Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance :
Really excellent bunch of quotes.
2011 10 11 Tuesday
“The fact is, the system is not working right. It is not right that we have so many people without jobs when we have so many needs that we have to fulfill. It’s not right that we are throwing people out of their houses when we have so many homeless people.
Our financial markets have an important role to play. They’re supposed to allocate capital and manage risk, but they’ve misallocated capital and created risk. We are bearing the cost of their misdeeds. There’s a system where we’ve socialized losses and privatized gains. That’s not capitalism! That’s not a market economy. That’s a distorted economy, and if we continue with that, we won’t succeed in growing, and we won’t succeed in creating a just society.” - Stiglitz Speaks at Occupy Wall Street – Bwog
Our financial markets have an important role to play. They’re supposed to allocate capital and manage risk, but they’ve misallocated capital and created risk. We are bearing the cost of their misdeeds. There’s a system where we’ve socialized losses and privatized gains. That’s not capitalism! That’s not a market economy. That’s a distorted economy, and if we continue with that, we won’t succeed in growing, and we won’t succeed in creating a just society.” - Stiglitz Speaks at Occupy Wall Street – Bwog
2011 10 04 Tuesday
New York Observer: Exclusive “Occupy Wall Street” Unaired Fox Footage (by mavgirl69)
2011 08 15 Monday
Keep Your Government Hands Off My Government Programs! - NYTimes.com:
Interesting statistics: about 44% of people that receive Social Security and about 40% of those receiving Medicare believe that they “Have Not Used a Government Social Program”.
“I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.” - Warren Buffett via Stop Coddling the Super-Rich - NYTimes.com
2009 04 03 Friday
oh hell yeah...
Inside Obama's bank CEOs meeting - Eamon Javers - POLITICO.com
But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”
“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
2009 04 02 Thursday
Kel and I were talking tonight, when I remembered a New York Times article from 1999 I had seen linked to recently:
CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS
The article is about the passing of Gramm-Leach-Bliley. The legislation passed in the Senate 90-8, and in the House 362-57. Generally speaking GLB deregulated the way banks, securities, and insurers could interact. Some choice quotes from the article:
"I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. "I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.
Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had "seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes."
"Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis," Mr. Wellstone said. "Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place."
I'm very happy to see Feingold on the list that voted against.