Wall St. protests

[tinselwolverine]

How many posts does a person need to get to to have 5 stars?

 

[Michchamp]

it's also shitty that the media, specifically the right-wing entities like FoxNews or the WSJ (both owned by News Corp) are attacking some of the protesters for their lack of eloquence or clarity in articulating their goals... yet these same news organizations have no problem broadcasting the idiotic rants about "socialism" and taxes from the Tea Party retards, and branding their bullshit lobbyist-funded rallies as true "populist rage."

the media has also cherry-picked and edited interviews with the Wall Street protesters to suit their editorial goals... yet they ignore the ones that turn the lens back on them like this: http://www.observer.com/2011/10/exclusiv....terview-vi deo/

media cherry picking does go both ways (left and right), unless all tea partiers are motivated by racism. On the other hand, media slamming any kind of protest is becoming the common denominator.

that's not my point; I don't think all tea partiers are motivated by racism, and I don't know any media organization that actually portrayed them that way; my point is that the Tea Party movement is - falsely - reported as a legitimate grass roots organization that represents the people's gripes, whereas, thus far, this ACTUAL grass roots protest, coming from people without big money backing them, or lobbyists organizing their rally are portrayed as a bunch of whiny losers with no legitimate complaints. See, e.g. the Fox report I posted, the NYT business reports, specifically DealBook, and the WSJ's coverage so far. The reality couldn't be further from those portrayals.

 

[Michchamp]

TinselWolverine[/color]]How many posts does a person need to get to to [SIC] have 5 stars?

hey, come on pal, we're tryin' to have a political discussion here.

 

[redandguilty]

media cherry picking does go both ways (left and right), unless all tea partiers are motivated by racism. On the other hand, media slamming any kind of protest is becoming the common denominator.

that's not my point; I don't think all tea partiers are motivated by racism, and I don't know any media organization that actually portrayed them that way; my point is that the Tea Party movement is - falsely - reported as a legitimate grass roots organization that represents the people's gripes, whereas, thus far, this ACTUAL grass roots protest, coming from people without big money backing them, or lobbyists organizing their rally are portrayed as a bunch of whiny losers with no legitimate complaints. See, e.g. the Fox report I posted, the NYT business reports, specifically DealBook, and the WSJ's coverage so far. The reality couldn't be further from those portrayals.

Well, I agree that the media has been lousy. A week ago everyone was either ignoring or making fun. I think I saw CNN making fun too...which is a real surprise to me.

With the tea party, I think there was an early period where it was grass roots and between the media treatment and the republican party, it was hijacked.

 

[TheVictors]

The Wall Street protest has reached Denver ... there were probably a few dozen semi-scattered protestors near the CO Capital.

I can't say they were terribly organized but there were passers by honking in support and some pretty clever signs about the Bailout and how the Richest 400 people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 50% of the population.

 

[Michchamp]

The Wall Street protest has reached Denver ... there were probably a few dozen semi-scattered protestors near the CO Capital.

I can't say they were terribly organized but there were passers by honking in support and some pretty clever signs about the Bailout and how the Richest 400 people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 50% of the population.

that's because those richest people work harder than all those 400 people combined. they earned it with their back-breaking labor.

 

[mhughes0021]

The Wall Street protest has reached Denver ... there were probably a few dozen semi-scattered protestors near the CO Capital.

I can't say they were terribly organized but there were passers by honking in support and some pretty clever signs about the Bailout and how the Richest 400 people in the world have more wealth than the poorest 50% of the population.

that's because those richest people work harder than all those 400 people combined. they earned it with their back-breaking labor.

lol nice sarcasm there! Whats even better is how much money they get out of paying taxes

And how theyre labled "Job creators" by the republican party ...yet no one has jobs (unless you live in a foreign country). Srsly the scum of the earth...

 

[tinselwolverine]

TinselWolverine[/color]]How many posts does a person need to get to to [SIC] have 5 stars?

hey, come on pal, we're tryin' to have a political discussion here.

You really believe that there's no politics involved in getting that 5th star?

 

[Michchamp]

TinselWolverine[/color]]

hey, come on pal, we're tryin' to have a political discussion here.

You really believe that there's no politics involved in getting that 5th star?

on ESPN.com there would be. Monster doesn't play games with us like that though. No pay-to-play here, everything is above-the-board.

you put in the time, you get a 5th star. no fine print. No qualifications. No monkey business.

 

[TheVictors]

http://news.yahoo.com/cnns-star-little-too-sympathetic-wall-street-160609543.html

Interesting ... cute-as-a-button Erin Burnett not coming off as 'objective' after making a career by covering Wall Street and having worked at Goldman...?

No .....

 

[Michchamp]

http://news.yahoo.com/cnns-star-little-too-sympathetic-wall-street-160609543.html

Interesting ... cute-as-a-button Erin Burnett not coming off as 'objective' after making a career by covering Wall Street and having worked at Goldman...?

No .....

did you see what I wrote about her in the other thread?

it's good the media is giving some ink to the fact that one of the own *MIGHT* have a little conflict of interest affecting the objectivity of her reporting.

if only they had been so critical of their own in the run up to the invasion of Iraq.

 

[tinselwolverine]

TinselWolverine[/color]]

You really believe that there's no politics involved in getting that 5th star?

on ESPN.com there would be. Monster doesn't play games with us like that though. No pay-to-play here, everything is above-the-board.

you put in the time, you get a 5th star. no fine print. No qualifications. No monkey business.

Yeah, I was being tongue in cheek, of course...

 

[tinselwolverine]

How dare the worker class stage protests! Don't they know that they are supposed to accept wall street thugs paying half the percent in taxes they do?

Capital gains tax - max 15%
Income tax - max 33%

Ha, ha....pretty sure not too many protester out there pay the top marginal income tax rate...

Do you have any data that shows what percentage of "Wall Street Thugs"' compensation is through capital gains, and what percentage is income?

 

[tinselwolverine]

they were arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. Blocking traffic is a non-violent protest method. It is against the law, but given the ends they are seeking (legal reform, finding and holding Wall Street accountable for the "widespread lawbreaking" that lead to the 2008 collapse), I think the means here are reasonable since just going out and voting has now been PROVEN to be pointless in this regard... If the Obama DOJ isn't going to do anything about it, you can sure as hell bet the other party isn't going to do anything about it.

Editorial note - I put "widespread lawbreaking" in quotation marks myself.

Let's talk a little more about Erin, Michael Moore and the Prez..

So, in the debut episode of Out Front, Ms. Burnet led off with a segment on the protests - she did come off as being a bit dismissive of the level of sophistication of the protesters, regarding their knowledge of exactly what they were protesting.

Turns out, in the following installment of Out Front the next day, she showed a clip of Michael Moore complaining that Out Front had mocked the protesters, and Moore was also complaining that not a single person on Wall St. had been arrested or charged for crimes commited that led to the financial meltdown....

Now the following day - yesterday - I watched the Presidential Special News conference, and President Obama was specifically asked why there had not yet been one single arrest or charge of a crime in the aftermath of the financial crisis - and the President answered that while there may have been misjudgements and unethical practices going on (some shit like that), the things that were done that contributed to the crisis had nevertheless not specifically been in violation of the law.

So I must respectfully ask, MichChamp - what do you know about "widespread lawbreaking" that, apparently, neither the President nor Attorney General Holder doesn't know?

Just aksin', thass' all...

 

[Michchamp]

TinselWolverine[/color]]

they were arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. Blocking traffic is a non-violent protest method. It is against the law, but given the ends they are seeking (legal reform, finding and holding Wall Street accountable for the widespread lawbreaking that lead to the 2008 collapse), I think the means here are reasonable since just going out and voting has now been PROVEN to be pointless in this regard... If the Obama DOJ isn't going to do anything about it, you can sure as hell bet the other party isn't going to do anything about it.

...

So I must respectfully ask, MichChamp - what do you know about "widespread lawbreaking" that, apparently, neither the President nor Attorney General Holder doesn't know?

Just aksin', thass' all...

I removed the quotes.

off the top of my head: Fraud. MASSIVE fraud involved in the credit rating agencies (S&P, Moody's, Fitch) rating sub-prime mortgage securities AAA so Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros, Deutsche Bank, etc. etc. could sell them to pension funds, commercial banks, or other investors. This was a huge problem; it enabled the problem to multiply and spread, since Wall Street banks could keep re-packaging and re-selling the same shit to unsuspecting parties. Not only did they make money pumping this stuff and dumping it, they made money on the transaction costs each time it was cut, re-branded, re-sold...

then you have the mortgage issuers themselves on the other end. it should be more or less self-evident that they were circumventing various lending laws & business practices in order to keep issuing mortgages.

 

[tinselwolverine]

TinselWolverine[/color]]

...

So I must respectfully ask, MichChamp - what do you know about "widespread lawbreaking" that, apparently, neither the President nor Attorney General Holder doesn't know?

Just aksin', thass' all...

I removed the quotes.

off the top of my head: Fraud. MASSIVE fraud involved in the credit rating agencies (S&P, Moody's, Fitch) rating sub-prime mortgage securities AAA so Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros, Deutsche Bank, etc. etc. could sell them to pension funds, commercial banks, or other investors. This was a huge problem; it enabled the problem to multiply and spread, since Wall Street banks could keep re-packaging and re-selling the same shit to unsuspecting parties. Not only did they make money pumping this stuff and dumping it, they made money on the transaction costs each time it was cut, re-branded, re-sold...

then you have the mortgage issuers themselves on the other end. it should be more or less self-evident that they were circumventing various lending laws & business practices in order to keep issuing mortgages.

That's a good a answer.

Fraud is going to be difficult to prove - there was a prevailing assumption at the time was that, even though the loans were subprime, the fact they were securizied by property itself in an "ever rising" real estate market made the loans nevertheless credit worthy.

 

[Michchamp]

TinselWolverine[/color]]

I removed the quotes.

off the top of my head: Fraud. MASSIVE fraud involved in the credit rating agencies (S&P, Moody's, Fitch) rating sub-prime mortgage securities AAA so Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros, Deutsche Bank, etc. etc. could sell them to pension funds, commercial banks, or other investors. This was a huge problem; it enabled the problem to multiply and spread, since Wall Street banks could keep re-packaging and re-selling the same shit to unsuspecting parties. Not only did they make money pumping this stuff and dumping it, they made money on the transaction costs each time it was cut, re-branded, re-sold...

then you have the mortgage issuers themselves on the other end. it should be more or less self-evident that they were circumventing various lending laws & business practices in order to keep issuing mortgages.

That's a good a answer.

Fraud is going to be difficult to prove - there was a prevailing assumption at the time was that, even though the loans were subprime, the fact they were securizied by property itself in an "ever rising" real estate market made the loans nevertheless credit worthy.

I don't know what "credit worthy" means here; based on what I've read, the rating of AAA was necessary to allow the mortgage CDOs to be purchased by pension funds, and similar investment entities which are often limited by law from purchasing riskier securities like those in this case. therein lies the fraud. I know it's difficult to prove fraud generally, but in this case, it should be a slam dunk. The Feds won't move on it because they are afraid to do their job here and go after the rich and powerful people on Wall Street.

the rating of AAA itself should only be used when there is little to no chance of default, and to think there was little to no chance that bundles of sub-prime mortgages would have negligible default rates was absurd, both at the time, and in hindsight...

the simple answer to all this is to put the wall up between investment banks and commercial banks again. They can take whatever risks they want with their own money, but they shouldn't be allowed to do the same thing with people's bank deposits & retirement funds.

oh, and charge and convict anyone who broke the law with breaking the law. that's important too.

 

[tinselwolverine]

OK. What was the benefit to the ratings agencies to over-rate the sub-prime loans, and what was the criteria the agencies used to justify these evaluations and ratings?

I'm asking because it doesn't make sense to me that ratings the agencies would engage in fraud - it seems that they would be the only entity who wouldn't be in a position to profit from an over evaluation of the sub-prime loans - unless they were getting kick backs - which I haven't heard anything about.

Note - I had, for whatever reason, referred to the ratings agencies as "credit reporting agencies" - changed that.

 

[Michchamp]

TinselWolverine[/color]]OK. What was the benefit to the ratings agencies to over-rate the sub-prime loans, and what was the criteria the agencies used to justify these evaluations and ratings?

I'm asking because it doesn't make sense to me that ratings the agencies would engage in fraud - it seems that they would be the only entity who wouldn't be in a position to profit from an over evaluation of the sub-prime loans - unless they were getting kick backs - which I haven't heard anything about.

Note - I had, for whatever reason, referred to the ratings agencies as "credit reporting agencies" - changed that.

the ratings agencies are paid by the banks to rate securities; there is evidence out there from whistleblowers that they were told not to actually look at this junk and rubber stamp it "AAA," or the banks would pull business from them. the entire process is corrupt. the compensation structure completely undermines the independence of the rating agencies.

it's similar to the way drug companies funnel research dollars to the labs that give them the favorable results they want to see.

 

[tinselwolverine]

TinselWolverine[/color]]OK. What was the benefit to the ratings agencies to over-rate the sub-prime loans, and what was the criteria the agencies used to justify these evaluations and ratings?

I'm asking because it doesn't make sense to me that ratings the agencies would engage in fraud - it seems that they would be the only entity who wouldn't be in a position to profit from an over evaluation of the sub-prime loans - unless they were getting kick backs - which I haven't heard anything about.

Note - I had, for whatever reason, referred to the ratings agencies as "credit reporting agencies" - changed that.

the ratings agencies are paid by the banks to rate securities; there is evidence out there from whistleblowers that they were told not to actually look at this junk and rubber stamp it "AAA," or the banks would pull business from them. the entire process is corrupt. the compensation structure completely undermines the independence of the rating agencies.

it's similar to the way drug companies funnel research dollars to the labs that give them the favorable results they want to see.

OK - do you have a link to anything that documents this?

I'm under the impression that the ratings agencies are financed prmarily through publishing/subscription.