Two weeks into Occupy Wall Street protests, movement is at a crossroads

Am I alone at seeing this!

I may be seeing things but at 3 minutes 30 seconds into this video that is aired the day of 911 this man predicts many things that are going to happen as if he could see into the future. Am I alone at seeing this!

I think it's illegal to talk about this kind of thinking, RL.

Be careful.

(as clarification the movement he was actually was at was a anti war movement demonstration which just happens to have some members from the 99% movement in it)


UPDATE: Conservative Writer Admits ‘Infiltrating’ 99 Percent Movement To ‘Mock And Undermine’ It

The mindless dumbmasses that are currently loitering in a city near you occupy Libtardia 24/7

This 'Occupy' crowd is nothing more than a bunch of liberal racists.

For now, the Occupy-Wall-Street movement is mostly a collective venting of frustration against a rigged financial system. It isn't yet a coherent movement with concrete demands and any means to assert them. I agree with the protestors' sentiment that the system is rigged in favor of Wall Street. I don't, however, feel a need to vent collectively (which says more about my psychology than about their politics). So I'll continue to withhold judgment on their manifesto until they break it down into something more concrete.

That said, let me make a point about the United States' Declaration of Independence, on which the OWS Manifesto is loosely patterned. I think it would have been perfectly plausible for a 1776 colonist to dismiss it as pretentious claptrap, using grand words to rationalize a petty tax revolt of rich, white, liberty-worshiping slaveholders. (Talk about incoherence!) It is only in retrospect that it has become the near-sacred text of America's civil religion, and only because you've been taught history by the descendants of those rich, white, liberty-worshiping slaveholders.

My point in drawing this parallel is this: I don't think that in 1776, you could have looked at the Declaration of Independence and tell if the Yankee's rebellion against the Tories was worth supporting. Likewise, I don't think it's possible now to look at the OWS manifesto and tell if this rebellion is, either.

... Redneck liberal racists that hate blacks

A contradiction in terms, h2oguy.

No, it's a reality that libtards refuse to accept.

I knew that the words I used were too big for you. Go to a public library, do you know what a library is? and check a dictionary.

In my opinion the reckless financial behavior of millions of people created that crisis, and that it's reductionism to try to blame a handful of bankers for it.

The bubble was inflated by millions of people spending beyond their means, by hundreds of thousands of speculators and traders, and thousands of government officials who failed to regulate the complex financial instruments in addition to the handful of top bankers who, in retrospect, should have known not to allow their workers to bet so aggressively on such ill-understood financial instruments.

It's not like the 99% weren't spending recklessly along with them all along, betting too heavily themselves. All those Americans who bought more house than they could really afford, and the many in the middle class who tried to start "flipping" condos are part and party to the bubble that burst.

This was a very collective failure, that the average person does not understand very well, and the result is to just mindlessly blame "Wall Street" for it all because rich people are not very sympathetic symbols.

I don't agree Robert - the millions were only at fault in that they believed their bankers, financial advisers and mortgagers knew what they were doing.

I found this This American Life podcast amazingly informative and entertaining. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money

I'm pretty sure I found it via some kind soul on A2K. I hope I thanked them.

Not so, because policy enacted by government did over several decades significantly reward those who played by "go big or go home" motto and penalized those who held to traditional standards of prudence. How long are people supposed to go on trying to be responsible when they are always losing to their neighbors and coworkers who play live by Vegas card room rules? It got to the point where those who tried to do the right thing had to seriously question whether they were schmucks for not understanding that the rules had changed, after all, they were doing things "right" and were always losing.

Reasonable rational people where systematically undermined by the policy makers, who decided that the only thing they really cared about was juicing the economy so that they could get enough growth that the economic system would not collapse in on itself. Such stuff as making sure that the rewards went to those who deserved it, and keeping the classes close enough together that everyone would remain pulling together, went by the boards in the attempt to obtain the imperative.

The blame belongs at the top.

These bankers simply could not have done that without rampant, speculative over-betting on the part of many.

The failure to regulate this speculation, and the relaxing of capitalization requirements for these institutions and the financial policy of the US for years (where the solution to every economic ill it to advocate that Americans go out and spend more in the malls, more that they don't really have, and for the country to completely blow it's financial position through dumb tax cuts and dumber wars) are all major parts of the bubble.

This was a perfect storm of stupidity and there was plenty to go around (the American government has over-promoted home ownership for decades for one). It is completely unrealistic, if popular, to think that a handful of bankers did this alone.

the bigger error was to allow the bundling and slicing into commodities of mortgages, an error that to this day has not been fixed. The little guy had little to nothing to do with this whopper of a mistake that allowed the economy to be undone by mortgages.

How much do savings accounts earn right now??

Nough said.....nothing has changed, which is why a depression is unavoidable now.

There's nothing inherently wrong with those financial instruments, the complexity and risk merely need to be taken into account. Making them illegal makes little sense in comparison to merely regulating them to mitigate risk.

You really should listen to the podcast Robert.

Do you know what a NINA is? It's a mortgage for people with No Income No Assets and banks and brokers were offering them. How is that in any way sane?

There are more than a 'handful' of bankers involved - a whole sector of the industry went nuts. Govt deregulation certainly played a part - but who pushed for that deregulation? Yes, people who thought their equity in their homes would never drop were foolish, but blaming them for the banks giving them money is not unlike blaming the patient for following a doctor's prescription that poisons them. (a colourful stretch I know, but you get the idea).

The change was making them legal, it was a mistake and still is. It removed the incentive to make sure that those who took out loans were likely to be able to pay them back. Even the intended fix, forcing those who write mortgages to keep 10% of them so that they have some skin in the game and thus A LITTLE incentive to make sure the loans turn out to be good, has run into a buzz saw of opposition.