Occupy Wall Street. Police vs people in NY.

I'm just happy that cell phone cameras are enabling a little brother effect. The gov't has CCTV cameras to record protesters in the street, but the protesters also have cameras to record the police.

NYPD has responded that the pepper spray was "appropriate use", but neither protesters nor police can operate with an expectation of anonymity or impunity. Once the officer was ID'd Anonymous vigilanteed up w/ a d0x on the officer.

Of course, this kind of ubiquitous surveillance has many potential negative effects on personal privacy, but if nothing is private, then everyone has to account for their actions.

goman wrote:

Norman - you call this misguided at best? Not Wall Street deregulation? It was Wall Street influenced deregulation that caused the recession and now is causing the inept recovery/double dip.

That deregulation "caused" the recession is arguable and probably a massive over-simplification. But I'm curious to hear the reasoning behind exactly how deregulation is causing a potential double dip now?

Was this on Sunday? If it was on a weekday I didn't even realize it happened, and I'm just down the street.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
goman wrote:

Norman - you call this misguided at best? Not Wall Street deregulation? It was Wall Street influenced deregulation that caused the recession and now is causing the inept recovery/double dip.

That deregulation "caused" the recession is arguable and probably a massive over-simplification. But I'm curious to hear the reasoning behind exactly how deregulation is causing a potential double dip now?

Being that much of the damage in the current recession was caused by the housing bubble popping I think it's fair to put a large portion of the blame on policies that incentivized mortgage initiators to hand out loans to anyone with a pulse then bundle them up and sell them off as safe securities.

A good portion of the double dip is because the first stimulus was mostly a gimmick and didn't create any lasting effects while things like the loan modification program didn't actually fix the problem but just masked its symptoms for a short while. The other portion of the current dip is caused by the very high risk of default in Europe.

At this point, we have to pay the piper. We can embark on massive reform, raise taxes and cut spending and take the hit now but be predictable and stable in the long run, or we can keep shoveling money and rhetoric at the problem and end up in a lovely 10 year malaise like Japan.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
goman wrote:

Norman - you call this misguided at best? Not Wall Street deregulation? It was Wall Street influenced deregulation that caused the recession and now is causing the inept recovery/double dip.

That deregulation "caused" the recession is arguable and probably a massive over-simplification. But I'm curious to hear the reasoning behind exactly how deregulation is causing a potential double dip now?

Deregulation through control fraud was so bad and mispriced profits so much that it hindered the ability of the economy to recover with normal stimulus programs.

Of course the devil is in the details. I could point to some details like the www.nakedcapitalism.com site.

casual_alcoholic wrote:

Was this on Sunday? If it was on a weekday I didn't even realize it happened, and I'm just down the street.

Everyday last week and it's still going on.

Edwin wrote:
casual_alcoholic wrote:

Was this on Sunday? If it was on a weekday I didn't even realize it happened, and I'm just down the street.

Everyday last week and it's still going on.

I must be too far away then. Idk it doesn't seem to have effected much. In fact, business has been a little better since last week.

Why would anyone be upset at the financial traders?

It's not like they are wishing for another recession or anything like that.

Oh.

Phoenix Rev wrote:

Why would anyone be upset at the financial traders?

It's not like they are wishing for another recession or anything like that.

Oh.

Who is this guy?

He makes a point that down markets are a time to be buying, just watch "It's a Wonderful Life" and George Bailey is saying it to everyone "You're all selling and Potter is buying" small investors are terrible because they sell at the bottom and buy at the top.

Ulairi wrote:

Who is this guy?

He makes a point that down markets are a time to be buying, just watch "It's a Wonderful Life" and George Bailey is saying it to everyone "You're all selling and Potter is buying" small investors are terrible because they sell at the bottom and buy at the top.

I agree that is what people should be doing. But, good grief... actively dreaming of a bad recession?

Ulairi wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I'm very confused. The pepper-spraying is justified because it was captured by an iPhone? Wall Street only supports devices that are made with ethical practices? The chains of logic here seem tortuous at best.

No. We do not know why she was pepper sprayed. All we know is that we got this video that shows no context. I'm not willing to jump on the back of a police officer and on the side of some neck bearded hipsters without an investigation.

Be interesting to know if those protesters being kettled were allowed to leave or not. If they weren't they were as near as assaulted in police custody.

Phoenix Rev wrote:

Why would anyone be upset at the financial traders?

It's not like they are wishing for another recession or anything like that.

Oh.

I actually 100% agree with the guy. People should probably stop hoping some financial messiah is going to come and save the world. There's money to be made out there! I don't know about other people, but this recession has been awesome for us. Business has never been better. If markets are volatile, it doesn't really matter which direction they're going in, if you know how to make the money you can. If stocks just stop moving all together, well that would suck, but I think there will always be trading.

casual_alcoholic wrote:

If markets are volatile, it doesn't really matter which direction they're going in, if you know how to make the money you can. If stocks just stop moving all together, well that would suck.

That's the disconnect right? If the markets are going down, then the people are screwed, while many traders can still make a lot of money. If the markets stay flat it's worse for the traders, but way better for the entire country as a whole. Since the person involved in the financial markets are really interested in short term speculation instead of the investment we should be interested in we get the volatile markets that they need.

Oso wrote:

NYPD has responded that the pepper spray was "appropriate use", but neither protesters nor police can operate with an expectation of anonymity or impunity.

Surely the protesters' designer throwback wayfarer sunglasses will protect them from identification?

I think there's a real danger in laughing off police brutality against people you don't like much (see also: "don't tase me, bro"). After all there's more than enough people who don't like you either, and you'd want to think they'd have your back when it happened to you.

What did Edmund Burke say about good men doing nothing?

NormanTheIntern wrote:

I'll start this post by absolutely supporting people's right to protest things - I certainly support the right of the protesters to gather, they shouldn't be maced or beat up by cops, etc.

However, as someone who happens to actually work on Wall St, I have to say the reasoning behind the protests seem... misguided, at best. From what I can tell, this is to draw attention to the (overly simplistic) "wall street soars while main street crashes" theme, with the subprime fiasco as the smoking gun. Or just generally, the idea that "the people who got us here" should still be getting paid while lots of people are out of work.

First, if the goal is to seriously disrupt market or financial operations, that's a fool's errand. Even if the NYSE gets nuked off the planet, there's enough DR infrastructure that the markets would continue to run. To be honest, besides going through a security checkpoint, the main affect on my day-to-day so far is that my favorite Korean taco truck can't make it through. If the goal is to make the subprime financial guys feels shame, well, of the top 40 financial companies, only like 2-3 are still headquartered physically close to Wall St. Go up to midtown, you'll catch more bankers.

But okay, let's assume Wall St. is a symbolic target. You're *still* barking up the wrong tree. If your beef is that corporations pay too little in taxes, go to Washington. If your beef is that the mortgage market was/is too lightly regulated, go to Washington. If you think CEOs should only be paid ten times the amount of their lowest paid employee... go to Washington. Virtually every solution to the problem these people are pointing out is in the grasp of the federal government - expecting corporations to solve this is like Mothers Against Drunk Driving picketing local random bars. Good luck, but your energy is better spent elsewhere.

Now, as for *why* a group of liberals are marching on wall st instead of pennsylvania ave, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader :)

But isn't this more or less what the whole subprime thing was about? The regulators lie for the banks that pay their salaries while the smartest guys in the room floss everybody for premiums, enabled by a corrupt government, fueled by reckless greed/cynicism/headless-chicken-style idiocy, no one solely responsible, et cetera, et cetera? Ultimately, you can only go so far with the whole Sun Tzu maneuver wherein you spread the bullsh*t so widely that the plebs have no enemy to attack. The point is no longer to enact corrective change, because the powers that be have made that thoroughly impossible. Perhaps we are now seeing the hipster vanguard of a more general 'rich people must die' movement.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I'm very confused. The pepper-spraying is justified because it was captured by an iPhone? Wall Street only supports devices that are made with ethical practices? The chains of logic here seem tortuous at best.

I know this should be f-ing obvious, but protestors in Egypt, Bahrain and many other nations also used technology created by underpaid workers in developing countries. Those are simply the tools to communicate when organizing a protest. Kudos to the kids for finally realizing that while they sit, largely unemployed, their future has been stolen from them by Wall Street. I support them.

Uh, comparisons between the people protesting and actually poor arab youth seems... spurious, based on seeing the protesters every day. The term "trustafarian" comes to mind, to be honest. There are pleny of disadvantaged kids in this country, but those aren't them.

Kudos to the kids for finally realizing that while they sit, largely unemployed, their future has been stolen from them by Wall Street.

And again, massive amounts of oversimplifation going on here, and essentially creating a boogeyman named "Wall Street". This could just as easily be a deep structural problem set up by overspending reaching as far back as the cold war.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Uh, comparisons between the people protesting and actually poor arab youth seems... spurious, based on seeing the protesters every day. The term "trustafarian" comes to mind, to be honest. There are pleny of disadvantaged kids in this country, but those aren't them.

*sigh*

Please don't be intentionally dense for a rhetorical win. I'm in no way saying that these kids are in the same situation as the youth protesting across the Middle East. My point is very simple. Kids across the globe coordinate their protests with the tools they have at their disposal. Simply owning an iPhone doesn't invalidate your protest. Kids in the Middle East had many of the same tools because at the end of the day they are tools, even if we treat them as toys in the US.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Kudos to the kids for finally realizing that while they sit, largely unemployed, their future has been stolen from them by Wall Street.

And again, massive amounts of oversimplifation going on here, and essentially creating a boogeyman named "Wall Street". This could just as easily be a deep structural problem set up by overspending reaching as far back as the cold war.

First off, kids leaving college are unemployed at a rate far above the rest of the population. This is just reality.

http://bls.gov/news.release/youth.nr0.htm

Secondly, protests are often most successful when their message is clear and simple. People such as yourself would mock student protestors when they protest environmental, reproductive and a grab-bag of policies. Here they're protesting a single entity. Which is it? Or can they never protest correctly in your eyes? Wall Street is the bad guy in this story. Along with their bought politicians they put the policies in place that lead to this. They created the destructive financial instruments that increased financial instability. They pushed for Fannie and Freddie to buy more loans so they could originate riskier and riskier loans. They sold these bonds as AAA while shopping the rating agencies. And finally they backed all of this up with hedges with companies like AIG so they "won" whether their gambles succeeded or failed.

It's been a magical success of Wall Street and corporate media that somehow not only are people not in prison, but the entire narrative has been lost. There are facts here. It's not oversimplification. They're facts. Sorry that facts aren't in favor of Wall Street. America has been borrowing beyond their means for decades. Definitely. That doesn't change the fact that Wall Street accelerated this process in a manner that was absurdly risky.

It doesn't look to me like DSGamer is relating the NY protesters as a similar demographic as the poor arab youth-- only that the technology used to document the goings-ons is the same.

Also by your logic, if those kids can afford said tech are "trustafarians", why aren't the protests of the youth of Egypt or Bahrain any less significant, since they too could obviously afford said technology and used it to organize/document their own protests?

I hate to say it, but you're oversimplifying things just as much as anyone else here.

I'm sorry, but it's really hard to take the "unfairly created Wall Street boogeyman" theme seriously when it's delivered in the same breath as a bunch of contemptuous hipster jokes (which has eclipsed the dirty hippie narrative you saw after the WTO protests). You guys are aware of that, right?

That was my point, yes. The notion that the protesters are hypocrites because they use tech built in Chinese sweat shops is absurd. EVERYONE uses tech built in chinese sweat shops. If the Chinese ever rise up against their leaders they'll be the ultimate hypocrites because they'll be using technology they created.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Uh, comparisons between the people protesting and actually poor arab youth seems... spurious, based on seeing the protesters every day. The term "trustafarian" comes to mind, to be honest. There are pleny of disadvantaged kids in this country, but those aren't them.

Perhaps I missed it, but could you point me to the "rules" that say that you have to be oppressed and poor in order to have a claim against greed/corruption/graft, etc.?

And again, massive amounts of oversimplifation going on here, and essentially creating a boogeyman named "Wall Street". This could just as easily be a deep structural problem set up by overspending reaching as far back as the cold war.

Wall Street led the charge for credit default swaps and 35-to-1 leveraging up to the economic collapse in 2008, and much of it was done using our money in our pensions and 401(k)s.

If Wall Street isn't the boogeyman, then what is it?

Phoenix Rev wrote:

If Wall Street isn't the boogeyman, then what is it?

The victim, Rev, victim of a cruel campaign of unfair name calling based on ugly stereotypes in an attempt to marginalize them from the mainstream, prompted by ignorance and fear--something you'd never understand*!

*That's the joke

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I'm sorry, but it's really hard to take the "unfairly created Wall Street boogeyman" theme seriously when it's delivered in the same breath as a bunch of contemptuous hipster jokes

To be clear, I'm not saying their personal financial circumstances completely undermine their reason for protesting, and I'm perfectly satisfied with DSGamer's clarification "simply owning an iPhone doesn't invalidate your protest". That's certainly true.

DSGamer wrote:

Wall Street is the bad guy in this story. Along with their bought politicians they put the policies in place that lead to this. They created the destructive financial instruments that increased financial instability. They pushed for Fannie and Freddie to buy more loans so they could originate riskier and riskier loans.

Really seems to me like you're glossing over the government's role here. Not trying to excuse criminal behavior, but one group is beholden to the people and the other is beholden to shareholders. Which statement should create the most moral outrage: "rich people find sneaky and manipulative ways to get richer" or "policy makers allowed themselves to be bought and sell out their constituents"?

(assuming every policymaker and freddie/frannie were on the take, which I'm positing only for the sake of argument)

NormanTheIntern wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:

I'm sorry, but it's really hard to take the "unfairly created Wall Street boogeyman" theme seriously when it's delivered in the same breath as a bunch of contemptuous hipster jokes

To be clear, I'm not saying their personal financial circumstances completely undermine their reason for protesting, and I'm perfectly satisfied with DSGamer's clarification "simply owning an iPhone doesn't invalidate your protest". That's certainly true.

Thanks. This is a rarity in P&C and on the Internet. Thanks.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Wall Street is the bad guy in this story. Along with their bought politicians they put the policies in place that lead to this. They created the destructive financial instruments that increased financial instability. They pushed for Fannie and Freddie to buy more loans so they could originate riskier and riskier loans.

Really seems to me like you're glossing over the government's role here. Not trying to excuse criminal behavior, but one group is beholden to the people and the other is beholden to shareholders. Which statement should create the most moral outrage: "rich people find sneaky and manipulative ways to get richer" or "policy makers allowed themselves to be bought and sell out their constituents"?

(assuming every policymaker and freddie/frannie were on the take, which I'm positing only for the sake of argument)

I'm not glossing over it at all. I said "along with their bought politicians". That's the reality. Politicians wholly owned by corporations doing the bidding of corporations are creating bad law and bad policy. One of those, indeed, was abusing the "full faith and credit of the US Government" to implicitly guarantee an expansion of loan buying by Fannie and Freddie. The financial crisis is definitely nowhere near this bad without the destructive abuses of Fannie and Freddie. It's a partnership.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

The victim, Rev, victim of a cruel campaign of unfair name calling based on ugly stereotypes in an attempt to marginalize them from the mainstream, prompted by ignorance and fear--something you'd never understand*!

*That's the joke

Well if you're going to put words in my mouth, at least let me in on the joke here - is Rev like, black, or rich or something?

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Not trying to excuse criminal behavior, but one group is beholden to the people and the other is beholden to shareholders. Which statement should create the most moral outrage: "rich people find sneaky and manipulative ways to get richer" or "policy makers allowed themselves to be bought and sell out their constituents"?

I'm still going to go with the former. The latter were the accomplices tempted into bad behavior by other people; the former were the people who went directly from law-abiding citizen to criminal under their own steam.

Also, does this mean we can stop worshipping the NYPD? Yes, members of the NYPD and NYFD were heroic on 9/11. That was 10 years ago and in the years before and after that there have been numerous instances of brutality in the police force. They're not saints. They're humans who happen to work as police.

DSGamer wrote:

Also, does this mean we can stop worshipping the NYPD? Yes, members of the NYPD and NYFD were heroic on 9/11. That was 10 years ago and in the years before and after that there have been numerous instances of brutality in the police force. They're not saints. They're humans who happen to work as police.

I think I've seen this mentioned on GWJ before, but I'm still confused about who worships the NYPD. That doesn't seem to be a common attitude in NYC, is it more common outside of the city?