Occupy Wallstreet... and Bs As?

[Joe]

Okay - this is what I find really short-sighted. The majority of people lost their homes because they chose to take on mortgages that they couldn't afford!

It's the job of bankers to determine if a borrower has the realistic ability to repay the loan. These people were suppose to be the professional in the room. When I go to a doctor I don't expect him to give me the test results and have me make the diagnosis. And yet you are blaming people for trusting in banking "professionals" who made incompetent loans.

OK and then now as millions suffer through foreclosure - how many of the bankers that made the criminally negligent loans are serving jail time? No the bankers got bailed out. We were told that we had to bail out the bankers so that they would continue to make loans instead they spent the money on solid gold toilets and prostitutes.

And you are surprised people are angry?

 

[anabeeare]

Just a quick update on the group:

They are arranging a meeting at 7 pm this Friday in a place that has yet to be determined but will be determined on Thursday. They are also meeting in front of the Facultad de Derecho on Friday night.

The facebook group has grown from around 3 people on Sunday to 80-something today (last time I checked). Facebook


The Twitter is getting attention as well. Twitter

May be something for you to occupy yourselves with until dinner. I am going to go and see what it is about.

 

[steveinbsas]

It's the job of bankers to determine if a borrower has the realistic ability to repay the loan. These people were suppose to be the professional in the room. When I go to a doctor I don't expect him to give me the test results and have me make the diagnosis. And yet you are blaming people for trusting in banking "professionals" who made incompetent loans.

OK and then now as millions suffer through foreclosure - how many of the bankers that made the criminally negligent loans are serving jail time? No the bankers got bailed out. We were told that we had to bail out the bankers so that they would continue to make loans instead they spent the money on solid gold toilets and prostitutes.

And you are surprised people are angry?

I think I heard something about the Federal Government telling banks that if they wanted to stay in business, they had to make these loans available...

And weren't the vast majority of these loans bought by Fannie and Freddie (quasi government corporations)...who's CEOs benefited directly from the number of loans made (good or bad) before they were bundled into the mortgage backed securities?

I'm not surprised that people are angry, but perhaps some of that anger is misdirected. They want the government to provide the solution to a problem that the government helped create in the first place.

 

[Traveldiva]

I truly don't care if one's view is to the left or right. The reality is that things here in the US NC are not good and we are not used to bouncing back like in Argentina. I came back after 6 months and I find plenty of closed stores, or closing, friends without benefits or loosing their jobs, etc. Whoever says things here are not going truly bad live in a bubble.

 

[fedecc]

Ive been reading some of the comments here and I have a particular different perspective than most of you.

I read some post saying that traditional politics and parties dont work anymore, that a "new system" should emerge and that this protests could be the first step towards something new. That maybe so, but I think the case of Argentina clearly shows the absolute failure of social protest / social movements politics.

Some of the things many of you say here, a lot of argentines said in 2001 (and still many today). Social movements were "the way". There were even sophisticated political theories that argued how awesome this "new" way of doing politics was, how fast it could produce results by dodging all the institutional barries and talking directly with the political power.

The result you can see for yourselves everyday. The social movements, many of which started with the 2001 protest, kept all the vices of the traditional politics and made them even worst. Blatant corruption, total discretionary assignment of resources, violence, clientelism, etc.

Thats why, even with all their flaws, Im a big supporter of traditional party politics. They are not perfect, but at least they offer some amount of accountability that other ways of doing politics dont offer.

 

[Ries]

Not for hedge funds....They bailed out the banks (which I agree is complete bs)

I myself am a hedge fund manager and trust me, no one's going to bail me out if I go under and I wouldn't expect anyone to bail me out.

You are either pulling our leg, or just ignorant of history.

The US government has repeatedly bailed out hedge funds.

Ever hear of Long Term Capital?
In 1999, the Feds organized and orchestrated a $3.65 Billion dollar bailout of them, when they lost at poker. And back then, that was real money.

Or, more recently, TARP? Some Tarp money went to Hedge Funds to buy "toxic assets".

And quite a big slice of the AIG bailout, again taxpayer money, went to Hedge Funds- the government and the taxpayers, in essence, guaranteed their gamble.

I dont have anything against Hedge Funds- I just think-
A- the Feds should not bail them out- Hedge Funds are high risk investors, and with risk, comes not only the possibility of profit, but the possibility of loss.
B- Hedge Fund management fees are NOT investments- these guys (heck, maybe you too, I dont know) are not reaping $1 Billion dollars a year on the interest gained on their OWN trades- nope, that is "management fees"- what, in any other business would be called a salary. At current rates of interest, there are very few deals that pay much over 5% a year, which would require these Hedge Fund managers to be on the hook for a personal investment of $20 Billion- and they dont, pure and simple. They get insider deals of free gifts of large percentages of everything, and that should be taxed as the income it is, not some mythical capital gain it surely isnt.
C- Hedge Funds should be regulated, so they do not start chain reactions like the Long Term Capital or 2008 crash. This might include registering with the SEC, reasonable limits on short selling and leveraged trading, which can easily run rampant and cause systemic failures, and periodic auditing- for instance, Bernie Madoff appeared to be on the up and up mainly because nobody regulated him or actually audited him.

With current leverage rules, Hedge Funds have the ability to bring down much bigger pieces of the economy than they actually hold in their funds- and with great rewards come great responsibilities.

 

[steveinbsas]

Bernie Madoff appeared to be on the up and up mainly because nobody regulated him or actually audited him.

Bernie was always subject to laws that eventually were enforced.

The SEC was warned about him in 2000 but did nothing...and bankers and hedge fund managers may have even been complicit:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Madof...tml?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

 

[Ries]

I think I heard something about the Federal Government telling banks that if they wanted to stay in business, they had to make these loans available...

And weren't the vast majority of these loans bought by Fannie and Freddie (quasi government corporations)...who's CEOs benefited directly from the number of loans made (good or bad) before they were bundled into the mortgage backed securities?

I'm not surprised that people are angry, but perhaps some of that anger is misdirected. They want the government to provide the solution to a problem that the government helped create in the first place.

I heard something about the Martians landing in Grovers Mill New Jersey.
And it is about as true, unfortunately.

NO bank was forced to make any loan.

The fannie mae regulations that right wingers blame the global financial meltdown on merely said that IF you loaned in any neighborhood, you could not refuse to loan to somebody due to the color of their skin.
What you are referring to is the Community Reinvestment Act, which was passed in 1977. As late as 2006, 85% of all loans were NOT made by institutions that even had to obey this act- yep, only 15% of lenders were even covered by it.
The CRA didnt mandate that anybody make ANY loan- it merely said that banks that received FDIC money, could not discriminate in their lending. The individual banks could, and did decide yay or nay on every single loan. They just were required to make loans to everybody.

As for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CAUSING the crash- not hardly. The big lenders of the bad mortgages were, by far, companies like Countrywide, who would lend to anybody. Thruout the 2000's, Fannie and Freddie lent LESS and LESS to risky lenders, while private mortgage firms lent more and more and more.
But it was the Bush era Deregulation that allowed banks and Wall Street to bundle these bad loans into even worse Credit Default Swaps and similar vaporware, which were "worth" many times the original bad loan amounts.

So, in a sense, you are right- government actions, in the form of deregulation and weak oversight DID cause these problems, but the Occupy Wall Street protesters want the government to fix its earlier errors...

 

[marksoc]

This is going to finish in three possible ways:

1) Capitalism corrects itself by giving back lots of welfare to the middle class, like it did in the last big Depression (the 1930s). Well, back then it created the middle class.

2) People in the US looks for a strong figure that will lead them towards full employment with a nationalistic xenophobic discourse (Sarah Palin?). Corporativism, war for resources. This solution did not worked too well for 1930s Germany, but the US has lots of nuclear weapons. China does too. Shudders.

3) A socialist (state-planning), market socialist ("economic democracy"), social-democratic (subdued capitalism, la lot like solution 1) revolution. Maybe, just maybe.

Or.....

4) After a while recession ends, people are happy to have even the crappiest of jobs, everything goes back to "normal", with an impoverished population, China the new leader of the world, Europe slowly declining, Latin-America (Brazil+Argentina+maybe Chile), India and South East Asia the new centers of cultural and economic power (more cultural in LatAm, more technological-industrial in SEAsia).

 

[dennisr]

Okay - this is what I find really short-sighted. The majority of people lost their homes because they chose to take on mortgages that they couldn't afford! Bankers weren't putting a gun to their heads to force them to do it.

Think there is a little bit more to the equation. Banks, lenders, mangers of all walks of life have a fiduciary duty by law and regulation to do what is ethical and right. Individual and idiots are exempt from*fiduciary things. The banks and lenders made fraudulent loans, having full knowledge the borrower did not qualify. We could argue all day about the idiots that were in over their heads, however, the responsibility and fiduciary duty is and will always be with the lender. That is why they get the big bucks.
That countrywide puke should be in prison doing hard time.