Occupy... - PG Music Forums

Nothing will change until 99% of the 99% figure out that the 1% got that way off from ripping off the 99%. As long as we worship the rich they'll stay in power.

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Nothing will change until 99% of the 99% figure out that the 1% got that way off from ripping off the 99%. As long as we worship the rich they'll stay in power.

There was a time that I believed as you do. I'm not a product of the 60's...I'm one of the creators. Fortunately, my eyes were opened when I was challenged to scrutinize my thinking & my beliefs. I challenge you to do the same. It's not easy. It required me to look at everything I believed to see if it was actually true. My search could not be limited just to my usual sources of information. I have to admit it was one helluva realization to find out that most of my life was not based in reality.

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They have been evicted from public places and parks. They have been beaten by police for no other reason. That's for real, "man".

You think they should be allowed to essentially live there forever? Typical protests like the Tea Party ones and others have the people show up somewhere for a weekend, make their point and go home. These people have been camping out for weeks. Seriously, where would you draw the line? They are disrupting access to public buildings and private businesses including some very important ones like I described. Do you think a week is fair? If so then they should be gone already, no? How about a month? Six months? Six months is not looking farfectched, they're showing no signs of voluntarily leaving any time soon. So what is it, where would you put the limit?

This is just my take on this btw, I don't want to insult you, get into a flame war or anything, we're just having a simple discussion. We're still musician buddies and I mean that sincerely.

Bob

This experiment has already been done, and it didn't work out the way the orchestrators planned. I don't remember the date, but I recall from my college economics class that around the turn of the century in England there was a move to dramatically raise taxes on the elite. The result was a mass exodus of the people whose investment in industry fueled the economy. After the brain drain, the economy suffered because the ones who were left were the ones who depended on others to provide opportunities, but now there were fewer people left to provide such opportunities.

Remember the Little Red Hen story? It tells the tale particularly well in this modern adaptation:

http://www.bgolden.com/oso/little-red-hen.htm

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You think they should be allowed to essentially live there forever?

Nope. I don't know what the time limit should be, ... but I'm quite sure they've already exceeded it.

Especially for a bunch of people who don't really know why they're "occupying"!

For the handful of "occupiers" who know this is really a socialist/communist movement, they should put socialist/communist candidates on the ballot and be honest about their intentions. Don't mask it as a populist agenda and prey on peoples hardships during trying economic times.

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Especially for a bunch of people who don't really know why they're "occupying"!

if you go to youtube and enter search strings "occupy" and "articulate" you'll
find some amusing clips of people explaining why they're there.

I occupy my armchair.

I predict the snow will dismantle the tents soon.

It was -5 (about 27F) last night. At 8:30 a.m. there is frost (snow) on the roofs of houses and you have to scrape the car windshield.

Occupy Jamacia or Cuba. There's the rub.

Protesting got the Vietnam war stopped. If enough people get up and protest there couild be changes.

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Protesting got the Vietnam war stopped. If enough people get up and protest there couild be changes.

Perfect, we're finally getting somewhere.

What changes?

Tax the rich? A constitutional amendment, if so where's the wording? Round up everybody on Wall Street who makes over a million a year and just throw them in jail and take everthing they have? Is it as simple as legalize pot and we can all party? I'm all over that one.

What exactly, specifically, do they want the government and by extension us, to do?

Spell it out please because I swear, I don't have a clue what they want.

Those war protesters had a specific goal and it was plastered all over their signs.

Bob

The first thing is to give up on the anachronistic concept of patriotism.

Bob,

Aren’t you glad rubberball103, (aka Bud), cleared that up for us? LOL.

Vietnam protest message: Stop The War!

Occupy protest message: give up on the anachronistic concept of patriotism.

Create the law Thursday afternoon and start enforcing Friday at 3 AM.
http://news.yahoo.com/police-arrest-29-occupy-nashville-protesters-capitol-plaza-163045782.html

I laughed out loud when I read how the Commisioner responded to the arrests at the jail..
at least one person involved had some common sense.

That's right Bob, my wishes have been fulfilled, my life is complete. So glad he cleared that up by giving us detailed answers as to what most of these protesters want. I suspect if we were to go down there and start nosing around we might find most of them have a similar feeling.

I never realized this movement was based on such a simple concept.

One thing I heard on the news yesterday concerning the cold weather was in London they surveyed the tents and outdoor shelters with thermal imaging in the middle of the night and found over 90% of them were empty. The poor little darlings went home each night and came back when the cameras started arriving in the morning. I guess when the going gets tough the tough go home to stay inside their capitalist pig parents house.

That's real commitment there.

Bob

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The first thing is to give up on the anachronistic concept of patriotism.

the first thing... toward what ultimate goal?
follow the link below and thoughtfully consider point 9 in light of the above statement

http://www.geoffmetcalf.com/416.html

WOW!! They're doing pretty well with the agenda!

Here's an interesting article about the folks who oppose the "Occupy" movement.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/26/news/eco...3_lnk3%7C108632

From Arab Spring to Springtime for Hitler
"I vos born in Dusseldorf, and that is why they call me Rolf"

“Don't be stupid, be a smarty/Come and join the Nazi Party”

...Smelling the Roses and sipping that "salty-rimmed cocktail"
down here in Cocoaville!!

Standard tactic - when you have no logical argument with people, call them bums, hippies, pot-smokers, and communists.

Bud, please. I can't speak for anybody else but as for me we have nothing to argue because you still haven't given me anything to work with.

This is all you've said:

"...there could be changes."

"give up on the anachronistic concept of patriotism."

"Standard tactic - when you have no logical argument with people, call them bums, hippies, pot-smokers, and communists."

These are merely slogans and this last one is creating the classic Straw Man. Create something so you can tear it down when nobody has said anything like that.

You've said nothing concerning my questions, the main one being what changes are these protesters looking for. If you're not going to engage in some kind of dialog here, then I'm done with this thread.

Bob

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture." ...Thomas Paine

rubberball103, (aka Bud)<

It would've been nice if you'd taken the time to articulate to the rest of us what the "Occupy" movement is all about without using one liner pre planned plugs.

I'm sure there is more than a couple of us who would like to hear someone in favor of it actually talk about it without using "talking points".

Exactly what are you wanting people to do?

I wanting to occupy someplace WARM.

I'm against all greed and hording.

Good people, good music, and enhancements.

We shall overcome, someday.

But who's we?

I think they meant Wee shall over come , John !

One of the great things about American politics is that it often doubles as entertainment. Given that most of network and cable television has devolved into so-called reality TV, it is getting pretty hard to distinguish between “entertainment” programming and political “news” coverage – especially where the occupy Wall Street protests are concerned.

On one hand we have strangers living in a house together with hidden cameras, arguing and having casual sex, and on the other we have what looks like a bunch of camping trips gone bad – complete with no showers, drugs and casual sex.

The former are usually paid to display their foolishness, so they know why they are there. But the later really can’t give a cogent explanation of why they are there and what they want to accomplish, other than that they are mad at “the man” and that they won’t leave until they get what they want.

Some members of the media, along with helpful liberal politicians, have compared them to the Tea Party, but there is very little in the way of comparison. The Tea Party protests were large, law abiding and about something other than sleepovers, specifically a political agenda of limited government and less spending. The Occupy crowd is smaller, mob like and unfocused. Further, their campsites have been the scene of assaults (sexual and otherwise), theft, drug abuse and sanitation hazards. And yet, the Tea Party was compared to “angry mobs”, while these people represent America? Please.

Recently, Democrat pollster Douglas Schoen conducted the first extensive survey of the Occupy protesters and, among other things, discovered the following:

Only 15% are actually unemployed, (meaning the other 85% must have union jobs giving them time off to protest). And 98% say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, ...

AND...

With Johnny-Boys "Vendetta Comments" about my posts...if he has $7 he can get one of these...

http://www.partycity.com/product/v+for+vendetta+mask.do

They know the problems; they don't know the solutions. By asking for demands you are asking them for solutions and they don't have them.

Problem- the earlier article I posted on congessional audit of FedReserve. 27 Trillion in loans to save banks around the world. 550 billion for US banks was approved by congress. That's quite a large discrepancy in numbers .. yet because the Fed is private no laws were broke. How do you solve that? That's a lot of money leaving the country and with the instability in Europe banking it was risky.

Problem - we bailout large corporations who then (surprise!) give large sums in bonuses to execs. Because of contracts they think this is perfectly OK, most of us agree it is not. Solution? I dunno. Personally I'd let them fail. It's Capitalism! Someone would replace them, they just add to the cost of everything with the speculation anyway (silly rant).

Protesting problems and not knowing the solution does not mean there is no reason to protest.

Problem - too much corporate money influencing elections and therefore laws. Solution? I dunno. But I can see why they are upset.

Problem - cheap labor used overseas to keep profits high while unemployment here soars. Solution? Change import laws and labor laws? .. but corporate put up a lot of money to get who they want in the places they are, so not going to happen.

Problem - a government that is so stuck on being in control that there is no control and no progress. Solution? Replace them .. but how is that going to go over for a talking point when news is contolled by corporate who also funded their campaigns? That's why you see the silly coverage of something that a lot of people feel strongly about.

Problem - BofA donates $45 million to NYPD shortly after the pepper spray fiasco, then starts $5 fee for debit cards. Does not look good to avg Joe.

Lots of problems that have gone on too long and now solutions are very hard. If you have the solution to any of these problems, please speak up. Or even if you think they are not problems .. explain.

The only problem, in my opinion, is government.
It does what it's not supposed to do. (constitutionally)
The politicians we've had for the past 100+ years, actually think they're smarter than the founding fathers. You know...the guys that actually invented the United States.
These arrogant fools have had their way, & we pay. AND we re-elect them!!!

They have planned our economy since Woodrow Wilson. Take a look at economic charts before & after Wilson (& the Fed) It's pretty dramatic. Before Wilson, the dollar was actually gaining in value. After the Federal Reserve it has lost 98% of it's value.

Want to put up a fence in YOUR yard...you need a permit. (permission)

Want to cut hair? You need a license. (please don't come back with..."we gotta make sure you can do it.") Someone who can't won't be in business long.

Want to get married? You need a license. WTF???

If the gov. thinks it knows what the best use of YOUR land is...they can take it!

Want to renounce your citizenship? The gov. is not allowing that anymore. If you can get away with it, it will cost you 50% of your assets. (compliments of Barney Frank added to a military bill)

Want to eat unhealthy? There's a tax on that.

Want to drill a well on YOUR property for water? You need a permit.

I can go on & on. THIS IS NOT the United States that it started out to be.

We are living under the illusion of freedom. I have since woke up...

Gdaddy is now my source for ...sex.

I think his post is a record for here, unless you count those porn posts.

Just a 'casual' observation.

Maybe the we get a snowfall like last winter. The first one was 100 cm. (close to or over 5 feet).

I think the tents are done at that point, and they better soon move off the ice or they will wake up frozen into the dirt. LOL. Casually of course.

There were porn posts? Dang, I missed 'em!

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Create the law Thursday afternoon and start enforcing Friday at 3 AM.
http://news.yahoo.com/police-arrest-29-occupy-nashville-protesters-capitol-plaza-163045782.html

I laughed out loud when I read how the Commisioner responded to the arrests at the jail..
at least one person involved had some common sense.

Greenest state in the land of the free. Not any more I guess.

Looks like TN has about 75 more state troopers than it really needs.

I agree Mick, we have seriously strayed and continue to do so. I guess that is part of the protest purpose also. Things are not as they should be, but again; if I asked you for demands (solutions) would you have them? Realistically? Because if you said repeal everything back to Wilson you'd be on Fox Noose quicker than you can blink, being ridiculed like the OWS is.

Maybe that explains a lot. We are so far off track that the solution is going to sound silly.

FWIW rubberball103, they tried again the next night, too, and the commissioner of the jail again shot them down, releasing everybody (with a ticket this time). He said they have no legal right to change the park law like they did. The comissioner is actually the night judge for the jail.

I know many people who say, "I like Ron Paul, BUT...when he says ".......[fill in the blanks]"
Ron Paul is SO constitutional it isn't funny. The points, of his, that people disagree with, are the very reason we have the problems today. "I think we should abide by the constitution...BUT"....

It either is or it isn't. When we impose our own wishes upon it, we lose the country that was invented by the founding fathers. We, like the politicians, think we know better. Or that they must have forgotten something.

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Want to put up a fence in YOUR yard...you need a permit. (permission)

Because your fence doesn't just impact your property but your neighbor's property as well.

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Want to cut hair? You need a license. (please don't come back with..."we gotta make sure you can do it.")

Well, that is exactly what you have to come back with. Someone who doesn't know how to do it properly can spread disease, and cause harm with dangerous chemicals that are used by the profession. By your logic we shouldn't license Physicians and Lawyers, because, well, the bad ones will not get enough customers to stay in business. Quite often the professional associations lobby for regulation to keep amatuers and quacks from giving the whole profession a black eye.

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Want to get married? You need a license. WTF???

Probably has something to do with the states not wanting Omar to marry off his 8 year old daughter to a 60 year old geezer for monetary consideration. At least it keeps a couple of 12 year olds from getting married to each other.

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If the gov. thinks it knows what the best use of YOUR land is...they can take it!

Actually the founders wrote that into the Constituion....in an amendment at least. Its called eminent domain.

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Want to drill a well on YOUR property for water? You need a permit.

As well you should. You share the water table with your neighbors. If you or the person you hire doesn't do it properly you can contaminant the water table for miles around. Folks who drill wells usually also need septic tanks and septic disposal fields for sewage. Place the well improperly in relation to the various componenets of your onsite sewage system and you contaminate the water table for everyone.

The reason that the government got involved in regulating most of this stuff is they saw the harm that was done when it was not regulated and stepped in to take control and maintain standards. Notice also that most of the regulatory action cited is the province and responsibility of the state and local governement, not the federal government, and pretty much all 50 states have developed codes to regulate these activies. It is pretty telling that 50 different state governments came up with the same or similar regulations.

For the record, I've spent the majority of my adult working years working for an agency that regulates onsite sewage, food service to the public, drilling of wells for drinking water, disposal of dead bodies, what you can do with your garbage, how your plumbing needs to be installed, places that take care of your kids, tatoo parlors, public swimming pools, exposure to second hand smoke, and yes, facilities that cut hair. There is no way that I would advocate total freedom to do whatever you want in any of these areas. Your hair would curl if you saw some of the things I've seen people try to do....And I get to see behind the curtain because of my regulatory authority, John Q. Public doesn't get to see the incompetence and lack of concern for consequences to others that I get to see.

I can only speak for what I know. Septic systems are suppose to perk 'up', not leach down. It can leach down to a water table 150' from the well just as easily.

And states tend to accept 'national' regulations. Like the building code. Hurricane clips are required in Michigan and Illinois. Really? When was the last hurricane? We have tornadoes, and those clips will just make the top plate go with the rest of the roof. Make 'em strap it from roof to foundation if anything. But then again, my shed (nailed properly) has survived the same 30+ years of storms as the house with the national building code requirements.

Sometimes it's just overdone.
Don't even get me started on stuff like 'fire-rated plywood'. I've had to stand face-to-face with Fire Chiefs and tell them I have to use it because of 'national codes' (even though he begged me not to because it risks lives of firemen).

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I can only speak for what I know. Septic systems are suppose to perk 'up', not leach down. It can leach down to a water table 150' from the well just as easily.

I've only been in Public Health for 30 years so its nice to be educated by someone who really knows. Septic systems are designed to perculate down into the soil so that by the time effuent from the tank reach the water table, all of the bacteria are left in the soil and the water reaching the water table is pure. The problem with the well, is the fool who drills in a manner that allows the effluent to run straight down to the water table without perculating through the soil.

I've actually written local codes in Mobile, AL, and the process is one of taking the international standards and adapting them. Local code officials can agree to strike anything from the code that has not already been proven to be a health and safety hazard. Absolutely surreal hearing your story about the Fire Chief because the International Code Council had to change some of their voting rules this past year because the firefighters were running bus loads of people to the code meeting to vote in things they wanted. Last year they pushed through a code that required all buildings, including private homes to have sprinkler systems.

I'll also say that at least in this jurisdiction, we sit down with all of the players (homebuilders, plumbers, septic tank installers, etc) and get them to bless off on code changes before we submit them for adoption to the County Commission and City Council.

Keith...
You should run for congress. You'd fit right in.

Wow, sprinklers in residential?? That's ridiculous. Actually just another point made about regulations. I'm sure you know fire-rated plywood chars before burning (reducing it's strength) so the fire marshall was asking me to not actually install it between units on a multi dwelling complex. His worry was that fireman walk across a roof with shingles still intact and fall thru to a fire below. Made sense to me. I still put it in to meet code.

If septic seeps down, why all the sand on top of the system? I'm quite sure up here they count on it to perk up. Like I said, they have designed systems that pump the liquid to the field, spray it into the sand to perk up, and boast it will work above any soil. Even paved, in theory. Their sales point, not mine, and it is an accepted system here. How does it seep into frozen ground? We get 4' frost here. Septic filds are nowhere near that deep.

They required the above mentioned system near a true artesian well that they had trouble capping only 60' down, BTW.

I'm not an engineer, just a builder trying to comply with all the codes. I'll research fields up here just because of your link.

OK. 90% of the septic fields I put in were 'mound' type fields. This puts the field above the surrounding area, surrounded by sand. The liquid soaks into the sand and disperses. I'm sure some of it soaks 'down' as well as up and out. The theory here is that it disperses (since it is often hard clay and the sand mound lets it spread out and evaporate up while the clay holds it from seeping down). Different areas different issues.
Still, if it *does* seep down, is distance really an issue?
And the 'fool who does the well' is a totally different guy than the guy who does the septic field. At least up here it is. Well guy has a drill truck. Septic is more an excavation guy with heavy equipment.

After rereading I get your issue with well guys drilling in such a way septic could drain down. I see that problem now. Guess licensing doesn't matter much if they still do the work like that.

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Keith...
You should run for congress. You'd fit right in.

One thing for sure you will never see and that is someone run for office on a platform of doing away with permits for cutting hair, or putting up a fence, or drilling a well, or doing away with marriage licenses and it isn't because the people who run government are subverting the constitution. It is like that because that is what the majority of people want. If that were not so, then some lunatic could run on an anarchy platform and get elected tomorrow because everyone would vote for him.

WANT TO BE AN ANARCHIST FOR THE NEXT OCCUPY "RIOT"...!!??...

GOSH, HOW CHEAP TO PERHAPS EVEN END UP WITH A "FREE" 42" TV OR GUCCI BAG?

http://www.partycity.com/product/v+for+vendetta+mask.do

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After rereading I get your issue with well guys drilling in such a way septic could drain down. I see that problem now. Guess licensing doesn't matter much if they still do the work like that.

I do business in 5 states. In MD, you must be licensed.
In my field, you are either licensed through the home remodeling association or work with a well driller's license. In the test given by the state to get your license, NOT ONE SINGLE QUESTION is asked about the trade. Not one! The questions all pertain to regulations, payroll & taxes. So you really don't have to know how to do what you do, you just need to have enough money to get the license & know where to send the taxes & how much to send. So much for licensing...

Inspectors??? They have their heads so far up their ass, they're looking out their eyes a 2nd time. (but I think they're licensed to do that)

Same with the license test here in MI.

That does sound bizarre to me. As I mentioned in another thread, I'm an Enrolled Agent and my test was what you would think it should be, taxes, taxes and more taxes plus all the legal stuff associated with them.

Since you guys are describing things I know squat about all I can say is the only way to change things is to get active in local politics. Become part of the local establishment, make your voice heard where it counts.

Keith, thank you for posting your detailed answers because I was going to make the exact same points but you did it much better than I would have.

Mick and RHarv all you guys are describing are the normal problems associated with democracy and it goes to the most often quoted cliche there is:

Democracy is the worst form of government ever created except for everything else.

This is a cliche because it's true. Any other system leads to the collapse of civilization. All any of us can do is swallow hard and become part of the system and work hard on these issues that are important to you personally and try to change things.

To become part of a disorganized mob living in tents with no clear objectives is just a complete waste of time.

Bob

Bob

I notice nobody commented on a solution to a single one of the problems I posted, or how by asking OWS for demands you are asking them for solutions. I don't think protesting what you know is wrong is a waste of time. Even if you don't have the answers.

Vietnam war solution was easy (get out), racial issues were easy (get rid of inequality).
Banking, investment and fed reserve are very complex to ask the average joe to figure out how to fix. You're a numbers guy Bob, what's the solution?
While yer at it, solve the euro crisis for us.

Look up how many people were killed, tortured, sent away to "re-education camps" because the US pulled out of Vietnam.

From Stalin thru Mao, Che, Castro, N. Korea and then Vietnam, there are millions of dead human beings as a result of their communist enlightenment.

As Stalin himself once glibly quipped about it, "One death is a murder, a million dead is a statistic."

A system that has failed miserably every time it has been tried.

No. Thanks.

--Mac

People should take care of people. After that, for those who have no people, the government, or the Big People, should be there for them. My people will assemble, participate in the production of a 'feast', and talk of days gone by this sunny November afternoon. Plus music. About a dozen family, from 86 to 2.

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Inspectors??? They have their heads so far up their ass, they're looking out their eyes a 2nd time. (but I think they're licensed to do that)

Mick,
I pegged you for being a smarter guy then this statement portrays. I'm an ICC Certified Inspector in all trades. I'm also specifically Licensed in Florida & North Carolina. Making general statements such as this are ignorant. I assure you that my head is not up my butt and that I can build what i inspect. There are many like me. There are also many that are not.

As far as the International Code Council.We do not have a National Code. The ICC writes a "model" Code in order to help bring a little consistency in the overall format. ICC code is a best case everything be equal kind of Code. A Building Code is adopted by individual States. If your State has adopted the ICC Code in it's entirety without looking at things specific to your State, and amending it accordingly, that is their fault. Not the ICC.It was never meant to be adopted in it's entirety.It's a model. That's all.

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As Stalin himself once glibly quipped about it, "One death is a murder, a million dead is a statistic."

A system that has failed miserably every time it has been tried.

No. Thanks.

--Mac

obviously, you are describing abortion. the more "civilized" term that is widely accepted is "family planning" not "murder." stalin pales by comparison. we "civilized" folks out-kill the bad guys each year! just another "statistic" unfortunately.

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I notice nobody commented on a solution to a single one of the problems I posted, or how by asking OWS for demands you are asking them for solutions. I don't think protesting what you know is wrong is a waste of time. Even if you don't have the answers.

You're a numbers guy Bob, what's the solution?
While yer at it, solve the euro crisis for us.

Whew, you want me to solve this crises, eh? Sure, no problem at all. I wonder what's the limit of a post size on this forum. 1,000 words? 10,000 words? Ok, a few thoughts with no embellishment and I'll do the easy ones first.

Lobbists. I have no problem with them. They are democracy in action, same with corporate funding of campaigns. What people fail to realize is corps are us. They're all publicly traded companies and most of us are shareholders. A board of directors is a democracy and they are heavily regulated by the SEC. A lot of us work for them or we like you I think, work under the regs of a trade association. When a corp lobbies congress it's on behalf of their shareholders and employees to help them get more work, basically and it's the same for the trades and unions as well. Every single organization in this country has lobbyists and that's a good thing imho. It's no different than the old cliche about our representitavies. We hate all of them except our own.

Exec bonuses. High level execs are no different than sports stars. These guys are rainmakers, financial wizards. a turn around specialist, whatever. They get the money they do because of the open market just kike ARod or Kobe Bryant and yes they all have contracts. This country is based on contract law, it's the fundamental principle of who we are. Congress, the president or the agencies can't simply say contract law is null and void just because they think someone is making too much money.

The real estate markets that's at the root of our current situation. I can't talk about this without getting political and that may start a mud throwing war and stop this thread. All I'll say is it's Congress that started it by forcing the big banks and I mean force them to make loans they didn't want to make. They fought it tooth and nail in congressional hearings and certain representatives at those hearings called them racists basically, accusing them of redlining neighborhoods by denying loans to poor people of color. I'm not naming names here, research it yourself. The protestors should be marching in front of the White House and Congress for not prosecuting the ones who are really responsible for this but unfortunately those protesters and most of the public at large are not numbers people like me and don't pay attention to this stuff enough to have any idea about that. The protesters and maybe you as well don't understand who caused this and think they're protesting certain things but they're barking up the wrong tree.

Companies outsourcing jobs overseas, free trade and all that. All I can say is when you shop for anything more expensive than a can of soup do you price it on the internet? Check how much Amazon sells it for with no tax and free shipping? The only reason companies lobbied to outsource is if they didn't they would go out of business, simple as that. You, me and all of us will cut their throats to save ten bucks on a thousand dollar item and nobody cares where it's made. Period. Ask anybody who rails about lost American jobs to China, India, Korea, wherever. Ask them where do they shop and how do they shop? It's all about the price and that's it, end of story. You Rharv and I mean that literally, have to look in the mirror and really think about that before you moan about jobs being outsourced. You're a tradesman and I'm sure you get your tools and supplies at the usual suspect big stores and you have to get the best price in order for you to be competitive if you're bidding on a job. Matching everybody eles's price is the only thing that allows these companies to survive, otherwise their pricies will be a few percent too high and that's all it takes when virtually anybody with a computer price shops them to death. Walmart has been called China's US marketing arm and it's mostly true but has that hurt their business any? No, because the prices are good. There is nothing else but the price, the price and oh yeah, the price.

Last and certainly not least is your point about the Fed. I have no idea about that and don't know if what you said is actually true or not and even if it is, that's way above my pay grade. I would like GDaddy to comment on this one because he knows more about that than I do I suspect but if he's smart and I know he is, he may not want to open that can of worms.

Jeesh, I'm surprised I managed to keep it this brief...

Bob

In TimHortonstan, only people can give donations to political parties, corporations are not allowed to donate. Up to $99 bucks, you don't get on the disclosure list. That's per year. You get 2/3's of it back on your tax form. Donate $100, get $66.

We don't have 1/100 of the lobby types. Not our style so much. A bit goes on.

The Federal Parties used to get so much cash allowance per vote they got. That is going away this term, along with the GUN REGISTRY. Good riddance...as if I would comply. LOL.

IF we could change one thing I'd vote for politicians to have to promise to repeal one law each for every year in office. This nonsense that you get elected to pass some new law like anyone with a cane must have a flashing light near the bottom so a guy named Ray does not trip over it in a dark theatre like happened to his brother who died and we name the law after him. Dick4brains law. Stop, it hurts.

No texting on Android phones while flying blackhawk helicopters, unless it's Easter Monday in the former Ukraine. Ha.

Thanks Bob, I appreciate you accepting the challenge. I can see your points in a way.
However -

Quote:

When a corp lobbies congress it's on behalf of their shareholders and employees to help them get more work, basically and it's the same for the trades and unions as well.

The $$ amount has gotten out of hand with this. $$ is making laws now for profits (not the good of the country). It's also (in my mind) why noboby is being procesuted for some of the fraud that took place.

Bonuses; once a bailout was needed the contracts are a just technical point to justify it. Fundamentally it was wrong. I wouldn't have accepted them and they shouldn't either. I'm voting for a new mayor that is not accepting a penny for the job. Character is still a viable assett, just not common. There is no 'public sevice' anymore; it's a very profitable career.

Please don't judge my personal decisions on trade and purchasing without knowing. I do my best to consider these aspects when I do business and make purchases. I am rarely the cheapest bid on a job, but you get what you pay for. My clients know this and decide whether to use me or not. I lose a lot of jobs due to price, but also have quite a few return customers because of it. The mirror does not scare me.

.. and yes, there should be prosecution on some of this. The fact that there isn't, is one of the scariest aspects of our current state in my opinion. Banks are not faultless in this; they may have been told to make these loans, but repackaging them and selling them was fraudulent. They are not the victim in this. They perpetuated a lot of it.

As for the Fed; that link was from the senate's .gov site on the first ever audit of the Fed, I think it's trustworthy. That report has been up for quite a while. I'm sure they noticed.

Banks can borrow from the Fed at a fraction of a percent right now, and buy (debt)bonds that pay a couple percent. Why NOT do this? Its guaranteed money. Why loan to a startup when you can borrow 10 million, make 12 million and have to pay back under 11? Just made over a million with no risk. I'll take 300 million please. And another 300 mllion next month.

Anyway, every one of your points still shows things are very wrong with how the country is run right now. You spread the blame, justified some of it, but gave no solutions.
OWS is simply a bunch of people shouting out to point that out. They don't have the solution (just like each of your points did not offer a solution). It still doesn't mean they are wrong for pointing out the problems. The answers are very complicated.
THAT is what I wanted to address. Everyone says "What are your demands??" They don't have demands because they don't have the solution. They just know things are very screwed up right now with no solution in sight. I happen to agree.

I do agree Bob, the average shopper is perpetuating the loss of jobs. Some of that is economically caused; simply no money to do otherwise. It's one of the 'catch-22' issues OWS brings up, but again doesn't have a solution to.
When Walmart is one of the biggest employers, yet doesn't pay enough to shop anywhere but discount places, of course this perpetuates things. Government should be helping this problem, not this corporation.

But the corporation can afford lobbyist and the employees can't. See the problem here?

rharv,

I don’t have any answers either, … just like the OWS folks.

There are, however, a few things I’m SURE of. ……Crippling businesses isn’t the answer!

Socialism/communism isn’t the answer! Stealing everything from the rich and giving it all to the poor will have a very short term benefit. After that, … we all starve together.

That’s a piss poor solution!

Who were our founding fathers? The ones who wrote our Constitution? Who led our troops in the Revolution?

They were the wealthy!!!!!!!! ……………………Oops! ………………… Did I say that out loud? If we kill the goose that lays the golden egg, …… then we also trample on the egg and we all get to marinate in the stench.

Class warfare isn’t the answer.

I don't think you can compare the rich back then with the rich today. I would also guess that in those days, morals and responsibility were wider spread. Rharv has nailed it, the problems are there for everyone who wants to look to see, the solutions are much more complex. Today is far too complex for old adages like socialism, communism and capitalism. Life's not a hit parade of political genres.

in the medical profession, there is a commonly stated goal: "First, do no harm"

They understand that when a body is compromised by illness or trauma that the goal is to help it heal, not traumatize it further.

Would it be responsible for a doctor who knows there's a problem but doesn't have a solution, to start plugging up arteries or lopping off limbs to see what happens? Of course not... but that's approximately what protesters who purposefully obstruct business are doing to an already traumatized economy

I don't trust such political movements any more than I would trust a doctor who disrupted my bodily functions in order to treat some dread disease.

That doesn't mean I like the disease, it just means I have more faith in the body's ability to heal itself than I have in the intervention of people who have an agenda that doesn't necessarily include my recovery

The fact that so few people who are interviewed at these rallies have a clue what they are protesting is a red flag to me. It suggests that somebody with an agenda is trying to mobilize the masses through generic discontent in order to create destabilization

Consider what I just said in light of this 1985 interview with an ex KGB agent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk

regarding the political aspect of this discussion:

People don't change when they are comfortable. They will barely seek change when they are uncomfortable. It isn't until people are in the middle of chaos that a whole society becomes willing to risk large scale change. Historically, revolutionaries and terrorists have used chaos and terror specifically to incite change.

Now, once you create widespread fear, discomfort and distrust, it is easy to replace the status quo with something else... a drowning man will grasp and hold onto anything he thinks might save him. Desperation doesn't differentiate between a floating log and an alligator

THAT is why the discussion of Capitalism vs Socialism keeps showing up. This experiment has been done before, at the turn of the century. Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.

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in the medical profession, there is a commonly stated goal: "First, do no harm"They understand that when a body is compromised by illness or trauma that the goal is to help it heal, not traumatize it further.
Would it be responsible for a doctor who knows there's a problem but doesn't have a solution, to start plugging up arteries or lopping off limbs to see what happens?
f course not... but that's approximately what protesters who purposefully obstruct business are doing to an already traumatized economy

What a nice analogy Pat

Alyn

I think that must have been before the medical profession morphed into an industry. Although it is still true for many traditional or natural healing doctors.

I recall reading a news story about how the powers that be removed the Hippocratic Oath from use and it is no longer part of the medical profession anymore...

I take a break and go to see a movie and this thread runs off and hides without me. Good discussion.

Rharv the "solution" everybody is making a big deal of is simple time. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the system that time won't fix as long as government stays the **** out of it. Many, many real estate pros and economists have been saying for several years now just let the properties go, put them on the market and that's it. The market can't heal itself until this happens but no, it's one lame "bailout" after another, the latest one is the refi thing. Shaving a few points off your rate isn't going to help the fact that your house is 50, 100, even 200 grand underwater depending on what part of the country you're in. Take the poison pill and move on. Trying to manage a free market just prolongs the agony for everyone.

Bonuses and contracts. Look, I know it looks bad to a lot of folks but just because a high level exec doesn't have the glamour of a sports star doesn't make the underlying principle any different. The guy who went to work for Goldman Sachs was recruited away from some other big institution just like LeBron James was. No difference at all. The guy was already making 10-20 mil and accepted another offer, simple as that. When the crap hit the fan, he still has his contract and still legally deserves to get paid. That's it. Your point about illegal activities is of course perfectly valid. If that same exec did illegal stuff then yes he should be prosecuted and some of them are right now but if the guy works for a division of the bank that has nothing whatever to do with all this, shouldn't his contract be honored and what does that say about our legal system if Congress passed some special laws that voids his contract? One further point on prosecutions and it's just my opinion. The administration is treading very carefully about prosecutions because what's these bank execs defense going to be? All the crap they were forced to swallow by politicians of a certain party and it would all come out at a highly publicized trial. That's my point about the protesters being in the wrong place.

Wall Street prosecutions are happening now, just look at that big insider trading case a few weeks ago. I agree some of those mortgages were packaged up and illegally sold as grade A paper when they clearly were not but that's an entirely different point from the banks being forced to do those mortgages in the first place.

Political pressure is the cause of all this hence my point about simply keeping government out of the markeplace and this will work itself out. That's the solution and the lesson for the future but these protesters are brain dead, they don't have any clue about all this. Using the tax code and legislation for social engineering never works.

There are about 250,000 jobs going begging right now because there's nobody with the technical education and skills for them and those companies are asking for more of those special work visas to bring in skilled immigrants to fill them. A lot of our unemployment rate is because of yes, government student loans for courses that have no chance of providing a student with a decent job. Liberal arts, psyche, and all of those "underwater basket weaving" type courses won't cut it in the job market. Millions of completely unskilled illegals are clogging up the system as well but that's a whole other discussion.

Government intervention is the problem across the board here, congress's footprints are all over this crisis and yes both parties are involved but its still skewed maybe 70-80% to one side.

Bob

I'll agree (obviously) communism and socialism is not the answer. I also will state I do NOT agree with all the things you are hearing about the movement. There is a point being missed, I guess regarding the whole 99% thing. That is the 99% no longer control have an equal say in the government. As long as this is the case things will not change over time. They will continue in the same direction they have. Money is running it IMO.

I'm glad some people now get my point about the solution not being easy, and by asking for demands you are asking for solutions.

As for the bonuses; if my contract says I get a bonus if the bank makes X profit, then that profit is caused by a bailout (meaning I did not make the profit) the bonus should be void. Whether it's in the contract or not the reason for it was not the priginal intent. And yes, I DO think that even if Joe X had nothing to do with the screw-ups, but works for a company that did, he should be included in that exclusion. Had they NOT been beailed out there would have been no bonus; they would have been unemployed. Bailing them out does not constitue a job well done.

I will also agree they should be protesting government, but that will get you in prison real quick, government has a way of protecting itself, so instead they are protesting those they feel are running the government. I can see this course of action and the reasoning they use. I don't want Buffet to have to give me money (or anybody else) except to pay their fair share of taxes (an argument we should avoid as I'm sure we all have our opinion on this) and stay the heck out of government. His vote should mean no more power than mine. Business should be able to be profitable under existing law, not need special laws to help it along or give it an edge.
I use Buffet name here only because it is well know, I actually like his stance on a lot of this. If he did indeed say government employees should have the same laws as everyone else I like that; term limits, it IS suppose to be public service afterall, not a profitable career. It needs to pay well enough to get good people in there, but that's about it.

I got interrupted during this, so it may not be as clear as I intended.
I also agree class warfare isn't the answer. I have no problem with business being profitable, and hope mine is. There is a widening gap, however, that draws my attention, and it is growing in both directions. The rich getting richer is not a problem. The poor getting poorer is. We should all be growing as a society and that isn't what's been happening. The burden of excessive number of poor is what is bringing out the socialist attitudes in a lot of people. Just a thought.
The whole 'get a job and get off welfare' is not easy for a lot of people that really do want to do this. This movement isn't being brought about by people who want welfare, it's mostly people who want a job. Regardless of who Faux news trots out as an example.

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As for the bonuses; if my contract says I get a bonus if the bank makes X profit, then that profit is caused by a bailout (meaning I did not make the profit) the bonus should be void. Whether it's in the contract or not the reason for it was not the priginal intent. And yes, I DO think that even if Joe X had nothing to do with the screw-ups, but works for a company that did, he should be included in that exclusion. Had they NOT been beailed out there would have been no bonus; they would have been unemployed. Bailing them out does not constitue a job well done.

Still missing the big picture here, Bob. The LA Dodgers are a complete mess right now with the McCourt's divorce, the bankruptcy, the team being run by a league appointed adminstrator. They're hemmoraging money, no profits there. The players however are all under contract and still being paid. That principle is part of the bedrock of labor contract law. The only way to void those contracts is by the business entity going completely under in federal bankruptcy court, then the BK trustee can void everything including those contracts. Short of that, no way. Here's where certain political parties are being hoist on their own pitard. Who's one of the absolute biggest contributors to the party? Labor unions. Who's behind labor contracts including the sports stars and bank execs? Labor unions even though of course bank execs are part of management not labor, it's the same underlying contract law that applies to both. Can't change one without voiding the other.

I think you mentioned earlier you thought the bailouts themselves were wrong. That's where the problem lies. Don't bail them out and then they do go under like Enron did and then of course, no bonuses. Get the government involved and there you are. Can't have it both ways. For me at least I have to accept the word of two administrations one Republican and one Democrat that TARP was necessary. Economists and experts from both admin's said the same thing and who are we to dispute that? I left my PhD in economics in my other car, sorry. Beyond that though, enough is enough already.

A point about lobbyists. You mentioned Walmart has their lobby but what about the employees. You can’t look at Walmart in a vacuum. They’re not the only lobby. All sides are being represented by very deep pocket lobbyists and their organizations backing them up. Unions have been lobbying congress for years about getting Walmart unionized. Walmart contends that would be the end of their price advantage. Both sides are fairly represented by lobbyists. This notion of Representatives and Senators being bought and paid for by lobbyists is complete bs in my opinion. Lobbyists are just another extension of democracy at work. The defense contractors lobby vs the green energy lobby vs the big oil lobby vs the hog farmers lobby vs the auto makers lobby vs, vs, vs whatever lobby. George Soros and the Koch brothers are both mega billionaires, both actively support their respective causes on each side of the political spectrum. The right says Soros buys left wing politicians and the left says the Koch brothers buys right wing politicians. Everybody has their advocates and it all evens out in the long run. What it boils down to is the political character of each individual in congress and the White House. They’re going to do what they’re going to do according to their own moral political thinking. I’m certainly on one side of this but I do give the other side credit for their beliefs even though I disagree with them.

Nobody is bought and paid for. If a right wing lobbyist decides to give a million dollars to Barney Frank is that going to change his vote on a right wing issue? Of course not. I’ve very cynical but I still give these people more credit than that. Congressman Frank believes what he believes and he will vote that way and if his constituents don't like it they can vote him out.

This is no different than our adversarial legal system. The prosecution and defense have the legal obligation to tear the other side to shreads within the rules of evidence and an impartial observer like a jury or voters wade through it all and act accordingly. Of course it’s not perfect but it’s what we have.

Bob

Bob, I agree we should keep government out of the marketplace (in both directions), but not so sure this is all going to work itself out if there is no change. We have a pretty serious debt right now and very little to trade for it.

250,000 jobs sounds like a large number until you compare it to the unemployment number. If every job was filled it wouldn't make much of a dent. My personal take on this is that we actually make too little product and increase the price by trading the little we do make until it's value is dimished. A society based on service and trading doesn't have much of a foundation. Consumerism can't drive capitalism without product.

Take something with a value of X and trade it (repeatedly) until you suck 3X out of it and you have sucked the value out of the product. That's pretty much what happened to our economy. Repackaging and reselling those things eventually sucked the value out, so at that point my sympathy with those involved is also diminished. There; diminished! Now's it's a musical thread again.

Quote:

...so at that point my sympathy with those involved is also diminished. There; diminished! Now's it's a musical thread again.

I've been accused of operating at a diminished capacity for years and this thread isn't helping my image any.

Bob

Thanks for the discussion, and to the mods for allowing it. It has remained very civil, which says a lot for the community here.

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Thanks for the discussion, and to the mods for allowing it. It has remained very civil, which says a lot for the community here.

this is a better than average group when it comes to discussing controversial topics

Clinton had some cool ideas here recently -
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-tic...-222914518.html

Sorry Bob. Not cool ideas at all. They sound nice but...

"Back to Work" hinges on a seemingly radical premise, as you write: "Government doesn't always mess everything up. It can be worth what you pay for it." How do we combat the popular notion that 'government is not the solution to the problem, it IS the problem', as Ronald Reagan declared.

What almost no one says concerning Civil Service employees is this: It’s almost impossible to fire anyone. How many times have we all heard from parents, relatives or friends, go into civil service, you have great job security and great bene’s just not very exciting work. You become a faceless bureaucrat. The reason government IS the problem is no accountability. They can do whatever they want, screw up terribly and no one gets fired for it. We all know when working for private sector bosses, screw up too much and you’re gone. That’s it.

Setting up some way to accelerate the resolution of the home mortgage crisis should be low-hanging fruit. If we don't do it it's going to be hard to return to a full-employment economy.

Right, this is what they all say. “Setting up some way…”. The problem is there IS NO WAY other than forcing the banks to simply write down the pricinple balance of all those loans to reflect the reality of current market prices. That means unbelievably huge losses that could easily throw them into bankruptcy. That in turn means a several trillion yes trillion, not billion dollar government bailout. THAT is the true 800 pound gorilla and there is no “some way” to fix it. He’s making it sound like oh, just get together, pass some new legislation and it’s all good. No, we’re not all good. Take it down to one house, one mortgage. The house is worth 250K and the mortgage is 350K. The owner can’t make the payments unless the bank simply writes off the 100K and rewrites the mortgage. Just lowering the interest rate a couple points won’t cut it. Multiply that by several million homes and do the math.

Secondly, the only way to get out of it is if we have shared prosperity. You can't have all income gains going to top 1% of us. He's not trying to be anti-wealth. He wants more millionaires and billionaires but he wants a growing middle class most of all and poor people able to work their way into it.

This is another simplistic statement not based in the real world. Great, make poor people have a bigger piece of the pie. There’s no free lunch, the only way to get a bigger piece of the pie is to earn it, actually make the pie. Otherwise what he’s saying here is somehow tax the rich and what, simply give money to the poor? Isn’t that called welfare and isn’t that one of Clinton’s biggest accomplishments, the lowering of welfare payments, setting up work-for-welfare programs to help people get off of it? The question never answered by the tax the rich crowd is precisely what are they going to do with the money and how does that help the poor? Without that answer it’s must another slogan.

It boils down to what is any individual poor person qualified to do? If they have a 8th grade education, no training, what can they do? Maybe work a call center for ten bucks an hour, work at Micky D’s, even be an assistant with me doing basic simple data entry. All that is worth about ten bucks an hour. How is taxing the rich going to change that reality? lets say a highly educated person is forced to work the call center for that ten bucks and we all feel sorry for them, understand that’s a very tough road to go on but somehow taxing the rich is going to open up a better job? Maybe the answer is to raise the wage at the call center to twenty bucks? Ok, what does that do to the costs for the company running the call center or Micky D’s or anyplace else that uses low qualified people? It raises those cost a whole lot so the prices for the final product goes way up and what does that do? Remember Nixon and price controls and Jimmy Carter and 18% inflation?

This is all crap.

You make some good points, however .. his reason on raising taxes is to pick up some of the debt burden, as I read it. Not for welfare.

And for an uneducated person a $10/hour job right now is a big deal. You said it yourself; "the only way to get a bigger piece of the pie is to earn it, actually make the pie" and this is what the *highly educated* people are much more likely to accomplish. Having them take that $10/hour job is not helping anybody. It's aweful hard to "make a bigger pie" when nobody is willing to invest in the little guy right now.

Since you said Clinton's biggest accomplishment was "lowering of welfare payments, setting up work-for-welfare programs to help people" I'm surprised you took some of his statements as you did. More than one of the top 1% have said "I should pay more taxes" and still you argue it.

The housing is a big mess, and I'm sorry to say it but if anyone is taking a hit it is homeowners right now, more than banks. I own a home, didn't participate in the McMansion fad (even though I was a builder and could have for reduced cost), and I have taken a hit. I owned my home outright before this mess occurred and am still paying for the mortgage mess; Lowered value, inability to borrow against properties I own .. How is that the right? Banks won't loan to customers with a proven track record even, without jumping through hoops. I owned my home, easily borrowed against it for another property, paid that off ahead of time, and now can't get a loan for 1/4 the (current) value of the home without all kinds of problems. I tried and got so frustrated I moved my accounts just because of how I was treated. If a good customer, who was never late, with collateral can't get a loan how do I make a bigger piece of pie? Maybe I'm not bootstrappy enough but it sure seems tough right now for the little guy, educated or not.

As for Nixon and Carter; I was young then. I do remember them, but not as well as you do I guess. I know Carter's period didn't go so well economically, and Nixon, well I only know history for him. I was in grade school then, maybe Jr High. Not really up on the economics at the time.

If the federal government stayed within the confines of the Constitution, the problems would not have occurred. The debt would not exist. The need for taxes would be less.

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You make some good points, however .. his reason on raising taxes is to pick up some of the debt burden, as I read it. Not for welfare.

It is extremely difficult to try to make points on a very complex subject like this without including disclaimer after disclaimer in an attempt to clarify what I'm trying to say. "Pick up some of the debt burden." It's been pointed out multiple times on the business networks that if you were to take every cent every rich person has for an entire year, the 1%, it would barely make a dent. Raising their taxes by a few percent means squat except for the very important psychological impact. If people feel they're getting screwed fairly or not they tend to turtle up and do nothing. Whether or not they can afford it is beside the point. When you and I look at our tax returns and see some thousands of dollars going to the IRS, we're not happy but not too worried about how they're spending the money either. But, when you're writing a check for taxes in the amount of say 10 mil even if you're worth 500 mil the thought crosses your mind "I wonder what they're really doing with this money." People like that actually write out and sign the check, "invisible witholdings" doesn't enter into it. If he thinks they're really just wasting it with frivolous spending programs he's not in the mood to give them more regardless of how much he has. The problem is systemic, built into the system of huge government spending and spending and more spending.

I knew it would come to this eventually if someone really wants to discuss this in detail. Start here:

http://www.american.com/archive/2011/august/obamasfollytaxingtherich

Then read the footnotes showing where the quotes came from, find out who these people are and read the links as well. It's deep, it's not easy and it will make your eyes glaze over. It's impossible to make these points without writing a detailed article like this one which is of course not possible in a simple forum like this.

Bob

[qoute]The problem is systemic, built into the system of huge government spending and spending and more spending.
[/qoute]

No argument there. Getting spending down and collections up makes twice the difference (or a ratio of such). I'm sure we can't tax our way out of this, but if it is attacked at both ends it will be resolved quicker.

I will read your link when I have a little time, sounds like it may take a while.

A major loophole in discussions like these is that the dynamics are ignored. Sure you won't solve the problems by taxing the rich in a short time line, it wouldn't make a dent. It will take just as long to solve the problems as it took to make them in the first place. National debts and widespread corruption didn't happen overnight. But you have to start somewhere. The system is broken and needs to be fixed. The opinion of prominent finance gurus doesn't mean much when you consider that they got us into this mess in the first place.
It has been said many times before that society and values as such have degenerated, and this is where the dynamics come in. It takes a long time for people to accept that violence and corruption is a fact of life, just like people living in a war zone come to accept that killing is a way of life. Most people have resigned themselves to the fact that things are only going to get worse, so why bother. It will take a long time to regain a sense of optimism. Unfortunately the democratic roundabout of politics means that any unpopular solutions are going to get voted out in the next election. The situation that Rharv mentioned concerning loans is happening globally. The average guy cannot help but suspect a systematic screwing of the public at large. At first glance it doesn't make sense strangling small business by withholding credit, after all the whole system is built on credit. Unless there is an ultimate motive. It may seem far fetched, but a strategy of global dominance is behind it. Don't laugh, it has happenend nationally on a smaller scale many times before. Also don't knock the Occupy or similar movements, just because they haven't got programmes fixed yet, they are but months old, whereas this systematic oppresion has been going on for hundreds of years. It is also no surprise that their disciples are to be found in all top levels of commerce and politics, and that they defiantly obstruct change at all levels, they have a lot to lose. In the age of information it has become easier to con people, but by the same token it could become easier to educate people. Educated masses are the enemy of the privileged classes, so wise up! and stand up and be counted! It's time to think small again and get back to basics.

And what does the other 99% end up with...maybe...TB...it's spreading among the Atlanta protestors....??

"With wintry weather poised to swoop into the cramped outdoor quarters of Occupy Wall Street protesters, it may not be long before more campers catch what's being called "Zuccotti lung."

That's what demonstrators have dubbed the sickness that seems to be spreading among them at an unpleasantly high rate these days: "It's a real thing," Willie Carey, 28, told the New York Times.

I was a stockbroker/financial planner (huh??)...

Trained in NYC'S Merril-Lynch main hdq's. from Jan through April in 1970..with
passing marks on the NYSE/NASDAQ/OPTIONS/COMMODITIES TRADING!? Huh, again!! Yep!

I could write a book about swaps/shortselling/commodities shinnanigans...

I retired in 1990, having by then been hired by Hornblower & Weeks, Dominick & Dominick,
Paine-Weber/...and a couple more...ending up at John Hancock....

Got to the "top-of-the-cock"...and "threw in the sponge"...

What foibles these "stock jockies" have engendered...it was such a great way to make money...
all the banks "climbed over the Glass-Segal Act"...and without catching their breath
"took the doubt out of "derrivatives"...and set forth as "world-connivers" to promote
their wares to the uninitiated...they should all be shot....except me...and Congress????

"As many as a dozen members of Congress and their aides took part in insider trading based on foreknowledge of market moving information on Capitol Hill, disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff told CNBC in an interview." "Fable of the Day" So much insider trading, it's widespread! We used to call Allan Abramson,
of the WSJ'd Friday editions of "Heard on the Street"...so as we could "front-ride" on upcoming "scoops" he
could report on the forthcoming Friday edition...Awww...come on...everybody do it!!

Only one survivor of my last brokerage house which specialized in short selling...
his name...Jim Chanos...who later went to NYC to set up one of the most successful
Hedge Funds...Jame (a Harvard Grad who had his first job with our firm, Gilford Securities,
called it "Niconus" after one of his Greek Gods..."Nikonus".

Anyway, he's still going strong as a multi-multi-multi-millionaire...what a crystal ball he had.... Huh?
He sure had this "crap shoot" all figured out!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/financial-pro-lost-house-191003606.html

Here's what I see .. the bank loaned him 100% of the money for the home. His thought, like many others was “Wow. I guess if they’re willing to lend it to us it must be O.K.” I know, bad decision on his part, but encouraged by the bank none-the-less.

The bank made interest on that loan from 2003 thru 2009. I'll let Jazzmammal tell me how much that would be. When the guy realized he couldn't afford it the bank then got the home sale for 531k. Who lost in this deal?
Honestly asking. The guy lost a lot, everything he gave the bank for 7 years on a half million loan. I'm sure the bank lost some on the second mortgage (200k) but he must had that equity paid in already to get the second loan.. it gets complicated for a simple guy like me.
The bank then repackaged and sold it of course (crashing markets and any investments the guy had), but we won't even worry about that part for now.

I'm just so glad none of that happened here. We had almost 100% financing, but you can't easily pay more than 25 percent of income to pay loans. My Dad, who's 84 now, worked in the the family Legal Real Estate office for 55 years. In that time he saw less than a dozen foreclosures, and he said over half were under the table gambling debts.

I used to inspect bank foreclosures, about 1 a year, often due to being grow ops.

120 homes on my crescent, all just over 200k here, worth 2 million in Toronto, well maybe 800k. Never had a bad neighbour, no vacancies, no vandalism. Heck my next door neighbour put out 2 old tv's a month ago, and they survived halloween. Shocked even me, as a kid I'd have put a sling shot marble right through the picture tubes. But then I was a bad boy.

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Heck my next door neighbour put out 2 old tv's a month ago, and they survived halloween. Shocked even me, as a kid I'd have put a sling shot marble right through the picture tubes. But then I was a bad boy.

and I suspect you still are John.

note to self: don't send John a slingshot for Christmas

Could it really just be that the kids nowadays simply aren't allowed to get their hands on or even build a common slingshot anymore?

In Ireland 100% morgages were standard until the bust. I read somewhere that a new Irish bank, which was formed from the remnants of a defunct bank, is now planning to reintroduce it. Albeit to select customers who have a guarantor in the family who can put up property as security.
If the Occupy movement achieves nothing else, it has given people food for thought, and hopefully they won't believe the fairytales spread by experts any more.

Actually a few years after the slingshot stage and I'd have take the 2 tv's to the garage and got out my voltmeter and my carbon arc furnace that popped dad's fuses and put on an old white lab coat and got out the soldering iron and burnt myself and got 3 shocks. But maybe only the speakers worked but I'd have had them under some porch hooked up to the little amp and yelled in the mic to scare my sister's friends. Ha...until I turned 16 and took up women. Game changer that women thing.

PS. I just checked out the window. Sunny Saturday a.m. 11:30, 4 kids playing street hockey, 3 girls jumping in leaves, and the 2 tv sets are still there. Picture tubes intact, but slowly loosing all the copper components to squirrels. Said squirrels are trying to launch an attack on my bird feeders, nuts. They need the copper.

On the good news front I made so much noise about my 25 year shingles crapping out at 8 years, that I got a refund for the 2003 roof job (2900 bucks) and the new job is costing me that plus 1200 more. For 40 year shingles with the same company and now laminated or some such thing. I'll be long gone before any 40 years. Worm bait.

Besides Ella Fitzgerald said it best, what woman would want a man...you get it.

Watch the language please, Chris. If we let this get a little too political, a little too emotional, the mods will close this thread because it's way off the rules of the forum. You make some valid, thoughtful points keep em coming.

Rharv, that article might as well be me. Exactly the same scenario except I work for a CPA firm and our clients ask us all the time for financial advice. We were telling people to buy a house if they could at the time for the exact same reason this guy said, if you don't the prices will run away from you and you'll be left behind and your family will be renters forever.

My business partner in several RE transactions is a CPA and a very smart guy. He was doing consulting for a large NY RE investment syndicate doing 200 million dollar deals in 2003-2006. They would fly him out for 7-10 days simply to review one of those transactions and he always found something that would save them several hundred grand and they would pay him 20-40 and in one case 70K plus expenses. As I said, he's a very smart guy. I thought I had an "inside line" on how the RE market worked and where it was going. Bottom line we lost 4 houses, that NY company has cut back something like 70% and my partner works for another CPA firm in LA at half the money he was making 5 years ago. The way Carl Richards describes the vibe during that time, looking for properties, the long lines, making offers at full asking price before you get outbid is exactly what happened because I lived it too.

It still boils down to looking at the big global picture here. By that I mean the principles of this country and our capitalist system. The system works, it's been proven for over 200 years and while these problems happen and will happen in the future, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the system yet these protesters know squat about that and somehow want to throw all that away and replace it with what, exactly? They certainly don't know but if we were somehow able to get inside their heads and root around most of us suspect some kind of top down socialistic Marxist ideology is hiding in there.

Just because the insider trading and corruption GDaddy talked about exists, has existed, will continue to exist still doesn't mean poor people with no education, no skills, no training can somehow earn the kind of money they think they are "entitled" to just because the rich fat cats are making the majority of the money. That has nothing to do with it. It's still a free country with a free economy. Regardless of how much the big boys make, if someone has a good college degree or some technical job skills they will be fine in the long run. This isn't the only recession based on a bubble in the history of this country and it won't be the last. Something else to research is the concept of the Business Cycle. Read up on that, it's pretty eye opening.

Bob

http://news.yahoo.com/patriotic-millionaires-beg-supercommittee-higher-taxes-185620525.html

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Patriotic Millionaire Robert Johnson, former chief economist of the U.S Senate banking committee, said that the current economic system is not broken, but it is "working on behalf of those who designed it in their favor."

"America is no longer based on markets and capitalism, instead our economy is designed as 'socialism for the rich' – it is designed to ensure that the wealthiest people take all of the gains, while regular Americans cover any losses,"

Then what he says next gets interesting.

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Could it really just be that the kids nowadays simply aren't allowed to get their hands on or even build a common slingshot anymore?

Very profound my friend.

Later,

Chemistry sets have a certain risk involved to the manufacturer in our suit happy society. Making your own slingshot kinda removes that risk and shows a self sufficiency. I see the point.

Kids have been lowered to Mentos in Pepsi, chemistry-wise.

Right. That's exactly why so many young doctors, computer wiz kids, other highly technical electronic, engineering, other physical sciences are jobs being filled by at least 50% foreign born people in this country. Here in California it's mostly Asian. American kids are not getting the kind of education they need to survive in that world. The same world that our politicians keep talking about btw. Good paying, highly skilled jobs with good benefits. The same politicians never talk about counselling for these kids while they're still in high school that they must, repeat must be taking math, chemistry and other hard sciences if they're going to have any chance at those jobs. Somebody needs to drive some of those 8th grade kids around back of a Chinese restaurant, look in the kitchen and tell them if you don't get your algebra and chem and physics grades up this is your future.

Anybody here read some articles about that high tech city in India? Can't remember the name of it but it's basically a collection of very good high tech schools in a huge enclave surrounded by Indian mud poor poverty. This one area is where most of the Indian high tech people come from and it's the same in various places in the Far East too. We can't keep subsidising via student loans kids getting degrees in subjects that are completely worthless in the open job market. Yes this is a free country and a kid is perfectly free to take whatever crap courses he wants but that doesn't mean taxpayers pay for it.

Switching gears here, on the news this morning is a quote from someone who's part of the Occupy LA crowd downtown who's taken over a BOFA branch. The quote is the bank has stolen from all of us and we're going to stay until they pay it back. My question to anybody here is what exactly has BOFA stolen and how did they steal it? I know some will say hey, it's those mortgages from Countrywide that BOFA bought out and it caused my house in my neighborhood to lose 50 grand in value and that's theft, isn't it? Well even that is not BOFA's fault it's the fault of FannyMae and FreddicMac. Those are the quasi government agencies who were forced by Congress to gurantee all those loans and by extension that flowed through to BOFA and the other banks. This again is very complicated but that's basically it. Then, when those mortgages were packeged up and sold as mortgage backed securities even that isn't the banks fault when people try to say that was fraud because the big ratings agencies Standard & Poor's and Moody's are the ones who gave those loan bundles a grade A rating. A bank isn't allowed to rate their own stuff and just sell it. So, who should those protesters be marching in front of again? I would say Congress, the White House and those ratings agencies.

Bob

Concerning our banking system in general-
I've been told by banking institutions that I cannot have large amouts of cash and make transactions using that cash. I am required to account for the cash when I make a transaction. I literally had a bank manager throw a fit when I tried to deposit 20k cash into an account. He told me I can not make transactions of that amount using cash without accounting for it.
So I am *required* to let banking/investment institutions hold my money. They then make money on it (or lose it at their free will if investing) and charge me fees when I want to use it.
Sounds like a monopoly of our currency to me.

For the record, the money had been withdrawn from various investment accounts (which in itself involved various fees and penalties paid to the institutions) to avoid further loss. And I 'can not' have my own money?? I *have* to have it in an account somewhere? And pay them whatever fees they want to charge .. AND bail them out when they mismanage it. Something is wrong with this picture.

The money is 'safe' in the system now and I'm not all that happy about it. I feel forced to let them make money on my money and charge me to do so. Please explain what I am missing.

You can thank the DEA for the "accountability." The rest is just banking business as usual. For the record, under those same DEA rules you can move amounts of less than $10K without issue. If the bank gives you any guff about that, they're out of line.

Yeah, I know, I ended up moving it to varous accounts in lower amounts (It killed that manager to watch me walk out with the cash).
But hey, at leat I'm contributing to their multi-billion profits this last quarter, so I have that going for me!
And earning almost enough in interest to account for the devaluation of the currency ..

This is not the bank, it's the IRS and it's been on the books for at least 25 years. I could say where have you been but I won't. Much.

It mainly for money laundering by drug dealers and anybody else who does illegal activities for cash. Any cash amount over 10K has to be reported on IRS Form 8300 or the bank is in deep crap. This is not just banks, it's any business who accepts cash payments in one lump sum over 10K. Including you as a home builder/remodeling guy which is why I'm surprised you don't know about it. Someone pays you that much in cash and it's not disclosed you could go to jail. The IRS insists on detailed records so the money can be traced in an audit. I used to manage a new car dealership in the mid 80's and this came up all the time. Some super sharp mob guy comes in with 75 grand in a money clip and wants a new Bimmer. Nope. Those guys had to switch to shady wholesalers who work the auctions and the cash can be more easily hidden but even then the auction is a business and subject to the same rules.

Here's the form and as you can see, it's very detailed.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8300.pdf

Bob

I didn't say I didn't know, just that I thinks it's wrong. The side effect of requiring me to have my money in an instituion allows them a monopoly on the currency and related services. Wasn't that way previously and they managed to make money. Now they make LOTS of money. Don't get me started on DEA .. we'd have another long thread. <grin>

Since the money HAD been legally acquired I thought it would be a simple explanation, as I had the proper paperwork, but when I had to do MORE paperwork (and waste my time to give them my money) it ticked me off. So I went a different route out of spite. I'll probably get audited anyway for it, but not until 7 years from now when the penalties would be most profitable. I've played that game with the IRS before too. I keep good records. You'd like doing my accounting Bob. Everything is there plain as can be.

As I think about this; so a few people did things wrong and now all of us are required to add to the coffers of private corporations to prevent it. Please tell me this solved the drug and money laundering problems.

I see Ryszard posted at the same time. The point of even this little side thing is that banking, our economic system and all of this Wall Street crap is incredibly complex and these so called protesters know absolutely nothing about it. They need some basic old school civics lessons in our constitution and our basic legal system. Nobody teaches that any more. All they think is somebody is getting "too rich" and somehow that's at the expense of the rest of is. Maybe a little but that's the way of human beings. Ever hear of Caveat Emptor? We're responsible for our own stuff, not anybody else.

I have several clients who made wads of cash by flipping houses several years ago and then saw the handwriting on the wall and sold everything. I have other clients who are underwater and really hurting. Who's fault is that? If you happened to buy a nice old Martin guitar at a yard sale for $200, found out it's a rare model worth 9 grand and sold it at an aucton for that amount, does that make you a lying, scheming SOB who took advantage of the poor person who ran the yard sale? That's basically all this is and was. There's winners and losers in every market.

There are probably millions of people you don't hear about and the protesters, lame brains that they are, don't know about either who when the market was hot refi'd their house, took out a 100K, bought a new, black Escalade (black means power and money doncha know), new flat screens, went on vacations and then the market tanked and they're underwater and oh, woe is them, poor baby's, now they're going to lose their home or already have and now they're blaming the banks and marching in downtown LA? Please. Millions more were told by mortgage brokers what they needed to put as income in a basic verification statement for a no doc loan and so blatently lied on the mortgage app. Sure, I make 120 grand a year, no problemo. That's a federal felony too, btw. So if somebody wants to open up all those mortgages thinking they're going to catch those dastardly banks in fraudulent activities need to think twice. Oh, yeah, they are arn't they? Want to know why that isn't being done? It's because members of a certain political party who were running Congress at the time know all about that in detail and don't want to throw all their poor inner city constituents in jail for loan fraud.

It all started with a certain President in the 90's followed by certain members of the House holding hearings talking about how all these hardworking poor people just need a little help from us and they too can have their piece of the American dream and if you mr. banker don't do it, we're going to investigate the crap out of you and charge you with discrimination. This is all in the Congressional record but these protesters can't be bothered to read it. Can't let the facts get in the way of a good squat.

That got the ball rolling and the rest was unintended but totally predictable consequences. And yes I freely admit I'm upset at myself for not catching it at the time. The real "one percenters" were the few who did catch it and tried to warn us but it was like pissing in the wind, nobody listened including me, my CPA friend and his friends in New York.

There's a very high powered attorney I know who was appointed to be a federal judge and took the bench at the beginning of this year. He told me at a party four years ago to not buy this house I was telling him about. He's very blunt and told me I was stupid if I went ahead with it. Did I listen? The market was hot, everybody was making money. When everything tanked and we lost those houses I took it like a man and moved on not yelling and screaming about how I'm somehow a victim in all this. And what really hurts is at the time we really were making the kind of money that justified those loans. All of our stuff was full doc with cash downs and completely legal but we still took a big dump.

What are you going to do? It was fun while it lasted.

Bob

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The side effect of requiring me to have my money in an instituion...

Not sure what you're referring to here. Nobody requires you to keep your money anywhere if you don't want to. It's just it's very awkward to try to buy big ticket items with cash because of having to fill out those forms but you can still do it if you insist. Are you saying you really would rather keep that kind of cash behind a cupboard in your kitchen like my grandparents did? They had a house in Flint and a cabin on Houghton Lake. When my dad went back there around 1975 or so to clear everything out after he had to move them out, he found $2,700 in savings bonds behind the wall. He only had a weekend to do everything before the house was going to be demo'd and he always thought he may have overlooked something.

Bob

Sounds like it worked OK for them if they had a house in Flint, a cabin up north and 2700 in savings he forgot about .. <grin>

Wonder what the odds are of filling out said forms causing IRS audits and other hassles along with the waste of time filling them out initially? I may not be 'forced' to, but they sure make it inconvenient to not give my money to a bank. Possibly hazardous to my finances.
Like I said; I complied, so no worries I guess.

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Wonder what the odds are of filling out said forms causing IRS audits and other hassles along with the waste of time filling them out initially?

Well, that's the whole point, isn't it? If you're the type to do large cash transactions and fill out those forms then sure, that could very easily cause someone to think, hmmm, wonder what he's doing to generate that much cash and has he been reporting it? The good news is there's a three year statute of limitations on most of this tax stuff except outright fraud. That's six years.

Bob

I've had fun in this discussion, Bob, thanks for being such a great sport.

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The point of even this little side thing is that banking, our economic system and all of this Wall Street crap is incredibly complex and these so called protesters know absolutely nothing about it. They need some basic old school civics lessons in our constitution and our basic legal system. Nobody teaches that any more.

if you've only got so many hours in a school day, you've simply GOT to prioritize, doncha know. Should we teach kids about real life and how society functions? Or should we get them angry about the injustices endured by spotted owls?

In a society where plumbing is deemed a lowly profession, and philosophy is deemed an exalted profession, it's just a matter of time before neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

The guy next door who put out those two TV's that lasted about 3 weeks without getting smacked took them to the 'electronics' recycling depot. When I said something to the guy across the street he said what I think I knew:

"They are inside on Facebook and playing Rambo on some video-game. Kids don't go out to play anymore..."

How true.

My 20 yr. old daughter barely comes up for air. She's even worse than not going out, she's in her room. Didn't the Beach Boys do a song about that?

At least I had the decency to blow up most of my stuff in the garage.

My wife hired a personal assistant. The woman's mother had a job in data entry and the family recently came from India. They did not live in a large city, but she told my wife that in every office, in all of their part of India, you spoke ENGLISH only all day. At first it was hard. But NO ONE actually spoke it well in her office. She's been in the country for 5 years now, left my wife's department for accounting and now is 1 year from her (American equiv. CPA). She's been working on that since before she got here.

Imagine kids being told that when they started work, they had to speak Chinese. Right. Riot right there I suppose. Occupy something.

In France they redistributed the wealth. And the 1% lost their heads. Dangerous stuff once the momentum swings. Maybe they should occupy a Betty Crocker factory. They could at least eat cake.

Time to ressurect this thread. I let it die because there was nothing else to talk about without some new developments. Check this out:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/sec-fannie-mae-freddie-mac.html

I had no idea the feds were working on this but I sure was hoping they were. This should make the protesters somewhat happy and validates my point earlier that they've been protesting the wrong places. There's certainly plenty of corruption on Wall Street but there's lots of honest WS exec's, hedge fund managers and bankers who should be able to trust what government agencies say concerning these matters. When they're blatently lied to by these FannyMae and FreddieMac exec's what are they supposed to do when they're being unfairly blamed for this mess? The ratings agencies S&P and Moody's have been unfairly blamed too but what was the source of their information? Yep, mostly these two agencies. Imagine a pyramid where these two agencies are at the top and all the analysis that goes on below them is through the filter of the information they give out. Then go back and research what the Congressional finance commitees were telling these two agencies 5-10 years ago and then get an idea about who's really responsible for this mess.

This new development is great and I hope it's not the last indictments, but merely the first.

Bob