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Keeping with the light blogging schedule, this is a repost from Alter.net about why the people of OWS are so ticked off and why they are protesting. Consider it a primer to help in understanding their positions.
1. Wall Street caused the crash: Unless you are suffering from financial amnesia, you should remember that it was Wall Street’s reckless gambling that did us in. It was Wall Street banks and hedge funds, not home buyers, who created the enormous demand for high-risk mortgages to pool, to securitize, and to turn into Ponzi-like gambling structures with names like CDOs, CDO squared and synthetic CDOs. It was the money-grubbing rating agencies that blessed these pieces of garbage with AAA ratings. As a result, trillions of dollars of worthless toxic assets polluted our financial system. When the bubble they induced burst, our system crashed, causing 8 million working people to lose their jobs in a matter of months due to no fault of their own. Anyone who still blames low-income home buyers, or regulations or Greece — or anyone other than Wall Street — should be checked for dementia.
2. The Wall Street crash directly caused the gravest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression: We’re three years into the worst jobs crisis since 1937. Upwards of 29 million people are out of work or have been forced into part-time jobs. The number of people who have been jobless for more than 26 weeks is at post-WWII record levels. And there’s no end in sight to this misery. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s representatives in Washington want us to focus on cutting public employment and public services to address the debt that Wall Street itself precipitated. WE wouldn’t have a debt crisis were it not for the bailouts, the crash, the lost jobs and the soaring cost of jobless benefits that can be laid at Wall Street’s door. (The debt was also caused by tax cuts for the rich, and the bankers certainly don’t want to talk about that.) For those diversionary debt tactics alone, Wall Street should be occupied until it pays to replace the jobs it destroyed.
3. Wall Street profited from the bailouts and remains unaccountable: Taxpayers provided trillions of dollars in cash and asset guarantees to the wealthiest bankers and hedge fund managers in the world. But nothing was extracted from them in return. Here’s one egregious example: Goldman Sachs paid $550 million in SEC fines for selling mortgage-related securities that were designed to fail so that a large hedge fund could bet against them. The securities failed as planned and the hedge fund pocketed $1 billion in profits. But after we bailed out AIG, Goldman Sachs picked up nearly $12 billion for similar bets that AIG had insured. Goldman Sachs collected 100 cents on the dollar and those dollars were ours.
4. The super-rich are getting richer: When the economy was crashing during 2008, high frequency traders in hedge funds and banks made upwards of $20 billion from the turmoil. This trading scam provided no redeeming value to our economy. Rather, it was a hidden tax on our sorrows — a transfer of funds from the many to the few. In 2010 the top hedge fund managers “earned” over $2 million an HOUR! The top 25 hedge fund managers took in as much as 650,000 teachers. Young people have the right to question these lopsided values. All of us have the duty to do something about it.
5. The super-rich are paying lower and lower taxes: While the government pleads poverty when asked to create a massive jobs program, our financial elites use every loophole available to avoid taxes. In 1995, the 400 wealthiest families paid about 30 percent of their income in taxes (after all deductions). Today their effective rate is less than 16 percent. And for what? What did society gain from their retained wealth? Not jobs, not debt reduction, only more Wall Street gambling.
Thanks to the Alter.net for the commentary on Alan Grayson smacking down conservatives on Real Time with Bill Mahr.
“Prior to O’Rouke’s entry, Grayson was relatively subdued, making occasional jokes. There was not that much need to challenge from Nicolle Wallace, the other conservative on, who weakly employed Tactic No. 4 in the right wing repertoire: “If any Democrat does something questionable, it’s irrelevant that all Republicans do the same thing.” Thus, because four Dem. Senators oppose the jobs bill based on oil subsidies, it’s irrelevant that all the Republicans oppose it for that and worse reasons. Or because Jimmy Carter supports some kind of voter ID, all of the onerous Voter ID laws are OK!
But O’Rourke is capable of sounding authoritative and knowledgeable when he lies. He also is a master of condescension and an expert in Right Wing Tactic No. 5: When you’re losing an argument, just make a joke — even a stupid joke works because the issue goes away. So O’Rourke was mocking the OWS protestors because they supposedly didn’t have specific goals, were just DFH’s playing bongo drums and had no leader:
Grayson said (I’m paraphrasing)
If you want someone who cares about millions of unemployed.
If you want someone who cares about 45 million people without health insurance
If you want someone who cares about millions in poverty. Then I’d be proud to call myself that leader.
The crowd went nuts and O’Rourke was reduced to even more of a blubbering fool. Grayson had cut right through Tactic No. 5 by citing devastating statistics and showing that while he can be funny like he was earlier, he can cut to the heart of problems that prigs like O’Rourke minimize and joke about.
Then the discussion turned to the amounts of cash businesses and banks are sitting on. His mocking tactic lying on the floor in a pool of piss, O’Rourke resorted to Right Wing Tactic No. 1: A simple lie that sounds authoritative. He said that the banks are sitting on cash and not lending because of the capital restrictions of Dodd-Frank.
I yelled at the screen — “Please Alan, call him on that!”
And Alan did not disappoint, saying directly to O’Rourke’s face: “Nonsense,” and explaining that the banks are getting huge interest on their cash and their failure to lend had nothing to do with Dodd.
Once again O’Rourke was reduced to blubbering, nearly falling off his seat onto Maher.
O’Rourke may be smarter than a lot of right wingers, but when challenged with facts and passion, he folds into a pitiful heap of goo.”
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