Occupy Wall Street

[Sasaki Kojiro]

What if MLK had delivered a really dumb speech, people would probably have talked about it more than if he'd done nothing.

[a completely inoffensive name]

What if MLK had delivered a really dumb speech, people would probably have talked about it more than if he'd done nothing.

Umm what are you referring to as "it", the speech or the message?

[Xiahou]

What if MLK had delivered a really dumb speech, people would probably have talked about it more than if he'd done nothing.

Yeah, we'd be talking about how dumb he sounded. Like we're talking about how dumb, unruly, messy, and just plain embarrassing this lot is.

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.

It seems alot of people are misunderstanding your viewpoint. Maybe you should take that as an invitation to clearly restate your position on this topic.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Yeah, we'd be talking about how dumb he sounded. Like we're talking about how dumb, unruly, messy, and just plain embarrassing this lot is.

Everyone here is talking about how embarrassing they are because everyone here is a bit of a cynic. While you guys are talking about how many iPhones they have, there are hundreds of thousands of others who are actually talking about the message. I really don't think any consensus made in the backroom is at all representative of the American population.

[Lemur]

It seems alot of people are misunderstanding your viewpoint.

Dunno, Vladimir and I were doing just fine; we may disagree but we are able to communicate.

Nothing I have written in this thread is esoteric, poetic, allegorical or hard to comprehend. That said, your attempt to summarize my take on OWS was comedy gold, for which I thank you.

[Husar]

I think there should not and cannot be a "too big to fail", neither banks nor Greece or anyone and by intervening our governments are messing up the free market that should regulate itself, using money of people who aren't really involved, much less responsible for the problems. I don't care whether the economy would fail otherwise, in that case the free market and economy are simply a failure and shouldn't be artificially sustained, period.

The people who protest out there may be what they are, but to an extent their message and concerns are perfectly valid. The economy is going to fail anyway, the question is just whether we try to delay it by taking the last money away from the poor, thus risking uprisings, or whether we accept that now and let the markets fail. People who think that anyone richer than the poorest Africans has no reason to complain have a rather low view of our "superior" western economic system, I mean who'd think that Africa is our new standard? Is that where we are now? "At least we're a little better off than Africans"? Really?

Now you can blame this all on politics and say Wall Street is innocent, but it doesn't really matter where people protest the bailouts, where they were given or where they were received, both parties are part of the bailouts. This all just distracts from the real issue, which is whether the government should step in everytime it thinks the economy made a mistake?

I agree that this may be a dumb, messy lot but that's what you get when you don't act responsible and don't own up to your mistakes so no sympathies from me.

[Nowake]

I think there should not and cannot be a "too big to fail", neither banks nor Greece or anyone and by intervening our governments are messing up the free market that should regulate itself, using money of people who aren't really involved, much less responsible for the problems. I don't care whether the economy would fail otherwise, in that case the free market and economy are simply a failure and shouldn't be artificially sustained, period.

While I agree with you that "too big to fail" cannot be allowed, it always has to be a preemptive action. You must regulate the market so that there are zero "too big to fail" institutions. If you get in the position where they are "too big to fail", well, the expression means exactly what it says really, the effects are too disastrous and simply thinking you can bite on the bullet and survive the rough-patch won't do, that option has already been eliminated when you put the TBTF label.
You get back on your feet, then knock them down to size. That it didn't happen is a separate issue of the US (and now EU) political system.

I know it's not what one wants to hear, but it is also the inescapable truth. Twenty Lehman's at once would lead to more than blood in the streets eventually and while you may think that necessary, it never is an option for the ones who won't make it until the end. So these arguments at this point in time are superfluous.

[Husar]

Twenty Lehman's at once would lead to more than blood in the streets eventually

Why exactly? What will happen once Germany and the US can't pay back all their debts either? Will the banks bail them out? What if all the bailouts fail and the banks fail AND the governments go bankrupt as well, AFTER all those bailouts?
Our governemnt had really nice plans to pay off all the debts because it was REALLY URGENT and all they have done since then was take up even more urgent so by now all that urgency is long overdue. Now even if we could potentially pay off all that debt in 20 years (we won't do that anyway), that's just wishful thinking because I'm sure there will be plenty more bailouts in the next 20 years, so when is this ever going to end?

[Montmorency]

So the house is moldy and drafty and the roof leaks when it rains. Tornados and sinkholes are constantly taking chunks out of it. The utilities are old-fashioned, non-functional and expensive. The kids keep breaking the windows, and the teenager upstairs has entered his rebellious phase.
So we should just demolish it and have a new house built? But where will we stay? How will we pay? Is there no other way?

The neighbors live in a storage shed, and I don't think there's enough room for us...

[Vladimir]

Dunno, Vladimir and I were doing just fine; we may disagree but we are able to communicate.

[Lemur]

This photo made me laugh. Does a decent job of showing how imbalanced both movements are.

[Nowake]

I love the picture As in, I literally laughed. However, I was under the impression OWS was a protest against financial corporations, not any corporate trust in general (genuine question)? Sure, you may get a few yells against anything during a demonstration, but to distort the message just to fit a joke in is intellectually lazy.