Since MVAgusta has embraced ad hominem barking to the point of becoming the least challenging member of this discussion, I'll focus on you, who seem to be a more credible opponent. You've now gone from repeating one-dimensional right-wing invective accusing OWS protestors of congenital hypocrisy (thank you, Rush Limbaugh) to stating you feel that demonstrators in the US and UK who blame corporations for our current financial conditions are simply mistaken, and you cite data to explain why you've come to that conclusion. I call that a civilized rephrase and it makes you worth talking to. Still, it would make the conversation livelier if you cited sources to go with your stats. You might assume so, but you'd be wrong. Here's a more pertinent statistic: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html Or to break it down in terms of the disparities in different countries, here's the ranking of income ratios from lowest to highest, with the lowest listed rank signifying the greatest level of disparity. Note the relatively high position of the UK, then note that the US is far closer in disparity to Brazil and Mexico; factory workers in Russia, China and Iran are paid proportionately better than American factory workers: Table 7: Income equality in selected countries Country/Overall Rank Gini Coefficient 1. Sweden 23.0 2. Norway 25.0 8. Austria 26.0 10. Germany 27.0 17. Denmark 29.0 25. Australia 30.5 34. Italy 32.0 35. Canada 32.1 37. France 32.7 42. Switzerland 33.7 43. United Kingdom 34.0 45. Egypt 34.4 56. India 36.8 61. Japan 38.1 68. Israel 39.2 81. China 41.5 82. Russia 42.3 90. Iran 44.5 93. United States 45.0 107. Mexico 48.2 125. Brazil 56.7 133. South Africa 65.0 Note: These figures reflect family/household income, not individual income. Source: Central Intelligence Agency (2010). This paper from the AFLCIO's PayWatch site documents the unprecedented rise in CEOs' wages (lest percentages alone not convey the extent): Contrast that with middle-class wages in America, which averaged $40,000 a year in the best of times and have not gone up even a little since the 1970s. Contrast that further with the wages of factory workers in America. A certain table of questionable origin measuring the differences has made rounds across the internet. Let's focus instead on more credible and verifiable sources. From the Harvard Law forums, this piece by Daniel Pedrotty, Director of the AFL-CIO Office of Investment: "[C]hanges in CEO-to-worker pay ratios are a useful measure of growing CEO pay levels. In 1980, BusinessWeek magazine estimated that the top executives of the largest U.S. companies made 42 times the pay of factory workers. In 2010, the gap between CEO pay at S&P 500 companies and the median U.S. worker had soared to 343 times. . . ." Further corroboration (though conditional) in Forbes. Lastly, but importantly, your dismissal of the millions in America who have worked hard, sacrificed everything, and been relegated to the lowest financial dungheaps of debt, default and poverty for decades seems a bit out of touch. Have a look at this series of individuals' stories on tumblr -- a series, by the way, which is ongoing and virtually endless -- and perhaps your contempt will be mediated by a bit more compassion toward some of the people who describe particularly heartbreaking circumstances: http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/ On the contrary. Many demonstrators at OWS are quite specific about the processes and persons they picket and blame: Here, for example, is Columbia Professor Jeffrey Sachs calling out the specific hedge fund kleptocrat who stole $150,000,000,000 from investors but is quoted in an international news publication as saying OWS demonstrators "are naive" and "lack sophistication." Note that the demonstrators repeating his words are not lackeys but rather "human microphones": They are amplifying his words by repeating them as a group because the use of microphones and amplification at demonstrations is illegal in New York. http://youtu.be/mB_eoUqbKDw In short, it isn't corporations as businesses that demonstrators are protesting against. It's the use of lobbyists and influence to dismantle the mechanisms that protect us all financially by those who engineer and manipulate the result at everyone else's expense -- not just the in States, but across the world as well.
Feel free to ignore questions that you either cannot or are too embarrassed to answer, and feel free to insult me as much as you wish. Oh look gaiz, another photo of an idiot: If she spent as much time researching before she made her purchases, as the amount of time she spends on coloring her hair, she wouldn't be trying to blame the banks for defaulting on a loan. I imagine the next time she wants some credit from a bank, and they refuse due to her credit history, there will be a new angry sign, protesting that the bank won't give her credit. She can try to blame the government, the banks, the hairdresser, anyone she likes, but the only person to blame for her current situation, is herself.
thing is banks were giving out loans to anyone.. they knew exactly what was coming when a guy who worked at mcdonalds could buy a 300,000 dollar house.. real estate agents were flipping houses like mad.. sometimes 40k a pop I was training to be a loan officer at the height of it all back in 2006-2007 and I literally walked away.. I couldn't be a shark like those guys I mean the point where I said I had enough is when a teacher friend of ours wanted to re-finance her home.. re-financing was big back then because the value of homes was way over inflated and the banks.. get this.. you didn't even need to talk to the bank as a loan officer to get someone a loan or even show any proof that they had a job! as a loan officer, once you got a few loans done.. it was simply done over a messenger that connected strait to the banks.. you did a stated loan and I've seen plenty of times where the clients income was grossly inflated to get some ridiculous option arm loan (what they called a power loan to the layman) of course the dream was.. you get a option arm and pay very little the first year.. but then next year before it increases- you refinance and pull the money back out the house! in a never ending loop your house will always inflate in value they were told.. so you can always pull the magic equity created out of your house before your mortgage balooned.. facking ridiculous.. that's how banks were allowed to operate back then.. everyone was making money and headed to the crash of 2008 anyways our teacher friend happened to be a math teacher.. she went in to fill in the final papers to complete the loan.. and my buddy who was doing the loan changed the numbers on her to make more money on the back end of the loan.. needless to say she walked out I quit and never looked back.. I hear nowdays he is selling life insurance.. how nice people in wall street have been playing these games unregulated for quite a while.. actually a good show to watch is the warning / frontline/ psb about brooksley borne http://video.pbs.org/video/1302794657/ she seen what was happening in the derivative market and when she confronted washington.. was given a big slap in the face for exposing it
Fair enough theHippoz, but we can say the exact same thing about people that pay too much for their pc stuff. All it takes is just a little bit of research, and money won't get wasted. I too wouldn't work as a loan shark, just as much as I wouldn't work at pc world, but before we say that the banks need to care more, and not be so easy to take advantage of, we need to think how much that screws over the responsible for the sake of protecting the reckless. There are many very succesfull people that made their dreams possible, because the banks gave them the benefit of the doubt, with things like huge lo-doc loans. The same people that initially called these informed borrowers crazy for getting into so much debt... .... are now jealous, angry, and looking for someone to blame, and the same goes for those who made poor credit decisions. I can't watch the vid atm, i'm on the iphone
yeah it's a good account on why the banks were able to do what they did.. suggest anyone who can get ahold of it watch I was fortunate enough to see it happen on the ground floor.. so I understand a little better than most how people got the loans.. wall street wants to make you believe otherwise- but I seen it I know people are greedy, there has to be regulation in place to stop the games.. even alan greenspan later admitted he was wrong about deregulation in the derivatives market (of course after he retired) I mean when I got in to become a loan officer there wasn't even a test needed.. later cali had issued a ethics test (was two tests in all) but it was done online you and I know.. tests done online (even timed) without supervision are easy to cheat
I'm not getting my info from the internet, newspapers, or magazines, it's all first hand. If banks are to radically change lending criteria, it's not going to stop fools from losing money. There's still plenty of hotels, casinos, drugs, alcohol, etc for them to blow it on. I've known and met a fair few people that recieved the huge loans, for personal and business use, and due to the generosity of the banks, these people were able to use hundreds of thousands of dollars, even sometimes over a million bucks of credit to their advantage. I've also worked alongside private bankers, and listened to their phone calls with even bigger players. These same private bankers tell me about the thousands of customers they have, many of which are bigger than the one they just spoke to. The girl with the sign moaning about high risk loans, may possibly just be refering to a friend or whatever, such as a maccas employee with a 300k loan, but she has no idea. Such a loan is indeed a very safe one compared to the many, much larger ones banks dish out - the sort of loans that made devices we're all using to read and post, possible to create. Ask Bill Gates. There's still plenty of succesfull people living on credit, continually drawing equity year after year, and it's very safe due to the relatively large value of the assets they draw from. I personaly don't want to live like that, due to the reliance on too many laws and conditions. They do it because it can mean living on $100k pa, and say 5 or even 10% pa increases, and zero income tax. Before anyone feels cheated, rest assured that these retired folk pay much more tax than the average Joe, due to the large amounts of gst in their expensive lifestyles.
yeah your talking about lending the right way.. I'm talking about a system that was set up, basically a money machine- taken advantage of by every greedy bestard on the planet and supported by banks which weren't allowed to fail actually when bush put up the initial bail money.. then obama came in and bailed out the banks.. the bankers were writing themselves bonuses.. same guys who were responsible for the whole fiasco were writing themselves huge checks issued to them by the fed the whole thing was enough to make me sick.. obama just didn't know any better.. he surrounded himself with wall street and they got exactly what they wanted.. I know the arguement.. you can't let them fail but let's put this in perspective.. let's say you ran a business and all of your clients suddenly couldn't pay their bills.. you have bills that needed to be paid but didn't have the money your business would fail right? you would go bankrupt.. not so for the banks- they had money rain from the sky which they stuffed into their own pockets wish people would wake up really.. if you want a fake economy that continually wrecks itself then let wall street run things.. those assholes need regulation- there's no other way around it..
So how do you regulate every stock broker, ceo, or other big knob without becoming communist? And for what? Because fools used banks poorly?
here's some links.. if you understand derivatives read half way down and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about http://www.moneytalksnews.com/2010/06/23/financial-reform-explained-what-the-heck-are-derivatives/ and here's a good opinion on why things are the way they are.. http://www.indyweek.com/citizen/arc...reet-allowed-to-get-away-with-economic-murder it has nothing to do with fools and their money.. if it did this would be a very small problem http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/trading-firms-await-new-derivatives-regulations/
That was uncalled for. At least she stands up for her believes, and for everyone that speaks up good for them! No reason to rip on her hair, pick her on make up etc.whatever the reason is.
The protests have much to do with fools and their money imo, as most if not every protester on Wall st has made poor financial decisions, and are trying to blame other people for it. It doesn't matter if they blew their money on superficial expenses, or/with unsustainable credit habits, and/or put too much money on shares, etc, whatever they didn't turn out too well, and now they are pissed off. Of all the people they can blame, why not blame some people who made a ton of money out of them? I'll have a read of those links a bit later theHippoz, when I've got some free time edit: had a read, and got reminded of a few things. The author of the first article you linked sounds a bit like me, no? Most people, including singles, couples, families and small business owners, don't want or need financial reforms, that will make dealing with the banks even more difficult than what it already is, especially not when the only reason for them, is to protect the amazingly stupid minority, who call themselves the 99%. Why shouldn't the banks be allowed to secure/insure themselves? If mortgages default, the bank can still get it's money, and if they pay on time, the bank gets it's money like it was supposed to. It's not fair that the banks should go down, and take down EVERYONE and EVERYTHING with them, just because some idiotic people took loans they either could not or simply didn't want to pay. Do you believes I was ripping on her hair? Rest assured, I most definitely was not I'm merely pointing out how long it would take for her, or anyone else she may possibly be referring to with that vague poster, to make an informed decision, instead of doing something to ruin themselves financially. I could have just as easily posted that if she paints her face like that every day, well then if for one week a year, she was to do some research instead of trying to make her face look pretty, she would be well informed to not ever take one of these loans which she classes as "likely to default" The same goes for anyone else in the world she may possibly be referring to.
OK, now let's present a different concept. I and my wife own our home, our land and our car. We have one loan at the moment, which is my student loan, that is already being discharged. We have a bit of credit card debt (around $1000 total, being paid more than minimums every month.) We were both handicapped earlier in life. Well before we would have ever had a chance to save for our futures. My care costs millions, literally. We have a son whose care costs tens of millions, literally. Now according to everyone's economic theory, what part of this is our fault, and why are we the problem? In a society where nobody has any assurance that any government or corporate agency isn't completely acting in their own self interest and with the direct intent to screw over everyone smaller than them to get there, I'm not surprised that there are protests. I'd be out if I could walk to the fridge and back without getting dizzy.
It is not just to protect an "amazingly stupid minority." Financial reforms are needed to put back in place what regulations have been teken away during the last 20 years and to bring financial markets that can not be seen into the light. Why? because one hedge fund, investment bank etc can collapse because of mistakes in the shadowy complex dirivatives market can spread from bank to bank. Which removes trust from the market and seizes credit. WIthout short term and medium term credit some businesses cease to function and go bankrupt. People lose jobs, lose ability to pay debts and default.Consumption drops due to lack of credit and loss of wages due to unemployment which creates unemployment due to businesses losing consumers and is a vicious circle. And that is only a vary simplified understanding . What Is irritating in saying stupid minority is it is a logical fallacy to say "because idots cause this it must then only affect idiots." It doesn't it affects many, many people who have not been stupid with their finances. And thats also the point with the woman you talk about mv just because she's angry about predatory lending and ill concieved borrowing doesn't make her one who can't control her finances. Yes there are the hardline lefties and the whiners who simply couldn't control their finances. But there may be people in those crowds who have educated kids who can't get jobs, people who have lost their jobs and have been unable to find another and various other people who have been proxy shafted by the financial crisis.
I'd just like to put forward the idea that being able to read is not the same as knowing how to read industry terminology. In other words although I can read, and quite often read classical literature, I do not understand how to navigate contract legalese. Nor do I understand financial information after it has been run through the Financial Industry Insider Bullsh*t Jargon Filter. Honestly, it's the number two reason that I do not aspire to any appreciable level of management. I don't really care to learn how to manipulate numbers to paint desired pictures - I have better things to do with my time. While there is some validity in suggesting that people take more responsibility in the system in which they take part, I also understand why the woman is holding the sign in the picture. The system as it stands today is rigged. Perhaps it has always been so, but I don't think the powers-that-be even care to hide that fact anymore.
If most people needed millions of dollars worth of care, then it would be a greater challenge for governments to support them, which would mean more tax for everyone else. Some people will be insensitive and call this a problem, others including myself, will say that some people genuinely deserve a helping hand. I hope your government and/or health care providers are doing a good job looking after you guys. I seriously doubt any of the protesters are in your shoes KayinBlack, but if I saw someone protesting for better health care, I wouldn't automatically call them an idiot. @Eddie, you tell half the story. Shouldn't a responsible adult save some money to protect themselves if things go bad? Then it doesn't matter if a bank goes belly up, and/or you lose your job. A responsible adult should also be willing to work a crappy job when there is nothing else available, even if that means an engineer has to temporarily clean toilets so the bills are paid. It's much better to have a crappy job on your work history than no job at all. People have lost money, and people make signs whining about predatory lending - other people such as singles, family members and small business owners, were wise with their money, and are very gratefull to the banks for the exact same style of lending. @supermonkey, that's a good point, as most people don't even read all of the contracts they sign, and most people that default, didn't even read the first page in full. Perhaps a good reform that could help prevent these sorts of disasters, would be the requirement of a TL;DR clause, just above where the final signature is required! Something along the lines of: TL;DR: This loan is to be fully paid, and if needed, everything you own will be sold. If the lender is in any sort of trouble, the loan will have to be paid early, so be prepared!!!111 This clause would also need to be in bold, there's a good chance many defaults could be avoided with a reform like this, and it's of no disadvantage to the responsible!
You may be reducing the reality and the human aspect of the situation, down to thrifty conservatism. Fact is if unemployment is rising and the new jobs created are scarce someone is going to get the shitty end of the stick and is going to be left in a financial or social mess because governments didn't regulate against bad finance practices. Its okay to say that these people should be gritting their teeth and getting on with it (rugged individualism) but thats subject to limitations. But what I am saying has little to do with people accepting entry level jobs, which by the way if you have experieced or qualified tradesmen and professionals cleaning toilets in the economy what are the non qualified doing? When it comes down to it solving the econmic crisis is about decreasing market volatility and putting right the wrongs that led to it, it is not a problem of individuals being snobby about jobs as there are many with your mentality. You can still have sizable savings, be shafted by the crisis and be bankrupt. After a certain amount of effort you are only as good as the economy you are living in. It seems to me that you undervalue the posibilities of being affected by negative externialities without having reponsibility for it and therefore beleive people have no right to complain. IMO they do: governments were told that this situation would occur and were made aware of how to delay and decrease the severity of this, they had the hubris to ignore it and damaged ordinary responsible peoples lives for the sake of free market neo liberal dogma.
In that case, why would you look at the woman protesting for financial reform and - without any knowledge of who she is or what brought her to join the movement - automatically call her an idiot? You're painting with a very broad brush, mvagusta. Not only have you extracted "singles" and "family members" from small business owners, you're assuming that those people didn't have first-hand experience with predatory lending (or even mis-reading a laon application). With respect to the health care aspect, you're arguing from vantage point that we Americans can't enjoy - universal health care. If an engineer in Australia loses his job, he can take up a job cleaning toilets knowing that he can still get cancer treatment. Here in America, if an engineer loses his job, he might be able to get a job cleaning toilets. If he gets a low-wage job, it's almost guaranteed to lack medical coverage. To add on to Kayin's story, when my wife and I moved from Lubbock to Houston, we were fortunate to have enough savings to cover us for a short time while we looked for work. After a long time with few leads, she ended up taking a minimum wage job in retail. Based on her hourly wage and the number of hours she worked in a given week, if she had opted in to the retirement plan and medical coverage her paycheck would almost have been a negative amount. If wages would keep up with inflation, and if we had a better system for medical coverage in the US, it would be more realistic for people to eke out a living on low wage jobs.
@eddie, you mention some fair points, and another point is that with some savings, people can pack up and move to another location if that's neccessary, even if that means completely starting over in another area, or another country, how about Australia? Just because people don't want to do something, doesn't mean they have no options. We even know a family that came to Australia from the US a few years ago, and they've gone from hardship to easy street. @monkey, it seems you've misinterpreted me. I haven't tried to extract anyone, I just gave a few examples. There are plenty of others that have alsobenefited from the bank's generosity, including ceos. We know people that have either misread loan contracts, or work for someone who recieved tough yet legal treatment from their bank, due to the financial crisis - they had allowed room for financial strains in their budgets, so they could survive when times got tough, much like how you did. The point was that the banks didn't steal from the little people and give to the greedy few, but there were a large amount of people that benefitted, including young singles, families, and small businesses, because of the bank's generous lending. I call the girl with the sign an idiot, because she talks as if the loans were given with the intention of failing. Banks prefer it if their loans are paid as planned, and everyone has the right to put measures in place, to try and ensure they are paid. If someone was conned by a nasty broker/loan shark, protest to the shark, not wall st. I would agree 100% with the protesters, if they were asking for improoved health care, and for wages that kept up with inflation.
