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Wednesday, October 5. 2011Crybabies: This would be a non-story on a busy news weekApparently, most of the protesters are white, middle class kids who somehow got the idea that the world owes them something because they had the remarkable privilege of attending college. Quite the opposite: they owe us something in return for all they have been indulged. Surber says Occupy Wall Street? Grow up. He lived in a trailer when a young adult. What's wrong with that? Everybody should have to. I lived in one room over a grocery shop, on beans, macaroni and cheese, cheap beer, and no-brand cigarettes when I got out of college, and I felt independent and happy despite having a go-fer job at a slowly-dying country newspaper, for minimum wage. Boo hoo. It took me 6 years of farting around while broke to make a good plan for my life. Here's a letter to the crybabies. And here's a good idea, children: Go march on Washington - It’s the real author of our woes. Protest Obama! Oh, almost forgot - MoveOn is providing financial support to these losers so they can't protest the government. So why not Evil Big Corporations instead? Yeah, they're the bad guys this time. As best I can tell, these kids want fun jobs with no heavy lifting - and they also want money - my money. I guess they didn't get the memo that their Obama's economy is not generating jobs and investment. If they had any sense, they'd be out there trying to figure out how to start a business or to make themselves useful to somebody. I am half-disgusted with myself for giving these spoiled brats any of our precious bandwidth since it's really a media-ginned-up story, but I had to get it off my chest. As a New Yorker, I can report that these people are having essentially zero impact on our vibrant life in Manhattan except when they walk on a bridge and mess up the traffic from Brooklyn. It might get a little more amusing and colorful when the union thugs join the stoners and losers. Perfect together! Almost forgot one item: the cops are getting good OT for the babysitting. It's good for their incomes, so there is some benefit for the good guys.
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Little wonder the protests are on Wall Street rather than DC. The push to point the finger at the finance industry has been comprehensive --from Rolling Stone (which made a star out of former Muscovite Matt Taibbi by sending him to eviscerate the handful of Wall Streeters who were in on the bust for sure, but who are, save for a few, long gone with their national GDP-sized hush money golden parfachute 'bonus packages') to the official congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was chaired by the same guy that chairs the Apollo Alliance, which wrote the Stimulus Bill.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=Phil+Angelides+financial+crisis+enquiry&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox http://www.bing.com/search?q=phil+angelides+apollo+alliance&qs=HS&sk=&pq=phil+angelides+apollo&sp=1&sc=1-21&form=QBRE ...as Richard Burton kept whispering to himself throughout the Night of the Iguana, "fantastic". === small silver lining, an honest man emerged from the commission. Peter Wallison refused to sign the Final Report. http://www.bing.com/search?q=peter+wallison&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox === ...bet the kids in the park don't know much about this historee -- "Quite the opposite: they owe us something in return for all they have been indulged."
Curiously, isn't this what Elizabeth Warren spoke of? Why isn't she bashing these protestors? Time for the Tea Party to demonstrate outside of Move On HQ. Bring tomatoes and be sure to wear a cup.
An acquaintance of mine has been joining the protests. He is a devoted Krugman fan. He and I have been going back and forth on the issue of what they hope to gain (nothing, really). I point out they may be "raising awareness", as he says, but most people are already aware of Wall Street greed. The problem is simply related to the fact few people agree with the solutions the protesters wish to engage.
More importantly, most of the people doing the protesting are just bored, unemployed folk. I remind him constantly that he is really just a drain on city resources. He doesn't care. Self-indulgent idiots. An acquaintance of mine has been joining the protests. He is a devoted Krugman fan. He and I have been going back and forth on the issue of what they hope to gain (nothing, really). I point out they may be "raising awareness", as he says, but most people are already aware of Wall Street greed. The problem is simply related to the fact few people agree with the solutions the protesters wish to engage.
More importantly, most of the people doing the protesting are just bored, unemployed folk. I remind him constantly that he is really just a drain on city resources. He doesn't care. Self-indulgent idiots. Here's an irony: it's a mirror image. Large businesses, including the financial services, have increasingly found it worth their while to devote their energy into lobbying the government for set-asides, waivers, and legislation changes rather than making their money by providing better services. The protestors are doing the same thing, trying to get money by having the government steer it their way rather than working for it.
Exactly. Same concepts, different recipients.
The thing is, the protestors are using tax money to ask for what they want. At least businesses use their own money to lobby. The protestors will cost you and me quite a bit of cash by the time they are finished with their police escorts and lawsuits. Oh, and they'll blame the police for their problems. Because they are, after all, 'peaceful'. They are not. But they say they are. My suspicion is that the tax money eaten up by the financial services industry in terms of bailouts (not to mention the costs to the real economy due to some really bad deals) are a tad larger than the overtime pay of New York's finest. Lobbying has it payback, alas.
Absolutely.
But at least they are paying their own way to get where they want to go. If the Wall Street Occupiers had their way, the same amount of money would be spent on their favorite emotional salves. The tax money spent isn't what I'm referring to. It's getting that money directed your way and how you spend to get it. Business uses money it's earned. Protestors use your money. I do not disagree as it concerns businesses and what they do with their lobbying bucks. I do disagree as it concerns the subset of business related to much of financial services which somehow lost the concept of being part of a sound financial system and ended up playing with other people's money (aka taxpayers). Cheap access to Fed money due to "banking status", all sorts of idiotic incentives - and plenty of bad policy (don't get me started on Fannie and Freddie, for instance). Banks are different than businesses, at least the parts of them that form the basis for the underlying financial system. Non banking activities (trading, etc.) benefited from banking status for no good reason, it's a subsidy and warps the market in terms of pricing of risk. Leverage ratios out of sight.
Again, don't get me started. But I won't be wasting taxpayers bucks further by sittin' in on Wall Street. Spent enough time there, on the payroll. Which is exactly why I wrote the John Law piece last week. People don't understand how fiat money, but more specifically easy money (a subset of fiat currency) alters the economic system by creating an imbalance with an overemphasis on finance rather than productivity. It opens up the doors to moral hazard, excessive risk taking, and a sense of hubris on the part of traders and speculators. Keynesians believe Investment and Saving are at cross-purposes (as described in the Hicks IS/LM model). In some economic conditions, where markets are near equilibrium, this is true. In the current environment, the Austrians are correct - higher interest rates would lead to greater long term investment by encouraging people to reduce debt and save, setting the stage for future growth.
My point is that if the Wall Street protestors had the opportunity to get their hands on the money the banks got, they'd have wasted it just as readily and created just as many, though different, imbalances. There is no difference between these people and the lobbyists, except for two things. First, how they make their points and pay for it. Second, where they want the money to go. Beyond that, they still believe the government exists to relieve them of various obligations which should properly reside on their own shoulders. well then, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
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