The promise of replicating past returns cannot be the reason, given the inadequacy of those returns. In fact, filtering out stocks in accordance with payouts would have lowered the draw-downs on investment in the financial sector by well over half over the past 20 years, with no loss in returns.

    Why do portfolio and pension-fund managers hope to receive impunity from their investors? Isn’t it obvious to investors that they are voluntarily transferring their clients’ funds to the pockets of bankers? Aren’t fund managers violating both fiduciary responsibilities and moral rules? Are they missing the only opportunity we have to discipline the banks and force them to compete for responsible risk-taking?

    It is hard to understand why the market mechanism does not eliminate such questions. A well-functioning market would produce outcomes that favor banks with the right exposures, the right compensation schemes, the right risk-sharing, and therefore the right corporate governance.

    One may wonder: If investment managers and their clients don’t receive high returns on bank stocks, as they would if they were profiting from bankers’ externalization of risk onto taxpayers, why do they hold them at all? The answer is the so-called “beta”: banks represent a large share of the S&P 500, and managers need to be invested in them.

    We don’t believe that regulation is a panacea for this state of affairs. The largest, most sophisticated banks have become expert at remaining one step ahead of regulators – constantly creating complex financial products and derivatives that skirt the letter of the rules. In these circumstances, more complicated regulations merely mean more billable hours for lawyers, more income for regulators switching sides, and more profits for derivatives traders.

    Investment managers have a moral and professional responsibility to play their role in bringing some discipline into the banking system. Their first step should be to separate banks according to their compensation criteria.

    Investors have used ethical grounds in the past – excluding, say, tobacco companies or corporations abetting apartheid in South Africa – and have been successful in generating pressure on the underlying stocks. Investing in banks constitutes a double breach – ethical and professional. Investors, and the rest of us, would be much better off if these funds flowed to more productive companies, perhaps with an amount equivalent to what would be transferred to bankers’ bonuses redirected to well-managed charities.


    and other people critiquing them, and coming to understand and spread actual knowledge, not from the mystical power of twitter and facebook:

    Not every one needs to have a leader with clear demands. That’s the old way of launching revolutions. This revolution is run by the Internet generation, with egalitarian ways of looking at things, and an inclusive process of getting everyone involved. That’s the magic of it."

  19. #49
    Senior Member Senior Member gaelic cowboy's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2003
    Location
    mayo
    Posts
    4,833

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    They should pick one goal and just parrot it all day long till the quality has to do something to shut them up.
    They slew him with poison afaid to meet him with the steel
    a gallant son of eireann was Owen Roe o'Neill.

    Internet is a bad place for info Gaelic Cowboy

  20. #50
    smell the glove Senior Member Major Robert Dump's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    OKRAHOMER
    Posts
    7,424

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    The best way to protest wall street it to put paper currency in your butt, then deposit it into the banks.
    Baby Quit Your Cryin' Put Your Clown Britches On!!!

  21. #51
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    Sydney, Australia
    Posts
    15,677

    Post Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post

    Look I think finance is overpaid, but there is actually a very strong contributor to this increase.

    Cities speed up as population increases in a non-linear manner, crime, patents, talk, walk all increase faster as the population increases.

    Some in a non-linear manner for instance you get along the lines of double the amount of people and you get 15% more crime per capita.

    So do pay rates... increase the number of people and so does the income... just compare country towns to small cities to large ones.

    One of the confounding things is finance sectors attract the best/worst and concentrate them in one city generally per country (London, New York, Tokyo, Sydney). Essentially that group of workers has a population based on the country's total population not just the local city... and at a non-linear increase rate too.

    So you need to compare this to the general population increase of the US and apply a non-linear pay increase.
    Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
    Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat
    Pape for global overlord!!
    Quote Originally Posted by English assassin
    Squid sources report that scientists taste "sort of like chicken"
    Quote Originally Posted by frogbeastegg View Post
    The rest is either as average as advertised or, in the case of the missionary, disappointing.

  22. #52
    Member Centurion1's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Location
    Wherever my blade takes me or to school, it sorta depends
    Posts
    6,007

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
    Look, I don't much sympathize with hippie drum circles, but they're reacting to a real problem. The financial sector is overpaid, overgrown and out of control. They privatize profits and socialize losses, as the bailout showed. It's almost a textbook-perfect example of a rigged game. The rest of us work hard and play by the rules; not so the securities folks.

    Again, I hypothesize that the average investment banker or stock broker is more parasitic and destroys more wealth than a welfare mother. (Some numbers: Annual cost of all means-tested entitlements (Medicaid, food stamps, family support assistance (AFDC), supplemental security income (SSI), child nutrition programs, refundable portions of earned income tax credits (EITC and HITC) and child tax credit, welfare contingency fund, child care entitlement to States, temporary assistance to needy families, foster care and adoption assistance, State children's health insurance and veterans pensions) is around $354.3 billion; estimates for true cost of financial bailout vary, but $4.6 trillion seems to be a not-unrealistic number.)

    Not to mention this absurd and counter-factual meme that the financial crisis was created in Washington rather than Wall Street. Read up.

    Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.

    During those same explosive three years, private investment banks — not Fannie and Freddie — dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie, according to a number of specialty publications that track this data.

    Fueled by low interest rates and cheap credit, home prices between 2001 and 2007 galloped beyond anything ever seen, and that fueled demand for mortgage-backed securities, the technical term for mortgages that are sold to a company, usually an investment bank, which then pools and sells them into the secondary mortgage market.

    About 70 percent of all U.S. mortgages are in this secondary mortgage market, according to the Federal Reserve.

    Conservative critics also blame the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods.

    Congress created the CRA in 1977 to reverse years of redlining and other restrictive banking practices that locked the poor, and especially minorities, out of homeownership and the tax breaks and wealth creation it affords. The CRA requires federally regulated and insured financial institutions to show that they're lending and investing in their communities.

    Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote recently that while the goal of the CRA was admirable, "it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — who in turn pressured banks and other lenders — to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity."

    Fannie and Freddie, however, didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market.

    What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.

    These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.


    that graph is literally the most worthless piece of drivel ive ever seen

    also these people are protesting the evil 1% and how they have all the wealth. They just look like ignorant buffons.

    also i live in the city and some of the kids at my school are there (shocker). The ultimate irony is their parents are likely part of that evil 1%

  23. #53
    Enlightened Despot Member Vladimir's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    In ur nun, causing a bloody schism!
    Posts
    7,906

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Well it's not *that* bad but teasing out a single occupation and comparing it to a group of occupations is an attempt at manipulation.

    Another shock value graph.


    Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
    Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
    How do you motivate your employees? Waterboarding, of course.
    Ik hou van ferme grieten en dikke pinten
    Down with dried flowers!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  24. #54
    smell the glove Senior Member Major Robert Dump's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    OKRAHOMER
    Posts
    7,424

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Kanye showed up in all his bling, the credibility of the protestors has just skyrocketed. I expect Paris Hilton next.
    Baby Quit Your Cryin' Put Your Clown Britches On!!!

  25. #55
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Centurion1 View Post
    also these people are protesting the evil 1% and how they have all the wealth.
    Doubtless some of them are exactly that stupid. However, I don't think their little movement would gain any traction at all if it were merely "eat the rich." See earlier in the thread, comments by me about "legitimate complaints" and a very well-written article reposted by Sasaki Kojiro. As unlikeable as the protesters may be, they're not reacting to a vacuum.

    -edit-

    A more broad-reaching series of charts can be found here.

    Also, further smackdown of the idea that the Federales were the primary movers/causal agents of the mortgage meltdown can be found here and (in less detailed form) here.

    The GSEs did generate large losses, but their bad investments in housing loans followed rather than led the crisis; most of those investments involved purchases or guarantees made well after the subprime and housing bubbles had been expanded by private loans and were almost about to burst.

    Even then, the GSEs’ overall purchases and guarantees were much less risky than Wall Street’s: their default rates were one fourth to one fifth those of Wall Street and other private financial firms, a fact not made clear by the authors. A further review of other literature shows that Clinton’s goals to increase “affordable lending” had little to do with the risks the GSEs took. The FCIC, for example, argued that in several years these goals were largely met by the GSEs’ standard loans with traditional down payments. [...]

    As noted, the GSEs bought very few subprimes in the 1990s. But it might especially surprise the inexpert reader to know that the GSEs did not own almost half of the “toxic mortgages” written by private companies, a remarkable exaggeration on the part of the authors. As usual, no source for the estimate is given, but it is likely based on the analysis of Pinto, who was a former Fannie official and is a colleague of Wallison’s at the American Enterprise Institute. To make the claim, Pinto radically redefined what qualified a mortgage to be subprime or an Alt-A, for which mortgage-holders were often not required to document their income, rejecting the conventional and widely accepted definitions. In his analysis, almost any mortgage held by Fannie and Freddie with modest above-average risk was categorized, to use Morgenson and Rosner’s term, as “toxic.”

    If so, one would presume the delinquency rates suffered by the GSEs during the crisis would have been very high. But David Min, an analyst with the Center for American Progress, shows that the after-crisis delinquency rates on the large additional portion of GSE mortgages that Pinto claimed were high risk, and that was termed “toxic” by Morgenson and Rosner, was roughly 10 percent, far lower than the 25 to 30 percent default rate of true subprimes. In fact, the rate of delinquencies for all GSE securities in 2004 was 4.3 percent, compared to a delinquency rate in private industry of 15.1 percent of mortgages. In 2005, the GSE rate was 7.8 percent compared to 28.7 percent, and in 2006 and 2007, the rates reached 13.2 and 14.9 percent in the GSEs and 45.1 and 42.3 percent in the private market.

    Last edited by Lemur; 10-14-2011 at 16:03.

  26. #56
    Enlightened Despot Member Vladimir's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    In ur nun, causing a bloody schism!
    Posts
    7,906

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Just for humor: First you say it's not about "eat the rich" then you link to an article showing exactly that.

    The start of the article isn't very promising. Being "unable to focus their complaints" reminds me of when Democrats talk about focusing, or effectively communicating their "message." As if they somehow worded their thoughts better people would agree with them. DC buzzwords.

    Those are nice, and exhaustive graphs, but all their only purpose is to point fingers at corporations when the real problems consist of things like uncertainty and poor political leadership. "The new normal" isn't. This is more like "what's old is new again."

    Does the article even take Europe's problems into account? Not Europe as a whole but the ongoing financial instability caused by certain countries.

    So, to sum up: There are a lot of factors influencing our current problems. What you are seeing, and what people are reacting to, are the symptoms, which are easy to see and point a finger at. They're missing the point and that's why I don't respect them.


    Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
    Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
    How do you motivate your employees? Waterboarding, of course.
    Ik hou van ferme grieten en dikke pinten
    Down with dried flowers!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  27. #57
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir View Post
    [W]hat people are reacting to, are the symptoms, which are easy to see and point a finger at. They're missing the point and that's why I don't respect them.
    In other words:


  28. #58
    Enlightened Despot Member Vladimir's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    In ur nun, causing a bloody schism!
    Posts
    7,906

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    You know what REALLY makes me mad?

    This:


    THAT'S what we should protest!
    Last edited by Beskar; 10-15-2011 at 22:59. Reason: Edited picture


    Reinvent the British and you get a global finance center, edible food and better service. Reinvent the French and you may just get more Germans.
    Quote Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars
    How do you motivate your employees? Waterboarding, of course.
    Ik hou van ferme grieten en dikke pinten
    Down with dried flowers!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 



  29. #59
    The very model of a modern Moderator Xiahou's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
    Location
    in the cloud.
    Posts
    9,007

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
    It's the golden rule: him with the gold makes the rules. A politician usually does what s/he's paid to do. I think it's more accurate and useful to examine the role of the paymaster than the employee.
    So instead of reforming the government that paid bailouts, you think it'd be easier to reform.... human nature?

    Edit: Also, don't kid yourself. Fannie and Freddie were very much in the thick of the mortgage crisis.
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemur's article
    The GSEs did generate large losses, but their bad investments in housing loans followed rather than led the crisis; most of those investments involved purchases or guarantees made well after the subprime and housing bubbles had been expanded by private loans and were almost about to burst.
    Their buying mortgage backed securities funneled more money back to the investment banks which allowed them to make even more loans.
    Last edited by Xiahou; 10-15-2011 at 01:58.
    "Don't believe everything you read online."
    -Abraham Lincoln

  30. #60
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Wisconsin Death Trip
    Posts
    15,754

    Default Re: Occupy Wall Street

    Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou View Post
    So instead of reforming the government that paid bailouts, you think it'd be easier to reform.... human nature?
    Why yes, that's exactly what I wrote, both in sense and literal meaning. From the beginning of this thread I've been arguing that we should all have our brains replaced with either robot or baboon brains. You, on the other hand, have clearly been in favor of trying to turn the human race into dolphins. Sure I read that somewhere.

Page 2 of 9 FirstFirst 123456 ... LastLast

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
Single Sign On provided by vBSSO