Occupy Wall Street Protests

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Post by fatbagger » 15 Nov 2011 06:24

I really think the occupy movement needs to be organized better. The main thing I hear from people is that they understand why eeryone is so upset but they don't know what they hope to accomplish. You can't just say"we want the corperations and gov. to stop being greedy" Their has to be some kind of actual demand.
Don't get me wrong, all thoes people out there just to be there are helping to bring attention to the issue and that is needed, but what are you hoping to accomplish.
A story came out recently letting light to the fact that while trading with insider info on wall street was made illegal years ago, that law does not include senators and other gov. officials. Making it perfectly legal for them to make a killing trading stocks that they know are going to be on the move 1 way or another. Unethical but totally legal. All legislation that is presented on this is burried and never sees the day of light for obvious reasons. That is 1 specific issue the occupy movements could demand gets changed.
The police in St. Louis(I think) made a statement saying something along the lines of "you should all be proud of yourselves and hold your heads high. You brought attention to a serious issue....yada yada yada" And I think some are buying it. They know it is getting close to when everyone gets lazy and gives up and if OWS just stays the same they are right, it won't last much longer. Don't give up, another 2-4 months and then stuff will start happening, if there are actual demands.
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Post by Pasquar » 16 Nov 2011 11:05

Hogan: I understand where your frustrations lie but I think you're missing some points. I totally understand that this movement has attracted a slew of people who may not know exactly what they're talking about and make the movement look like an unorganized clusterfuck, but that is due in large part to the nature of this movement as a whole: one speaking out for the 99%. 99% of the population surprisingly does not have a PhD, MBA, college, or even high-school degrees. Does this mean that they are any less affected by the systemic forces of inequality that persist in society? Fuck no. On the contrary, people such as this are those who are most at the receiving end of this flawed system. The movement is open to anyone (not in the 1%), rejecting people on the basis of anything besides preaching a form of facism and inflicting any sort of harm on others is in my mind completely counterintutitive to what the basis of the movement is. The beauty of this movement is not only that it is not only national but GLOBAL, but that these occupation sites and communities will establish a pattern of meaningful dialogue with people to educate each other on our current state. Although there are plenty of people who don't know their shit and spell some stuff on signs wrong, there are also a hell of a lot of people involved who do know their shit and will be able to communicate this knowledge to those know do not through this subculture.

Furthermore, your proposed tactics are complete nonsense, I'm sorry. I've heard this argument about how hippocritical the movement is because we all use products of corporations, but what your proposal of action is nothing more than a fantasy. Smash your phone, go naked and protest at the White House, oh yea, and bring 1,000 of your closest friends(???????). That's impossible and you know it. The only way that this movement, not to mention the recent Arab Spring, as able to start and is able to continue is due to social networking and social media. This is the LIFEBLOOD of the movement and why people are able to gather and do mass actions in such a short amount of time. It is necessary to use products of corporations, which is arguably all material things, to mobilize any sort of movement. This does not mean that there is support for the engrained, systemic problems which are able to strip power and enslave humans while benefiting the elite in society. There needs to be either a HUGE shift in power dynamics (which is what this movement is representing) or anarchy, which is what you propose.

Jeremy:
I'm surprised to hear your support for this, I honesty thought you would be tearing this apart hahaha. I totally agree that here is ample room for reform that could be put in place without being a communist state. I think so many people try to overgeneralize and state that by making anything that is currently private instead of public, that is clear-cut socialism. This is a ridiculous sentiment and it is that of the far right, which I'd argue is across the board much less informed about things than said hippie-college students Kevin was referring to. This is almost purely a product of Fox News dominating (and dictating) conservative media.

I personally do feel that there needs to be more than just reform, there are systems that need changing. That's all I'll say about that.

Oh yea, and you can format that long reply if you want.

Fatbagger:
I also have frequently heard the demands complaint about this movement and it's an ongoing debate. Like Jeremy said, this is more of a widely based feeling of inequality and lost hope in the status quo of society, and a lot of what this movement is doing is trying to unite the 99% so we together can figure out how we want to use this newfound power. It's intended to be participatory.

I think this movement will continue and it will increase in importance as we head toward the 2012 elections, in which I feel Democrats will attempt to co-opt it. I have no idea what the winter will do for this, especially considering they tore down Zoucotti park and slashed a lot the heavy-duty tents they had set up to bear the lower degrees.

I hope this movement will begin to take more concrete local and national issues. There is always dispute over whether demanding specifics will do harm because then this movement will turn to more issue-based (and thus easier to be co-opted by a political party) rather than broad-based.

I personally would like to see some badass protests January 21, 2012 which is the one year anniversary of Citizens United vs. FEC which declared insufficient grounds for limiting corporate influence in campaigns (specifically ads)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_U ... Commission
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Post by Pasquar » 16 Nov 2011 11:10

I feel I should clarify that "Not everyone IN the 99%" has the degrees/credentials I listed. Of course there are a great deal of people in the 99% who have them.
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Post by Jeremy » 17 Nov 2011 23:31

I wouldn't say I support the occupy movement, but I support arguments based on facts, and the criticisms of the movement in this topic are, frankly, stupid.

I don't oppose the movement either, but I'm not going to get involved. I guess I am ambivalent about the movement (which means, contrary to popular belief, that I am interested about it, but can't make up my mind where I stand, rather than apathetic).

I think it's very understandable that people are angry about wealth distribution and the state of financial systems. However I also don't think that the criticisms that I see a lot of people in the movement making are completely accurate. I especially think the criticisms of the cause of the GFC are misguided, and re-writing history. I don't really accept that the sub-prime crisis was caused by "wall street greed," but rather by a mistaken policy that would have worked were it not so successful.

The theory, to simplify the issue as much as I can without distorting it too much, was that lending money to people to buy houses is a safe loan regardless of their ability to pay it back, because if they can't, you still have the house, so you don't lose anything. This is based on the assumption that house prices don't crash, which many people thought was unlikely to happen. It meant that the housing and equity market was open to much poorer people, and it gave them a real opportunity to improve their wealth. At the time, this was seen by many people, on both sides of politics, as a market mechanism for reducing poverty and moving people to the middle class.

The problem was that although it was obvious that many people wouldn't be able to pay off their loans, the financial markets didn't realise that so many people would take up this opportunity, meaning that a basically unpredicted high number of people defaulted on their loans at the same time, meaning that housing supply was much higher than demand (because many more houses came onto the market at the same time then usual), meaning that the house price dropped dramatically, and suddenly all those loans were worth more than the value of the houses, and epic amounts of money was lost.

I think the policy was largely well intentioned, it just needed to be regulated a lot better. Our market systems are largely built around the assumption that people are "greedy" and will thus act in their own best interests, so I don't think that's really a meaningful explanation for the cause of the GFC or anything, you might as well say IT was the cause, because if people had to conduct all the transactions via snail mail and person to person conversation, it wouldn't have happened either.

So I think many of the Occupy people don't really get the issue, and I think their calls for criminal charges against the bankers are completely unhelpful (I would even adopt the slogan "fight the game, not the players" in those circumstances).

However that said, regulation was a problem, and has been one for a long time, not just on that issue but on many. Social welfare and equality are also big issues, particularly in the US which is bucking the global trend and becoming less equal, as far as I'm aware. So I do support the vibe of the Occupy movements, at least to a degree. The other thing I think, is that they're very likely to have some influence on future policy legislation, even if it isn't a noticeable or attributed influence. I think politicians will be more careful with how they deal with financial regulation, bailouts, and that the movements are "moving the balance" back towards socially positive policies, at least to a degree.

At the very least, the Occupy protests are well intentioned people taking action and standing up for values of fairness and equality, and doing insignificant harm, so I don't think there are any good reasons to be actually opposed to the movement (except the apparently high numbers of conspiracy theorists within the movement, perhaps).

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Post by Jeremy » 24 Nov 2011 16:51

I was thinking about these protests the other day, but from a different perspective.

I think from the view of the people who want the protests to go away (ie. the local governments in particular), it's a really, really bad strategy to have the police involved at all.

Just in terms of winning PR battles and waiting for the movement to peter out, which I guess is the basic strategy, it seems like the police actions have created lots of "martyrs" and inspiration for the protesters to continue. It also creates much greater media reporting of the events. The media loves a good riot, but I wonder how much they could report on groups of people camping in public places and being ignored by the various governments.

It seems like poor strategic thinking from governments has been a large reason for these to continue for so long, and spread.

Although, on the other hand, I think the ethics of the kind of Machiavellian PR strategy response that I'm advocating dubious to say the least.

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Post by Pasquar » 24 Nov 2011 21:51

Jeremy said a lot of things and I'm on an iPad and it will be too difficult (or I'm too lazy) to cite specific arguments.

In terms of the GFC, I disagree that it was "largely well intentioned" mainly because I do see things from the other perspective which was mentioned. I do believe that people acting on their own self interests who spearheaded the GFC were incredibly greedy and that IS the assumption and reality (IMO) from which market-based systems operate. When there are people who have not only a disproportionate amount of wealth in society but also have disproportionate access and knowledge of financial systems which run our world, there are already some problems. The fact that the financial system is severely unregulated (specifically the derivative and credit default swaps which are at the core of this entire mess) is (again IMO) the biggest issue.

The reality is that hot shots with a shit-ton of wealth gambled with fake money in the form of subprime loans and when the housing bubble finally burst (which, as Jeremy mentioned was thought to never happen), it was the people who were encouraged to enter these mortgage agreements who were foreclose on and fucked over while banks, insurance companies, and rigged rating agencies either filed for bankruptcy or got a governmentl bail out, as speaks true to the popular "occupy" chant; "banks got bailed out, we got sold out". There is something seriously wrong when a system is in place which encourages people to make risky (though led to believe secure) investments. The rating agencies such as standard & poor played a very central role to the way things played out. Frequently loans were rated AAA when they were really shit and stocks were encouraged by higher-ups when they themselves talked about them being horrible investments.

There is something terribly wrong when a certain portion of the population has so much power literally over the rest of the world as they have the ability to control the flows of money in the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) economy that currently represents our country. Derivatives and default swaps being unregulated is the most ridiculous thing that could have happened. This is in addition to emerging from the Bush administration which gave massive tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations. These are all things that need to be critically evaluated and changed as they have proven themselves dysfunctional to any sort of egalitarian society. These problems are not something that can be easily remedied and are not singular issues because they are all products of a systemic problem with a functioning society, which (again IMO) is firmly based in capitalism. I would say more here by I'll leave that for further discussion, hopefully with more participants :wink:

As for the local gov'ts militant responses, I do agree with Jeremy and I believe it is a great thing for the movement. If there was no govt influence/police presence at these occupy sites, they would quickly be fading into the background of the news. Instead, there is an increase in police brutality and this is only working to amplify and strengthen the movement. I was going to provide some links to articles/vids but I'm lazy and anyone reading this most likely has seen their fair share, such as the recent pepper-spraying at UC Davis.

From studying social movements, I've learned that moments like these are more crucial than a peaceful protest of 300,000 people where there is no police involvement. Further, the media is anything but unbiased and will underreport or ignore completely these types of actions. The golden rule with media, however, is "if it bleeds, it leads" so if there is violence involved, there will undoubtedly be more attention focused, more media, and more momentum as a result. Police brutality is highlighting where the state lies, both locally and on a federal level, and who they are really out to protect. While over 4,000 nonviolent protestors have already been arrested, no one responsible for the GFC has been held accountable for their actions in any respect. Police officers are not out there for fun to arrest people (or most of them, I'd hope), there are orders coming down from the state to take action on We The People and this pattern exposes whose side the state is invariably on.

Like Jeremy said, this action by the state will inevitably work against their interest, as more people will be mobilized on a local, national, and global scale to fight and correct this pattern. UC Davis, for instance, has called for a general strike on ALL campuses in the UC system. This would not have happened if police didnt point-blank shoot a stream of potent pepperspray into the eyes of 11 students who were doing nothing but sitting down on their campus.

Shit's getting real.
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Post by Jeremy » 25 Nov 2011 13:50

I have numerous fundamental disagreements with your analysis, but they are mainly factual, and I don't trust the internet on this topic, so I don't think discussing them can be very meaningful, since it will just be a debate about facts without a reliable way of checking, without looking at economics textbooks.

Something that annoys me, that you talk about though, is citing the people who were foreclosed on as innocent victims. I don't accept that, and I don't accept that they were foreclosed on because of the crisis. Rather so many of them being foreclosed on at the same time was what caused the housing bubble to collapse, and caused the crisis to begin with (again this is a factual claim though, so not my main point).

People should carry some personal responsibility for their actions, especially when they're borrowing huge sums of money. These people being foreclosed on are far from innocent, but in fact, stupid, and the main cause of their personal woes. It reminds me of in Australia where an election a few years ago was largely decided by a debate interest rates. At the time interest rates were at the lowest level they'd been at in decades, and many people voted for the prevailing government because they were afraid rates would go up, and they couldn't afford that to happen. If you take out a loan when interest rates are at the lowest they've been in your lifetime, and can't afford to make the payments on higher interest rates, you are a retard, because they will inevitably go up (and they did). Likewise, if you take out large homeloans that you could not pay back, you have to accept some responsibility.

It is a sad reflection on humanity that the government needs to regulate to stop people borrowing money that they couldn't possibly pay back, and I agree that regulation is needed, but it's needed because there are so many stupid people who can't be trusted to make intelligent decisions. These people may have also been preyed upon by unscrupulous lenders, but the only reason that was successful was because of their lack of foresight, intelligence, planning, and critical thinking. Perhaps they are victims of their stupidity and lack of education too.



The other issue I wanted to bring up was the spraying, which is what led to my comment. From the video, and accounts, I take a completely different view to you. I think that while this was an obvious mistake in terms of PR, and that it would predictably cause the mass outrage that it has, the outrage is unjustified and completely disproportionate. I'm sure being pepper sprayed would suck, but for all but an insignificant number of people, it does no long term damage, and it's clearly a much more effective and less harmful manner of moving people than just trying to pick them up and carry them away. The video suggests the conversation was along the lines of; "You are tresspassing and need to move, if you don't move we will pepper spray you. Ok, I'm going to spray you now" - and then they did. I don't think that's "police brutality," or at least, certainly not very serious, and I especially think that people who are so clearly made aware of the consequences of their actions need to accept responsibility for them.

If they had have been sprayed, tasered, beaten or otherwise physically harmed without warning, or while under control in custody, they would be a different situation, but if you're so clearly warned, and choose to stay anyway then you're choosing to be sprayed, and you are clearly responsible for your choice.

What we see, of course, is the typical attitude of many protesters, that their cause is so important that the law should not apply to them, and so all legal action taken against them is unjustified, even though they're relying on legal action being taken against them for the protest to actually have any affect. I think this is an inconsistent position to take, and possibly somewhat dishonest.

It's also very much a case of "crying wolf." If you make this much of a fuss over such small and trivial issues, it is no surprise that more people aren't jumping on board the protests. If you quantify the seriousness of the issues regarding the GFC, bailouts, and financial regulation with the seriousness of a handful of people being pepper sprayed after being warned and choosing to be stay and be sprayed with the knowledge that would happen, then clearly there would be several orders of magnitude difference, and yet right now we're hearing more vocal outrage at the trivial issue than at the serious issue. Mixed messaging is always a problem with these kinds of protest movements, and I think it substantially decreases their ability to win new supporters, rather than just inspiring the already converted.

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Post by Jeremy » 25 Nov 2011 14:22

I just wanted to quickly clarify, because I'm sure I'd otherwise be misinterpreted, and say that obviously many of the people who profit from bad financial decisions are acting unethically, which I think is much worse than merely making a mistake, and also need to accept responsibility of their actions. The same probably applies to the pepper spray incident.

In relation to that, I also wanted to re-iterate that the spraying was a pretty obvious strategic error, regardless of whether or not it's justified, and that from a Machiavellian perspective I accept that the outrage might be a good strategy (although I disagree, because of the mixed messaging). Genuine outrage over the incident is, however, largely unfounded, at least to the extant that we've seen.

I also wanted to make it clear that I'm not criticising the actual people sprayed. I don't know what their position on the spraying is, but generally choosing to suffer because of the strength of your belief in your cause is an admirable decision to make. The outrage from the people divorcing the sprayed from their choice to be sprayed is not admirable, and indeed doesn't give the sprayed the credit they deserve for their decision.

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Post by Pasquar » 26 Nov 2011 14:48

I had a lot to say from you post 2 up from here, but your last post did clear up some key points.

In regards to personal responsibility and ethics relating to the GFC, I was going into this long explanation about the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE) which is something I observe a lot as I am a student of psychology before I left the comp open and my dad deleted it :x . If you are not familiar, it refers to the tendency for one to attribute the causes of an "other" person (usually in an "out-group") to dispositional, personal qualities rather than the power of the situation. I think the way you blatantly called a couple million people stupid for taking out subprime loans emulates that pattern of thinking. Of course there is personal responsibility with which we all must be accountable, but do you really feel that it was due to each person's dispositional qualities and not a situation created by severely unregulated financial practices which is to blame? You do clarify that people profiting from these bad financial decisions are indeed acting unethically, which I appreciate. I just want to reiterate the power of the SITUATION which contributed to this clusterfuck. With banks essentially being immune from the accountability of who they chose to give loans to, they proceeded to encourage the masses to enter these risky and premature contracts.

Now in regards to the perception and reaction to police violence/brutality, I understand your arguments, but I just feel very differently about the whole situation, which I'm guessing is not something I can persuade you with. Mainly though, I don't give a fuck if they were properly warned. I'm assuming you've watched the video of the pepperspray @ UC Davis, it's quite clear what they are doing: blocking a walkway. A FUCKING WALKWAY. I have seen my fair share of civil disobedience, including one that was the blockade of a major street in Columbus, OH. People were warned multiple times to leave or they would be arrested, and they were. They were not sprayed or harmed in any way. So what, prey, is the rationale for a police lieutenant dousing 11 people in the face with pepperspray when they could have easily (of course with some resistance) simply arrested the students. The spray was unnecessary regardless of whether or not they were properly warned.

Another thing, these students were protesting (among other things in solidarity with OWS) an over 80% tuition hike faced by the entire UC system. I'd like to bring this back to the fact that these students were blocking a path on a PUBLIC campus which they all pay to go to, and that price is being increased almost 2x against their will. Not only is UC Davis land public, they all pay to use it. When they actually use this "privilege", which is actually a right for not just students but anyone (as, again, this is public land), they are sprayed in the face.

So when you are referring to the "typical attitude of many protesters, that their cause is so important that the law should not apply to them", I counter that with WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY DOING THAT WAS ILLEGAL IN THE FIRST PLACE???????????? It is only "justified" because police warned students before it happened. Just because a representative of "the law" requests something of you DOES NOT MAKE IT THE LAW. My main point is: they were not doing anything illegal, they were sitting in a line on the campus they pay (too much) to attend.

I know we're harping on the same incident back and forth now, which in actuality is unfair given the scale of arrests and brutality experienced nation-wide. I wish to not open this can of worms myself just yet. here are a few articles I'd recommend which do a good job of exposing the reality behind the coordinated attack on OWS.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... NETTXT9038

http://www.cpj.org/2011/11/journalists- ... otests.php

http://www.alternet.org/story/153134/ca ... rotesters/

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Post by Jeremy » 27 Nov 2011 01:49

Just some quick points, sorry I can't expand on them, as I am in a rush.


1. The people who took out bad loans are obviously not solely to blame. Indeed I'm fairly sure that in one of my first posts on this topic I stated that there does need to be better regulation of the markets, and that I am sympathetic to the goals. All I'm saying is that the people taking out the loans are not "innocent victims," but also bear some of the responsibility. Both the lenders and the borrowers caused the problem. As they say, it takes two to tango.

2. Blaming just the "1%", and blaming the lenders but not the borrowers sounds a lot like your definition of this FAE to me... I could almost rephrase your argument to say you're blaming the "ruling class" and think that the "working class" is innocent.

3. Presumably the protesters were trespassing, which can still be a crime on public owned land (I don't know if universities in the US are public owned or not, but it wouldn't matter). People are arrested for tresspassing being on public owned land all the time, usually without any controversy (such as in hospitals, family courts etc.)

4. But this point is meaningless. The key point is that they were given the choice to move or be pepper sprayed, and they chose to be pepper sprayed. Put it this way, if somebody is being held up, and the criminal says "give me your wallet or a stab you" and the person refuses to give up their wallet, so is stabbed and has the wallet taken, are they making a smart decision? (Note, of course, that the criminal is obviously a criminal, and I'm not trying to justify the stabbing). Why was it so important for those protesters to sit there, that they would rather be pepper sprayed then move - and if they did have a good reason, isn't that reason more important than the fact that they were pepper sprayed, you could say by definition that it was that reason that they thought was more important than avoiding getting sprayed?

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Post by Jeremy » 27 Nov 2011 04:24

I further wanted to add that I wasn't really saying that the people who took out loans they couldn't repay did so because they were stupid, at least as casual relationship. My point was that the crisis was caused by so many people doing that, which caused house prices to fall (rather than house prices falling before people started defaulting, as you suggested). Whether or not the people are stupid was not really an issue. I was just saying that making the decision to borrow money that you can't afford to pay back is a bad decision, and that the people who did that are partly to blame for the GFC. I didn't literally mean that they're stupid, any more than I literally think the people who bought houses thinking interest rates would stay at record lows, and then voted for a shit government in the hope that it would keep them low are actually retarded. I'm just using language to express the fact that I think those decisions are not good ones, and indeed the people making them were seriously financially harmed by them, and would have been regardless of whether the GFC occurred or not. The only way they wouldn't have been harmed is if they didn't take out the loans - either because they chose not to, or because they weren't allowed to.

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Post by fatbagger » 27 Nov 2011 11:32

My dad tried buying a house durring this time. He got a loan he could afford and paid his bills. Then the housing market started to crash and the house he was buying dropped in value dramaticly. This made it so he owed the bank over twice as much as the house was worth. He also had quite a commute to work(from granite falls WA to seattle Wa) and durring this time the gas prices went from around $2.50 per gallon to $4.50 per gallon. This made it very tight but he still could afford to pay his bills. Then he got laid off from his job and had to collect unemployment. This made it so he could not completely pay the bank so he tried to refinance but because he was currently unemployed and he currently owed more than the house was worth. Even though he had shills to find a new job and even though he was currently less than 1 month behind. The banks were really quick to give the loan and even quicker to yank the rug out. The house still hasn't sold 2 years later. If the bank would have just refinanced it would have at least gotten a check every month, but no the house just sits there vacant while hard working americans get thrown out and are forced to rent(throw your money in the trash). The only reason My dad decided to try to buy the house was because the renting market was getting more and more expensive. The decision was like this. Either throw $1500 a month into the trash renting or pay $2000 a month to actually own a house. If you could afford to buy this is a no brainer. Is this greedy, is this stupid? I don't think so. You can't plan on the company you work for going out of buisness. You can't plan on gas prices almost doubling and you can't on your house to lose half it's value. Mabey the market crashes and your $240,000 home drops to $190,000. Mabey gas goes up a buck a gallon. But what happened was not predictable, at least to a 50 year old man who spends 50 hours a week working and can't use a computer very well. When he bought the house the market had supposedly stabalised. It was not at it's all time high it had already fallen from there and was supposed to be going back up. It was portrayed to him as a golden opprotunity to buy a house at a fair price and it was his only opprotunity to afford to have his own house. So if you don't expect; a houst to drop in value from$240,000 to $75,000, gas to go from$2.50 a gallon to $4.50 per gallon and to lose a stable 50hr a week job because it goes out of buisness then you are retarded. It's not like you see it Jeremy, yeah I'm sure there were thoes who were buying houses and they knew any little thing going wrong would bust them. The majority were just trying to stop throwing there hard earned money away, and buy a house that they could afford to buy with a little wiggle room. These people were lied to by banks, employers and the government. That is why all the houses were foreclosed. I know because they were my neighbors, freinds and family. You don't know because all you have to go on is a computer screen that tells you only what you want to look for and all you are looking for is why everyone else in the world is dumber than you are. Fuck you for calling my freinds, family and neighbors retarded. And that is what you are saying. You know nothing.
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Post by Jeremy » 27 Nov 2011 14:34

A sad story, but like with every time a trend gets mentioned on modified, you've misunderstood.

When people are talking about large scale social phenomenon, they're not saying that every single individual confirms to that generalisations.

I should note, the people I'm calling retarded are the Australians who re-elected John Howard in 2004 on the basis of their belief that he would keep interest rates at record lows.

I also note, that the discussion was about the reason for the housing market to crash, not for the consequences of the GFC. Lots of people suffered after the GFC without being partly responsible for it. It was the people who borrowed money they couldn't afford to pay back, and then defaulted on their houses in record numbers, leading to the house price drop who should bear some of the responsibility.

Based on your story, your father was not somebody who defaulted when prices were still high, and was not somebody who voted for John Howard based on interest rates, so none of my comments were aimed at people like him.

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Post by Jeremy » 27 Nov 2011 14:38

Put it like this;

Your father probably lost his job because of the economic downturn at the start of the GFC, and then he couldn't refinance his house because prices had dropped so much and he was unemployed. None of these things would have happened if there were either regulation in place, or personal choice, that stopped people from taking out loans they couldn't afford while the economy was going well. Both his loss of job and the fall in his house price are probably directly attributable to the people taking out unaffordable "sub prime" loans.

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Post by fatbagger » 27 Nov 2011 22:25

K. Still there are an awful lot of people who did the right thing at the wrong time and lost alot. They are victims of a bad situation and a lack of regulations and it seemed to me that you were calling them stupid. If I mis understood then sorry for that, I just felt offended.
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Post by Tsiangkun » 28 Nov 2011 14:20

The sixteen trillion dollars was not given to the banks from the taxes of *homeowners*.

The sixteen trillion dollars was given to the banks from the taxes of everyone.

I did not get to participate in the buying of homes I could not afford.
I did not profit from the sales of property at inflated prices.
I did not get to profit from nano-second market manipulation schemes.
I did not get to profit from any of the banks schemes.

I got stuck with the tab for sixteen trillion dollars worth of criminal banking behavior.

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Post by Jeremy » 29 Nov 2011 04:16

I don't disagree with any of that (except perhaps your use of the word "criminal" and only because I take a literal definition of that word, and don't call people "criminals" unless they have been found guilty of a crime).

I was merely discussing the causes of the GFC, which are complex and numerous, but one of which was a large number of people taking out loans they couldn't afford. The bailout was obviously a response to the financial predicament, rather than a cause of it. I understand and sympathise with the anger over the bailout, and I wasn't attempting to deny that anger as reasonable.


@Fatbagger; While you did misunderstand me, I think it probably was foolish to call those people stupid, or suggest that their decision was stupid. Lately I've been very frustrated with people who make bad decisions, but "stupid" is an obviously loaded word, and I think if I were to look at the situation better, it is perhaps an unfair word to use. There may be many reasons why they made such bad decisions, and without knowing their specific circumstances I shouldn't judge them, so I think you were right to call me on that, regardless of whether my statements applied to your family or not. Sorry. I will try not to be so judgemental in the future.

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Post by Jeremy » 29 Nov 2011 04:19

Indeed Cameron, I think you'll find I did acknowledge the concerns you raised on the first page, and suggested they were sensible. Without any moderators reading or responding to this topic, it is still difficult to read though.

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Post by Tsiangkun » 29 Nov 2011 15:49

Sorry, my phone doesn't wrap the text right on this thread, and I can only see the first screen width of characters.

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Post by pips » 04 Dec 2011 09:32

You say the whole movement is about banks being bailed out and you being sold out in relation to the housing crisis...

But still, what do the protesters want out of this? Stuff IS being done about the whole housing crisis. So here is my opinion based on my limited knowledge and hopefully not on any of my naivety...

I am pretty much in agreement with Jeremy that the majority of people were foolish to buy houses they couldn't afford, AND banks were foolish to loan money out to people without seriously reviewing their abilities to pay. Who is going to turn down an opportunity to have a home they really wanted or to profit off of another loan? It is done and overwith. We all learned our lessons about sub-prime loans...hopefully.

Coming from a mortgage servicing position, I see borrowers being helped (usually just capitalizing their debt to the end of the loan, but that relieves them from foreclosure). I also see borrowers not getting helped for many reasons why.

From my experience, Obama rolled out this Making Homes Affordable program / Home Affordable Modification Program (not sure if there is a difference between the two), telling borrowers that they may qualify for help. EVERYONE came rushing in for this program. So not only are servicers overwhelmed with requests for modifications, they have to follow guidelines to be able to weed out the ones who seriously need and could use the help over the ones just looking for some random relief.

WHY DOES IT MATTER THAT THE VALUE OF HOMES DROPPED??!! It sucks the value of homes fluctuate, and I don't know who should take the fall between the sellers, buyers, and lenders. You bought it that price. You out to pay that price. People don't go and try to get their car loans refinanced the day after they bought the car, because the value dropped after driving it off the lot. It is just like the stock market. The only time the value of your home should matter is when you sell it.

But my guess is that Obama rolled out this plan to help out. Banks were bailed out (to sustain the loss offering all these modifications caused), and I guess it doesn't seem like it, but borrowers were given modifications, too (can't remember the numbers, but it was in the millions or billions)! Others were just disqualified or not eligible based on guidelines. Guidelines pretty much look to see that borrowers have income...and enough to make monthly payments. If borrowers unfortunately don't have a job right now, it doesn't matter whether their loans are modified or not, payments are not likely (except they may be approved for a forbearance). There are others out there who could really use this bail-out. And again, if borrowers have too much income or assets to support monthly payments, again, there are others out there who could use more help.

Other than that, it is just going to take time to fix. I have a job, because the mortgage servicing industry is overwhelmed with borrowers looking for help, and it is CHAOS trying to handle every case properly and in a timely fashion, but I am seeing some order starting to fall into place after almost two years in the job so far.

Here's another thought...if servicers just accepted whatever money borrowers could pay rather than foreclosing on their homes, how fair is that to the ones actually making their payments? Or to the servicers and investors depending on their income to stay afloat as well?

You can't please everybody. You fix one thing, and someone else is going to be affected and complain. And that is economics. And that is where I stop, because I can only imagine how tough it is to handle taxes, and unemployment, and all those rates. I know I ruined my city as a mayor in a simulation I had to do in my economics class, and all my intentions were good.

I just don't understand what exactly the protesters want out of this, and I hope they've picked up an economics book and understand something of it before participating in this whole occupy movement. You can't just swoop in and change something to someone's advantage and expect nothing else to get knocked out of balance.

And I don't believe all this 99% crap. I know there are some exceptions, but you gotta work to get what you want, and doing nothing but complaining about it in a park isn't going to cut it.
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