Just as an aside: why is it ultimately the bank's responsibility for giving sub-prime loans that can never be repaid and not that of the idiots taking them? Because the bank, ultimately, is managing other people's money. It is not the bank's money that is being put at risk. It is the money of investors and savers. The bank has a responsibility to them to keep savers' money safe and handle investors' money sensibly. Just a reminder here.
You do have a point but on an individual level besides austrailia having stricter controls on immigration, people still being emotional beings, possible risk, lack of large savings. But heres the big bummer for a fair few those in negative equity, (which was a result of over speculated house prices with inelastic supply of housing esp in the UK.) Btw housing in the UK is a real grinds my gears issue and weirdly enough has been since I was about 12. It is correct that people should be thinking of solutions within their own families and as individuals but that does not remove their right to be annoyed at the bad fortune that rains down upon them. I like to say "well... f**k 'em.... lets get on with it" but I do also reserve my ability to be angry at the same time If you do say that banks don't take from the little guy and give to the greedy few then you'd be inclined to be slightly mistaken. The whole system was set up around rewards for short term performence. In the short run it may improve peoples lives to be lent to freely but it isn't when a crisis comes demand is down and the job cut is theirs and then the HP car, mortgage and overdraft change from arm bands to stone wheels. Its always been well known banks give out umbrellas in sunshine, give out hosepipes in floods. Commercial Banking is supposed to allocate capital in the economy to consumers, householders and businesses its supposed to be sensible and careful in its approach to lending, that works just fine and is really enough for that level of lending. But thats too boring and carries very little profit so they go with risk to garner more profit and lend irresponsibly, which in the longrun doesn't help very many people. There is a balance to be struck where lending is concerned and the pre 2007-08 model was not anywhere near that. Today the Eu puts forward a step to regulate speculators.The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive- Guardian "City minister Mark Hoban has already made clear that the UK will not tolerate protectionist measures from Brussels" Which is government talk for the banks in london threatening that the city will cease to function if any law introduced creates a competative disadvantage for the london market even if it is in the interest of the general future health of the economy. Which is why we are in this situation in the first place, because banks force governments into deregulation through use of game theory. Which is protectionism in itself.
If the banks have to not just provide us with credit, but also provide financial advice, or perhaps even go as far as not giving us more credit than what they think we can definitely deal with in the future... well they are going to have to charge us much more in bank fees, we will get even worse deals on interest rates, and the banks would also like it if they can get their hands on a crystal ball. Seriously, the banks will need a crystal ball, as not many people will be able to reliably answer questions such as "What are the future prospects of your current income sources?" "What are the future prospects of any of your personal relationships, and any professional partnerships?" There are so many variables, be it family, friends, work, etc, which can have serious impacts on the cash flow of bank's customers, and not many people will like it, if banks go back to requiring absolutely huge deposits and long work histories with large corporations, just so they can get some credit. Let's not forget that banks are like any other business, with the sole purpose of making a profit. The only reason they offer credit, is because they will be paid back more than they lend = profit. The only reason they will hold money in savings, trusts, etc, is because they can make more money from it than what they offer in interest = profit. They have every right to protect themselves, in the case of someone not being able to pay a loan on time - try not paying on time with any other business, be it the hair dresser, mechanic, painter, plumber, chemist, grocery store, any business at all, and you'll soon see the cops, or a sheriff, or a collection agency, etc. I'm not saying lets shed any tears for the poor banks of the world, the buggers make epic profits every year, I agree 100% that they should be giving their customers lower fees and better interest rates. If only that's what these demonstrators were asking the banks for! Earlier on we even managed to drift onto discussing health care! If some despicable brokers have conned people into shady deals, again that's not the bank's fault - just imagine the costs the banks will have to pass on, if they were to perform detailed audits on every deal they approve! I don't think it would be very reasonable to protest for the banks to perform these audits, yet maintain the current levels of fees and interest rates. /walloftext
This is starting to get to the crux of the problem. In many cases, the "loan sharks" are the banks. For example, Countrywide is now Bank of America Home Loans (Bank of America purchased Countrywide Financial in 2008. My perception of the Occupy Wall Street protests is that the people are protesting against the way the financial/banking system has grown and consolidated over the past few decades. In the race to the top, it seems that more and more companies are being owned by fewer entities. The mortgage industry is a major piece of the financial sector, and because they are so entwined you can't really talk about one without bringing the other pieces into the discussion. To expand on Nexxo's point, the banks aren't just managing other people's money. As you begin to untangle Wall Street's web, you realize that in many cases the banks are managing money that doesn't even exist. As the stock market goes up and down, media outlets like to talk about how much money was gained or lost. The interesting bit is that much of the money that gets traded back and forth never existed to begin with.
Thats not as far as I am saying anything should go. But banks should at least take income into account when offering loans and a credit rating. Its better if low depositis are required (but there should at least be one). Most the ideas in your post aren't anything I believe. Anyway will keep it short governments and banks should be working together so that the financial services industry in future is less of a ticking time bomb, rather than stating they do something and the banks say we'll move and they stop.
your not seeing the big picture here mv.. there were banks taking loans with no proof of income.. aig was going all in with over the counter derivatives- and they held the insurance this needs to be stopped.. a small crash happened in the 90's on the backs of the taxpayer and there was a big one in 2008.. how many more times does this have to happen.. alan greenspan held your exact beliefs.. you let the banks sort things out (as they are much smarter than everybody else) and let the market take care of itself he was an idealist.. it would work if everyone was honest but we can now see the reality.. without regulating the otc derivative market this will keep happening- there has to be regulation
Many businesses work the same way, and not just the big ones, many small shops will order bulk goods without having paid for them, basically on credit supplied from the wholesaler, and the shop owner will only have the money he owes them, once at least some of the goods are sold - this happens on a large scale too, take Walmart for example - I'm sure the protesters all love to grab a nice bargain thanks to bulk purchasing power Who are they kidding that they don't like the benefits of easy credit Sure the governments could step in and do something... but it's not entirely the bank's fault. Many people lost money with shares, property, credit cards, etc, but again, many average Joes either made money, or at least didn't lose much, and overall are still very grateful to the banks for they are still way better off than if the banks didn't make credit easy to get. So why aren't the protesters carrying signs that say "The government needs to take action, so our nation is protected from idiots" The reason is because they are too embarrassed to admit, how stupid either they or someone they know was. There's even a single mum that used to work with us, who put all the money from her divorce into bank shares. She'd brag to me about how much money she's making, and her plans to retire on it. I'd tell her to be careful, and in the year leading up to the crash, I started to tell her things like "So you thinking of selling?" and she'd be like "NO WAI!!! My stock's going up!!!111" I'd say "Sure you might make a bit more if you stay in, but how much longer are things going to go up for? What if it crashes?" She wasn't worried, and I wasn't going to bug her more than that, since I wasn't even sure myself what would happen. Well for most of that year, every time her stock went up, we'd have the same little conversation... until d-day... then she was seriously pissed off at the banks and share traders, so I would say things like "Yeah, those ba$tard$" I wasn't going to kick her while she was down, and I didn't push harder for her to get out in time, since I wasn't sure myself as to what was going to happen, but I see it as HER fault. She knew she was playing a dangerous game, I reminded her of that a few times, and then when things didn't go as well as she planned, time to get pissed off about it. /back on topic She's not much different to the girls who got pepper sprayed. They were playing a dangerous game, and should have known the risks, of standing beside a screaming mob, whilst screaming insults and provocative comments.
Aahhh, I was going to keep my trap shut, but you've very nicely put us back on the thread No amount of screaming and insulting deserves to be punished with violence. We've discussed about the (perceived) severity of violence, but this is what it comes down to. No amount of screaming and insulting deserves to be punished with violence.
ORLY?!?!?! A single human can scream at 128db, and permanent hearing loss occurs at 127db = a single screaming human can cause real physical injury. For every additional screaming human in the mob, add 3db. Just 5 screaming people, can generate 140 db = The threshold of pain, human throat and vocal cord resonance occurs, and hearing protection required to prevent long term or even permanent damage. http://decibelcar.com/index.php/menugeneric/87 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_induced_hearing_loss A mob of screaming and insulting people, are polluting their surrounding environment with a very real danger, which can directly cause permanent hearing loss, to any other people or animals in their vicinity. Losing one's hearing is a very serious injury. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deafness The people of this mob think they can be reckless in the streets and get away with it, just like how they are reckless with their employment and money. The rest of us go to work, earn a living, and we handle our lives including our money responsibly, so we can manage to look after ourselves when times are tough. Unlike some people, that have their hands out: http://occupywallst.org/donate/ The population of America is over 312 million people... so even if every person that supported the protesters gave a single dollar, the protesters have a very, very small percentage of the nation's support, just under 1%. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
Densely-linked cluster of 147 companies control 40% of world's total wealth [Original Article - New Scientist]
If that's the protester's worst fears, then we must all do the troubled souls a massive favor, and be sure to never mention anything about any sort of global government
Not quite right. Acoustics lesson! The quoted figure of 128dB is useless unless it's given at a distance or specified as a sound power level. But we will assume it is a sound pressure level at 1m for the sake of argument. For every doubling of distance the hapless cop is away from the screamer the sound pressure level decreases by 6dB. e.g. 2m = 122dB, 4m = 116dB etc. But we'll ignore distance loss for now and take the cop standing 1m away from a single screamer. Now for every doubling of screaming humans add 3dB. So 5 screaming people would mean adding approx 7dB = 134dB. For 140dB you would need 20 people. But this assumes every person occupies the same point in space, which is somewhat impossible so we need to spread everyone out so they look more like a crowd. Now remember distance loss? Person 2 is stood 2m away from the cop, so a level of 122dB, person 3 is also stood 2m away but person 4 + 5 are stood 4m away. So that's individual contributions from 5 people equals 128dB + 122dB + 122dB + 116dB + 116dB. Now dB are log added so total at cop = 130dB. Yep! That's only 2dB more than if it was a single screamer alone. Its also worth pointing out that the 128dB quoted is almost certainly a maximum sound power level (which would be subject to further corrections and losses) and not a sustained level and that its very unlikely someone could scream at that level for anything longer than a few seconds. Finally i get to make a sensible contribution to the bit-tech forums.
Fine, I'll be more specific. Watch the videos, there were plenty of screaming protesters that came within 1m of police members, and even other protesters = they were a real danger to themselves, not just the police. Therefore we can use the quoted 128db maximum figure for one protester @1m, and in the videos, you can see that quite often, there are several protesters, within 1 or 2 meters of a single police officer, and even within each other. So common sound pressure peaks were at least: 128db + 128db + 122db + 122db + 122db = 132.4db http://www.noisemeters.com/apps/db-calculator.asp But hey, even just a few seconds of just the much easier to achieve 130db you've suggested, is more than enough to cause permanent hearing loss = very real physical injury, lots of links about this in my previous post. If we are going to start playing down the possible injuries caused by screaming, and how loud angry protesters can scream, then others might start playing down the effects of pepper spray.
As you've been doing all the time So now, screaming is physical violence, so answering with physical violence is OK. Great, I'll go and pepperspray the next kindergarden as those little brats are potentially damaging my hearing... I was right, I should've steered clear of this discussion a long time ago.
I don't think i've ever posted that pepper spray is an insignificant use of force, IIRC, I even posted that pepper spray should have been used against the mobs in the Tottenham riots thread. I think i've already mentioned in this thread, that I agree pepper spray causes real injuries, even if they are generally not very long lasting. The whole argument about the protesters posing a real threat to police officer's hearing, is to simply counter the suggestion that screaming protesters aren't actually physically harming anyone. They weren't protesting peacefully, far from it, and although it wasn't a riot, it was a screaming, stampeding mob. They were behaving like wild animals, not responsible, sensible, mature adults. Don't take my word for it, have a watch of the video in the OP. PS: children need guidance, not punishment with pepper spray. Suitable punishments for children, are things like taking their toys away for short while, and/or putting them in time out/naughty corner for 5 minutes.
Give the following a read. Section 1 is particularly interesting and words the relevant points far better than I could. www.audioforensics.com/PDFs/AES122_Scream.pdf I would be surprised if permanent hearing damage occurred as a result of exposure to a screaming group of people for a relatively short amount of time. Temporary loss, maybe - but permanent I suspect not. But that's only based on my 8 years experience in acoustics and if you can find any trustworthy evidence to to contrary I'lll happily change my mind I also don't believe screaming in this instance can be classes as physical violence and given the choice I suspect most people would rather be screamed at than pepper sprayed. Plus if the police thought they might be in danger from screaming they'd have ear plugs to protect themselves.
Exactamondo Sort of like how the resulting symptoms of being pepper sprayed, tend to wear off after a relatively short amount of time. I guess we could say... /puts on sunglasses ...that the punishment fit the crime. YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Wait, are we really justifying pepper spray as a reasonable force to use against people protesting, just because you can draw a tenuous link between yelling and hearing loss. In that case, I suppose it was perfectly acceptable to hose down civil rights protesters. All that yelling was potentially damaging, yet the temporary hearing loss couldn't have been any worse than being knocked down by a fire hose. Other than yell - and therefore by your standards harm the police officer - what exactly did the protesters do to deserve being sprayed? If it takes 40 people to achieve the requisite noise level to cause temporary hearing loss, shouldn't the police be crop dusting the entire protest with pepper spray, rather than one cop targeting a couple of women?
