Occupy Wall Street

[a completely inoffensive name]

I still don't see why people are just crapping all over the protesters. Ok yeah, I get it, they are ******* morons. Awesome. They don't have clear message, cool beans. They annoy me, yeah, same with a lot of others.

Nevertheless the spoiled teenage children of the 1% still has us talking about this stuff in the first place which is better than not talking about it. Sasaki wants to dismiss the motivational aspect of it as people doing the bare minimum to feel good without actually doing anything and claims that what is needed is more articles. Yet, I am pretty sure the media attention of OWS has generated more than a fair portion of the good articles about the 1% over the past 4 weeks now. I'm sorry, but attention to the subject, is attention to the subject no matter how idiotic they go about it. If they all painted themselves blue and acted as if this was Avatar and Wall Street were the loggers, still wouldn't matter if the attention generated articles pertaining to the subject at hand: the 1%.

[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...

[PanzerJaeger]

I still don't see why people are just crapping all over the protesters.

My main issue is the ignorance of it all. They don't seem to understand why TARP was implemented or acknowledge that Wall Street has paid back the majority of its debts to the government and is on track to continue with the rest. They don't seem to recognize or acknowledge just how much money has been spent on their behalf. The 800$ Stimulus, the auto bailout, the years of unemployment benefit extensions, the Federal Home Buyer Credit, the Loan Modification Program, the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, the Credit CARD Act, the student loan caps, and a dozen other programs - trillions on behalf of the underprivileged.

What these people are essentially protesting against is the age old maxim that wealthy people ride out recessions better than poorer people. The government - and by extension, society - has indebted itself greatly to help poor Americans during the recession, but the government cannot force businesses to hire people with outdated or worthless skills. The government can do little to affect wealth disparity, which is a result of globalization and the high cost of American unskilled labor. And the worst thing the government could do is tax the rich and distribute it to the poor banana republic style. That would take our entitled and uncompetitive work force beyond the point of repair and ultimately destroy the country.

In my opinion, the reason these people do not have specific demands is that, deep down, they, or at least their leaders, know that they are fighting against the inevitability of global trade, and even burning down Wall Street will not bring back the glory days of post-war America where entitlements only got bigger.

[Cecil XIX]

Both the American Nazi Party and the Communisty Party USA have endorsed the OSW protests.




I'm not surprised, everything I've seen about the protests seems to be compatible with their kind of ideology. Hopefully it will fizzle out before real harm is done.

[Samurai Waki]

Lol. Anything that seems to be against the "Status quo" will be endorsed by every low-life out there... endorsements do not generally represent reality.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I still don't see why people are just crapping all over the protesters. Ok yeah, I get it, they are ******* morons. Awesome. They don't have clear message, cool beans. They annoy me, yeah, same with a lot of others.

Nevertheless the spoiled teenage children of the 1% still has us talking about this stuff in the first place which is better than not talking about it. Sasaki wants to dismiss the motivational aspect of it as people doing the bare minimum to feel good without actually doing anything and claims that what is needed is more articles. Yet, I am pretty sure the media attention of OWS has generated more than a fair portion of the good articles about the 1% over the past 4 weeks now. I'm sorry, but attention to the subject, is attention to the subject no matter how idiotic they go about it. If they all painted themselves blue and acted as if this was Avatar and Wall Street were the loggers, still wouldn't matter if the attention generated articles pertaining to the subject at hand: the 1%.

So what is likely to be done now? The idea behind spreading awareness is that the only reason people weren't doing X is that they weren't aware of Y. For example, you spread awareness that asbestos causes health problems, and when people become aware of it they stop using it. But what does spreading awareness that there was a way to exploit gaps in the regulations of the financial industry that got exploited by people who could get away with it and caused a recession do? Besides the fact that everyone was already aware of it, it's also pointless. Solutions are what's needed.

It's like having a protest where you say "our kids need to be better educated" over and over again. HOW?

It's a very bad idea for a democratic society that people can pat themselves on the back just for voting, or making a sign, or protesting, or "having a conversation" and "drawing attention" to things.

[Major Robert Dump]

Yes. I am very much more aware of the corruption and greed present in the financial sector now. I hear next they are going to protest cancer.

[a completely inoffensive name]

My main issue is the ignorance of it all. They don't seem to understand why TARP was implemented or acknowledge that Wall Street has paid back the majority of its debts to the government and is on track to continue with the rest. They don't seem to recognize or acknowledge just how much money has been spent on their behalf. The 800$ Stimulus, the auto bailout, the years of unemployment benefit extensions, the Federal Home Buyer Credit, the Loan Modification Program, the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, the Credit CARD Act, the student loan caps, and a dozen other programs - trillions on behalf of the underprivileged.

What these people are essentially protesting against is the age old maxim that wealthy people ride out recessions better than poorer people. The government - and by extension, society - has indebted itself greatly to help poor Americans during the recession, but the government cannot force businesses to hire people with outdated or worthless skills. The government can do little to affect wealth disparity, which is a result of globalization and the high cost of American unskilled labor. And the worst thing the government could do is tax the rich and distribute it to the poor banana republic style. That would take our entitled and uncompetitive work force beyond the point of repair and ultimately destroy the country.

In my opinion, the reason these people do not have specific demands is that, deep down, they, or at least their leaders, know that they are fighting against the inevitability of global trade, and even burning down Wall Street will not bring back the glory days of post-war America where entitlements only got bigger.

Sounds just like the Tea Party.

So what is likely to be done now? The idea behind spreading awareness is that the only reason people weren't doing X is that they weren't aware of Y. For example, you spread awareness that asbestos causes health problems, and when people become aware of it they stop using it. But what does spreading awareness that there was a way to exploit gaps in the regulations of the financial industry that got exploited by people who could get away with it and caused a recession do? Besides the fact that everyone was already aware of it, it's also pointless. Solutions are what's needed.

It's like having a protest where you say "our kids need to be better educated" over and over again. HOW?

It's a very bad idea for a democratic society that people can pat themselves on the back just for voting, or making a sign, or protesting, or "having a conversation" and "drawing attention" to things.

It's a bit silly to be dismissing the public for being angry at the financial system because they are not generating solutions to a problem that has the entire worlds economists between a rock and hard place. I really dislike this idea that if you are not saying, "this is what we should do." then your voice is meaningless. The public wants to show they are angry in hopes that people with the means to create solutions do so, instead of sitting on their hands continuing to do what is best for Wall Street and not necessarily for everyone. To ask them to be solving the problem themselves is like telling the average citizen to go fix the power lines outside their house that fell after the hurricane hit. They don't have the know how, the people in Wall Street and government do.

[PanzerJaeger]

Sounds just like the Tea Party.

Indeed, populism, whether from the Left or the Right, is usually based in ignorance.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Indeed, populism, whether from the Left or the Right, is usually based in ignorance.

Is this one of those times? Or is this truly a time when the public has been screwed over?

[Brenus]

“I am very much more aware of the corruption and greed present in the financial sector now. I hear next they are going to protest cancer.” The difference is you had research to cure cancer. We are still waiting for the fight against the others…
I think it’s time to do a Revolution, I am not sure that “the truth behind 9/11” banners will help, and I am sure that medias and opponents will exploit this as much they can to discredit the genuine movement. But I do think that the banksters should have been put in jail for fraud and illegal activities. I do think that greed kill people, and now, the race for money has nothing to do with competence and hard work.

The man in charge of the notation agency that helps the Conservative Greek Government to cheat and to cover-up the deficit is (or will be soon) head of the ECB… The same ECB that demand to the Greeks to make sacrifice for a debt that can’t be reimburse due to the interest rate impose by the Agencies, agencies that work (and represent) the banks. We are far of the Government of the People for the People. We are in a Pre-French Revolution situation. Tools of democracy are taken from ours hands one by one. Private Companies will soon impose their rules above the rules of the Law. Their lackeys are working on it, imposing regulations avoiding debates in Parliaments, imposing a economic model that actually is leading the world to the wall.

The crisis is worsening, people lose their job by hundreds of thousands, houses are repossessed, and firemen, police-officers, nurses and soldiers are fired. Everywhere, in every country, the old receipts don’t work, but the Righties (Conservative) still demand their application… Like the doctors of Moliere, they bleed to death the patients. We will die in good health…

I hope a big wave, a tsunami, of hungry/angry population all around the world will raise and wash away the banksters and affiliates. It could be a citizen Revolution that hopefully will avoid a real and bloody Revolution. A Revolution the poorest would probably loose anyway.

[Nowake]

It's like having a protest where you say "our kids need to be better educated" over and over again. HOW?
It's a very bad idea for a democratic society that people can pat themselves on the back just for voting, or making a sign, or protesting, or "having a conversation" and "drawing attention" to things.

Apologies for focusing only on your reply, yet you sum up the point of view of several posters with this.
That aside, I would've thought it is clear that "the people" (limiting myself to protests in the US) are largely protesting against the blockage financial reform ran into?
We're mainly talking about the way Dodd-Frank is slowly defanged in Congress, the actions taken to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and so on and so forth. Wish I'd have bookmarked the most salient reports written about these processes I read in the past two years, but a quick search gave me at least okish articles on the subject:
One year after Dodd-Frank - acceptable summary
Lobbying Dodd-Frank
House GOP tries to slow down Dodd-Frank express
Dodd-Frank financial reform law hasn't curtailed banks
Consumer Agency stymied by the GOP
However, it bears repeating that these links are very far from completely illuminating the plethora of maneuvers employed by the financial lobby to block minimal reform in the regulation of all economic sectors. You must've kept a close eye on the US press, so you probably know what I'm referring to though.

The six largest banks spent $29.4 million on lobbying last year, according to firm disclosures — record spending for the group. They spent an additional $8 million in the first quarter this year, which puts them on track to break last year's record
Even before the bill was passed, bank lobbying helped defang some of the strictest proposed regulations, including rules that would have prevented banks from managing hedge funds and fees that would have been levied on the industry to pay for future bailouts.
The regulations have also been scaled back since President Obama signed the law last July 21 as attention shifted to regulators who have been writing the language of some 300 rules.
Banks have pressed regulators in countless meetings to lighten the rules, and they have found a natural ally in congressional Republicans, who have long been suspicious of government regulation.
"The industry has really thrown a lot of wrenches into the rule-making process, thanks to very aggressive lobbying," said James Cox, a professor of securities law at Duke University.

Quick-read of the the Reuters report:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

(Reuters) - Two congressional committees led by Republicans approved measures on Wednesday to delay and weaken key provisions of last year's Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, but they were expected to fizzle in the Senate.
With Democrats in control of the upper chamber of Congress and President Barack Obama able to defend Dodd-Frank with his veto pen, efforts by Republicans to water down and postpone the reforms seemed unlikely to succeed, analysts said.
That is not stopping Republicans from pressing their rollback agenda, however, especially in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"Dodd-Frank is not in any way, shape or form in danger of being repealed," said Ed Mills, a financial policy analyst with brokerage FBR Capital Markets. "But they're building the groundwork over time to strip away elements that the business community feels are the most onerous."
As a global regulatory crackdown moved ahead fitfully in the United States and Europe after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, a House subcommittee voted in favor of weakening the powers of the new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.
Set up by Dodd-Frank to protect consumers from abusive and misleading credit cards and mortgages, the CFPB will open its doors in July. Like the rest of Dodd-Frank, it has been hotly opposed by Republicans and Wall Street since it was proposed.
The legislation approved by the subcommittee would have the bureau run by a five-member board rather than a single director, and make it easier for the new Financial Stability Oversight Council to overturn bureau regulations.
Another Republican-led committee voted on Wednesday for an 18-month delay of post-crisis regulations intended to reduce risk in the over-the-counter derivatives market. The rules are being implemented by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission.
The legislation would keep in place the timeline for issuing final rules for definitions such as swaps and swap dealers, and for rules requiring record retention and regulatory reporting.
"The speed at which these rules are coming out is unprecedented, and these are important rules and thus a delay of 18 months is reasonable," said Greg Mocek, a former enforcement chief at the CFTC and now a partner at law firm Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft.
Like the CFPB measure, the derivatives delay bill may win approval in the full House, but it has little chance of becoming law. There is no similar Senate bill and futures regulators have said that they do not need additional time.
OTC DERIVATIVES TARGETED
The Dodd-Frank law, enacted last July, extended full federal regulation to the $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market for the first time. It requires derivatives to go through clearinghouses and trade on exchanges as much as possible, with more disclosure and reporting also required.
"It's highly politically risky to move back the date of implementation" for the derivatives rules, said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and the CFTC's former director of trading and markets.
"The Republican drive for this does not take into account that the CFTC is contemplating a phase-in process," he said. "It is allowing people to prepare themselves for the new regulatory situation."
To implement the derivatives rules, and many others mandated by Dodd-Frank, regulators asked Congress for more money. At a Senate committee hearing, both the Securities and Exchange Commission and CFTC asked for funding increases.
Republicans seeking to weaken Dodd-Frank and restrain federal spending are trying to block big funding increases for the two agencies. (they did) The SEC wants a $222 million increase for its fiscal 2012 budget, beginning October 1, which would bring the total to $1.4 billion. The CFTC wants an increase of $106 million, bringing its budget to $308 million.
Separately, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro told reporters on Wednesday that there is no guaranteed way to prevent a repetition of the May 6, 2010 "flash crash," but that measures being implemented should help head off volatile price swings.
Last year's unprecedented drop sent the Dow Jones industrial average down some 700 points in minutes before it sharply rebounded -- a rapid breakdown that exposed deep flaws in the mostly electronic U.S. marketplace.
Schapiro said the agency has moved fast on circuit breakers to dampen volatility, along with new rules for breaking clearly erroneous trades, rules banning "naked access" to the market, and a prohibition on stub quotes, those offers to buy or sell stock at prices not in line with the prevailing market.
"Can I guarantee we will never have another flash crash? No," Schapiro said. "But I think these are really important steps to take that I think go a really long way toward fortifying our market structure."

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Sounds just like the Tea Party.



It's a bit silly to be dismissing the public for being angry at the financial system because they are not generating solutions to a problem that has the entire worlds economists between a rock and hard place. I really dislike this idea that if you are not saying, "this is what we should do." then your voice is meaningless. The public wants to show they are angry in hopes that people with the means to create solutions do so, instead of sitting on their hands continuing to do what is best for Wall Street and not necessarily for everyone. To ask them to be solving the problem themselves is like telling the average citizen to go fix the power lines outside their house that fell after the hurricane hit. They don't have the know how, the people in Wall Street and government do.

Aha, so then the government can just come out and say "this fixes it" and they don't need to know whether it does or not? You are holding them to the standards of children.

Apologies for focusing only on your reply, yet you sum up the point of view of several posters with this.
That aside, I would've thought it is clear that "the people" (limiting myself to protests in the US) are largely protesting against the blockage financial reform ran into?

Doubtful, but let's imagine.

We're mainly talking about the way Dodd-Frank is slowly defanged in Congress, the actions taken to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and so on and so forth. Wish I'd have bookmarked the most salient reports written about these processes I read in the past two years, but a quick search gave me at least okish articles on the subject:
One year after Dodd-Frank - acceptable summary
Lobbying Dodd-Frank
House GOP tries to slow down Dodd-Frank express
Dodd-Frank financial reform law hasn't curtailed banks
Consumer Agency stymied by the GOP
However, it bears repeating that these links are very far from completely illuminating the plethora of maneuvers employed by the financial lobby to block minimal reform in the regulation of all economic sectors. You must've kept a close eye on the US press, so you probably know what I'm referring to though.

In a massive reform bill I expect some measures that aren't a good idea. If I see that the banks lobbyied congress and got a measure removed I don't assume that they "bought" congress. Why are you repeating the line that it was "defanged"? If you defang a snake it is completely harmless. Does the bill do absolutely nothing now? Do you have a strong opinion on whether the bureau is run by a 5 member board rather than a single director, like the republican subcommittee suggested? Why is the fact that the banks made a profit treated like a smoking gun? A summary of those articles would be that the bill is here to stay but that details of it are being quibbled over by some republicans, who don't control the senate and can't override the presidents veto anyway.

Don't you see the tremendous disconnect from a detailed argument about the dodd-frank bill and this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

??

picture spoiled because I don't want to look at it

[Nowake]

Hmm, I believe you are succeeding the performance of writing both that they’re asking too much and that they resume themselves too to little simultaneously.
So lets clarify the phenomenon: first of all, we are dealing with a mob here. It’s roots are springing out of progressive networks and democratic-leaning organizations, with lots of disenfranchised lay-abouts joining in. Why are they gathering? Lots of punctual reasons can be found and I am sure given by any of their spokespersons with a bit of eloquence, yet at the end of the day, it is a general anxiety over the economic situation which they perceive to have been brought about by the destabilization of the financial sector; that was caused by Wall Street and deregulations, deregulations which were also the product of the financial lobby by and large. Now, there were two initiatives taken for reform and those were, in fact, Dodd-Frank and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
And yes, I stumbled upon the word defanged when perusing the sources above and found it poignant, because the bill is totally inefficient at this point in time. And while I am an educated person in macroeconomics, I do not have the expertise to vet each proposal, my ultimate formal training is in political marketing and Law.
But I have made a mistake, because in wishing to show you why the protests would target the banks, I appeared as if I wished to demonize those when I linked only articles condemning them. It was not my intention and when I repeated that the bill was defanged, I actually had in mind its initiators as well, which totally overbloated it, regardless of consequences, in a bid to appear decisive.
It’s the old political syllogism:
We must do something
This is something
Therefore we must do it.
Here you have a cogent article I had actually bookmarked a while ago on why Dodd-Frank is a "defanged" bill, article which lays the blame at the feet of its proponents. I agree with it as much as I agree with the articles I hastily searched for and mentioned above, and the issues the reform encounters would only become clear if we’d very selectively and expertly synthesize all this feedback: Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill turns one.

Still, nevermind the blame game, these are street protests. You are very much mistaken if you think the reason behind such actions needs to be punctual. They simply have to express their desire for changes to be made in the sector they’re interested in, in the hope that enough political will shall coagulate to champion their cause in a cogent manner. This is not about their childish behaviour or not, expectations are misplaced in mob behaviour. This is about creating the premise for a political movement capable of channelling social anxiety, and to obtain that, these protesters are doing exactly what they need to do. Yeah, they cannot ask for guarantees from the persons they will end up backing in the end, but that’s a problem contained in the entire system and which 100% percent of the population accepts in the case of the electoral system anyway – they elect a part which claims to “fix it”. These people are not there to change that catch-22 of the democratic system, they are there because they are under the impression no one even bothers to wave that claim anymore.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

I don't disagree about the dodd-frank bill (my assumption about such bills is that it will be hard to implement) except that defanged means deliberately crippled and I think it's more inherent to the attempt.

But that article itself is a great argument about protesting, as they say:

Still, according to a recent poll conducted by the Center for Responsible Lending, 71% of likely voters support the Dodd-Frank bill. You have to wonder though: do they really know what's in it? Do Americans working outside the financial industry understand the difficulty that regulators are having making so many of its provisions workable? Do they understand the reported or even potential harms that overly aggressive regulation can cause?

If the answer to all three of these questions is "yes," then that 71% is a meaningful and important statistic. Unfortunately, the answer to all three of those questions are more likely "no."

If I was a politician and saw these protests that's what I would be thinking. "Since these people don't actually know about it, all I have to do is give the appearance of being on their side".

Creating a premise for a movement is no substitute for starting a movement, and hoping and expressing a desire aren't a substitute for anything either. A protest is entirely inappropriate. Protesting works best to prevent something or to undo something. It doesn't work for fixing a difficult problem.

[Nowake]

We’d be mistaken to think the protesters are blissfully unaware of their low chances of success.
Or unaware that the politicians declaring for them are most-likely populists. But again, you are speaking from a very righteous pulpit, as if this was not already common practice throughout the whole democratic process, and it’s only these chaps who naively deliver themselves in the hands of politics. It's an accepted risk already, no point going on about it


As to the protest being inappropriate, I do not see how it obstructs the on-going process of reform or what do they have to lose. Can it have consequences which would ultimately hurt the economy should they succeed in imposing a regulatory agenda? Yes. It is totally plausible. In the absence of their protests, could certain financial interest groups succeed in imposing their particular agenda which would hurt the economy? Yes. 2008 actually happened. Since they are equally uninformed and incapable of foreseeing which would lead to success, they might as well go for it and see what happens as long as they remain peaceful.

[Slyspy]

Of course it doesn't matter how educated and informed the protesters are since those traits will not enable them to action any change whatsoever because what they lack is power.

Protest is the only form of power and leverage that they have.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

We’d be mistaken to think the protesters are blissfully unaware of their low chances of success.
Or unaware that the politicians declaring for them are most-likely populists. But again, you are speaking from a very righteous pulpit, as if this was not already common practice throughout the whole democratic process, and it’s only these chaps who naively deliver themselves in the hands of politics. It's an accepted risk already, no point going on about it


As to the protest being inappropriate, I do not see how it obstructs the on-going process of reform or what do they have to lose. Can it have consequences which would ultimately hurt the economy should they succeed in imposing a regulatory agenda? Yes. It is totally plausible. In the absence of their protests, could certain financial interest groups succeed in imposing their particular agenda which would hurt the economy? Yes. 2008 actually happened. Since they are equally uninformed and incapable of foreseeing which would lead to success, they might as well go for it and see what happens as long as they remain peaceful.

I don't see what your saying. How many police have been pulled from other duties to watch over this (two for the wall street bull, 12 for a building front in the pictures I saw) how much taxpayer money has been spent on that, how much on processing all the people arrested for blocking traffic on the brooklyn bridge? Are their crimes being gotten away with because of lack of police in other areas? Even if you don't agree that people making a public spectacle of themselves is a bad thing, or that promoting an extremely superficial idea of what it is to be a citizen in a voting country is a bad thing, you have to agree that the sheer waste is bad. So why "they might as well go for it and see what happens"?

[Nowake]

Oh, we'll just have to agree to disagree after all Sasaki

Even if you don't agree that people making a public spectacle of themselves is a bad thing, or that promoting an extremely superficial idea of what it is to be a citizen in a voting country is a bad thing, you have to agree that the sheer waste is bad.

For one, the waste in terms of wearing out the public space is absolutely negligent and it won't leave significant traces. Suggesting protests in favour of economic reform should be re-thought on the consideration that they overload police duties is simply hypocritical. The jobless who feel abandoned and forgotten turn to crime a lot faster, think of how much violence these protests prevented by engaging potential perpetrators and allowing these mobs to let go of social tension.
As to making themselves into a public spectacle, that's a narrow view, for one, no one is laughing or looking down on them around the world. Secondly, try to look at this anthropologically, anxiety is always defused through gregarious manifestations. It's how human beings solve their issues, you don't want them to look for other options, believe you me. If you think you're living in a society where the walls of civilisation cannot come crashing down, you are misunderstanding the bottom line of the people around you. These type of politically orchestrated protests (as they are politically orchestrated by elements of the left) are the best outcome you can hope for.

[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.