Forum Post: Free Markets and Wall St NOT the Problem; End the Fed, Occupy D.C.
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 10, 2011, 4:41 a.m. EST by gekko
(75)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
As the Wall St. protestors grow in numbers, their message and demands become increasingly obscure and disconcerted. It seems everyone has their own answer to our economic woes and are quick to place blame on whatever institutions or ideologies they feel are responsible. It seems like everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, from the unemployed, to the unions, to celebrities like Michael Moore. What is clear, however, is that many others are now chanting along side people like Michael Moore, a well known socialist, and are now blaming capitalism and free markets as our problems and presenting socialism and bigger government as a solution. As alarming as that sounds, there seems to be more and more people out there who seem to be singing the same tune. The only problem with their incriminating arguments against capitalism and free markets is that they’ve never actually lived in a truly free market, and the very ideologies they place the blame on are almost the exact same as the ideologies they are now promoting: An amplified version of socialism, big government, corporatocracy, dependence, and collectivism. The truth is we have not had true capitalism or free markets in the United States for at least 98 years, or since the inception of the Federal Reserve System. It is impossible to have a free market when there is a private central bank that controls the money supply by artificially setting interest rates, operates without any transparency or congressional oversight, and makes secret deals with Wall Street, foreign central banks, and other politically-connected insiders. That is the very antithesis of a free market. In a free market, interest rates and the money supply would just be determined by supply and demand like anything else. The Fed is actually quite inefficient in determining true market interest rates and thus creates massive disequilibrium and imbalances that are felt worldwide. Bubbles blow up and pop when artificial supply and demand for money is created by just a few people, leaving the average person to cope with the pain of the inflation and deflation of their money, assets, and resources. In addition to this fundamentally flawed credit market, we have a Federal Government that has gotten so huge and so invasive, anyone still saying we live in a free market world should be thrown in an insane asylum. We have never before seen such an expansion of Federal government than we have in these past few decades. Since 1971, when the Bretton Woods agreement was revoked, we saw the last remnants of sound money thrown out the window and an explosion in government indebtedness.
READ THE REST HERE: http://www.moneytrendsresearch.com/capitalism-and-wall-st-not-the-problem-end-the-fed-occupy-d-c/
And thus begins the fracturing of the movement.
This issue is too specific to be the central theme. The Ron Paul libertarians will divide from the other factions over it and the movement will either die or be coopted.
If you wish this matter to be discussed in government with any real affect, corporate influences on our politics via campaign finance must be ended.
The problem is not the Fed but who has been running the Fed since Reagan appointed Greenspam.
Going back to a gold standard is not an option.
Financial reform is a big, complex project and will most likely include some changes for the Federal Reserve system. But you dump the Fed types really should just go back to Faux. We've got work to do.
HAHAHAH @ your ignorance
TO ALL RON PAUL SUPPORTERS: Will you Ron Paul people please go hang out with the Tea Party where you properly belong? OCCUPY WALL STREET IS A LEFT-WING MOVEMENT, or haven’t you notice? Just look around. For one thing, our signs aren’t misspelled. Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable among fellow right-wing extremist? Don’t you find yourself agreeing more often with Sara Palin than us? Our message is not exact, but I'm sure it doesn't admit the view that the billionaires are an oppressed minority who should be taxed even less and given even more freedom to screw us. Sure, getting rid of the Fed sounds cool-- if you're talking about nationalizing the banks under the auspices of truly democratic government. However, Occupy Wall Street surely rejects the right-wing extremist sentiments that you hold in common with your fellow "Libertarians" like the Koch Brothers, Dick Armey, Eric Cantor, and the Cato Institute. Why don't you take your "Austrian” economics" (aka "Reaganomics," "Supply-Side economics," and "trickle-down theory.") to Somalia where there's no government and your Randian privateer heroes (known there as "war-lords") richly abound. You appear well financed, but sorry, we're not Tea Party dupes who you can convince to vote against our interest. We don't believe the best solution to every problem is for the government to do nothing, or if it is doing something, to stop doing it. We range from moderate Obama supporters to anarcho-communist. We don’t believe money should ever talk in government and that a moral society should tax its rich to help provide healthcare, education, housing, and social security for all its people. That‘s a big enough tent, indeed. But if we let the likes of you in, we cancel out whole the meaning of our movement. It would be like the American Revolutionaries including Tories in their movement. Why bother with a movement at all if it has such a broad meaning that it means nothing at all. Face it, if you can’t believe that we must make sure everyone has at least a shitty apartment before one person can own 10 mansions, then you just don’t belong among us.
I am sure you would prefer rename us “Occupy the Fed“and leave references to Wall Street out of it altogether. You would have us protest all regulations of the Banks and demand that we go back halcyon times of the 1840s. Perhaps we could get Rush Limbaugh, a true economic Libertarian, to address our crowd. We can become the new darlings of Fox News.
You guys are like wolves in sheep's clothing in our ranks, attacking our low-information members, and trying to co-opt our thunder. You disguise yourself as anti-establishment leftist, and then spew out rightist propaganda that makes Richard Nixon look like Karl Marx. Libertarians are always trying to sponge off the Leftist cool. But you are not cool. You're just of Republican wannabe hipsters who smoke an occasional joint to look cool. Admit it. You call the Billionaire criminals who‘ve been screwing us for 30 years "job creators," and you always end up voting Republican. (Ron Paul is a Republican!) This may not be a partisan movement, but please know that Republicans are the antithesis of everything we’re about. Sorry. We're the 99% and we want the Greedy 1% to pay. Call us class warriors if you must, but the Koch Brothers our not on our side and either are you. I don’t see how we can get along. As far as I’m concerned, you guys are well-financed counter-demonstrators. I hereby out you for all to see. Hear this OCCUPY. KEEP LEFT. NO RIGHT TURN.
well after wasting about 2 minutes of my life reading this, I've concluded that your probably just slightly retarded, and you've probably have just been without a job for so long, that you believe the only way for yourself to make money is for someone else to give it to you. can't really come to any other conclusions. yes we all know that many of you want more socialist type policies, you want more wealth to be spread around to you just for existing. You are the people who can't create anything on their own, and because you are incapable you deserve to be given it just for being alive. well guess what?? you can't penalize all the rich because of the corrupt few at the top colluding with the government. sorry. there are lots of rich people out there who started with nothing and earned their living perfectly legitimately, and they helped lots of people and gave lots of people jobs along the way. private business is still the best known engine of job creation to this day, and they are already so burdened with high taxes, regulation, and high cost of employing people because of all the programs they need to pay to take care of the incapable such as yourself. and you want more taxes?! taxing them more will only demotivate them more than they already are from producing and it will further force them to other countries to do business. It is the poor ppl who need to start paying up: last year the top "1%" paid 47% of all taxes while the bottom 51% paid ZERO. so why don't YOU start paying more taxes Mr. 99%. get off your ass and go protest in D.C, so they can lower taxes for everyone and ease the restrictions of doing business, and maybe one day, a guy smart and resourceful enough to start a business on his own and can, god willing, finally get your little job you've been dreaming of for all these years. i know it's probably been a very long time, but one day, i know this is gonna sound crazy: even you will finally be able to earn your own living without anyone handing it to you. just keep praying, and start by occupying the institutions who are responsible for the bailouts, backscratching, and bad policy: the federal government and the federal reserve.
Here is the real problem: There has been a massive "wealth redistribution" that has gone on for the last 30 years. The top 1% now controls over 42% of our entire nation's wealth and the top 10% now controls over 70% of our entire nation's wealth. The bottom 50% now control around 2% of our entire nation's wealth. (University of Southern California Study).
How did this wealth redistribution happen? The middle class is the engine of our economy. The middle class spends their wealth on corporate goods/services and the corporations take that money in as profit. The corporations redistributed the middle class wealth by paying vast majority of their profits out to the executives at the top and shareholders. Middle class wages have stagnated for 30 years while executive wages have gone up 256% in since 1980. Even last year executive compensation went up another 11%. We have not seen numbers like this since the great depression. All of our nation's wealth has been redistributed into the hands of the few.
How did this happen? The middle class was roped into replacing wages with easy credit and loans. So instead of paying people living wages, corporations fooled us into thinking we were doing well and could afford things by giving us easy credit instead of wages. Corporations came up with the brilliant idea that they could loan us money instead of paying us wages. Instead of having wages to buy t.v.'s, furniture, etc. we were given easy loans. So the middle class became a debtor class. There used to be a tax disincentive to paying out all of corporate profits at the top because in the 1950's income was taxed at 90% over a certain amount money ($2 million in today's dollars) and now that tax disincentive has disappeared. In 1950's the highest marginal tax rate was 90%. In 1960-1970's it was 70%. In 1980's it dropped to 49%. In 1990's dropped to 39%. Under George Bush it dropped to a mere 36%. We have had over 30 years of massive tax cuts for the wealthy. There is now no tax disincentive to paying out all of the corporate wealth at the top. And there is no employee bargaining power because now less than 7% of all of private sector jobs are unionized.
With no tax disincentive and no employee bargaining power, all of the corporate profits are being paid to shareholders and executives. Why can't you just trust executives to pay people fair wages? In the 1980's our courts ruled that corporate executives only have one duty and that is to maximize shareholder profits. The 1980's ruling single-handedly removed executives from having any duties to their employees, society, or to the company's long-term future. Executives only have one duty and that is to maximize short-term shareholder profits. And executive compensation is usually directly tied to maximizing short-term shareholder profits. This caused companies to not create long-term growth plans and to instead use gimmicks to increase short-term profits. In fact, instead of executives using innovation, creation, and growth to increase profits and stock prices, executives know that they can do it through easier methods like laying-off workers and cost-cutting like pushing healthcare and retirement costs on workers.
The problems are: 1) deregulation of the banks by the Republican-controlled congress in 1999 (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act); 2) hedge funds are exempt from regulation (and are currently causing the world financial crisis by betting against Greece and other Euro nations and the Euro currency); 3) tax system no longer has a disincentive against paying outrageous executive salaries (highest marginal tax rate has dropped from 90% to 36%); 4) commodities market (oil, gold, food, metals) is exempt from regulation and is now a haven for financial speculators (Republican-controlled Congress exempted it in the Commodities Future Modernization act of 2000); 5) the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations can spend unlimited funds in campaign elections - Citizen's United case (thus politicians on both sides favor the wealthy/corporations) and 6) the rise of corporate/billionaire propaganda media "news." Because of the need to raise massive sums in politics today, we no longer have a party that represents the people. The Democrats have to chase the corporate and big money donors too. What can we do about this: 1) re-instate Glass-Steagall Act regulating the banks; 2) regulate hedge funds and the commodities market (because the commodities market is not regulated speculation has caused prices for commodities to go through the roof); 3) get rid of the money in politics (have federally funded elections with clear limits on spending and no outside groups allowed to have ads); 4) get rid of 1980's laws stating that corporations' only duty is to maximize shareholder profits; and 5) regulate "news" channels and newspapers (no more "slanted opinion news" masquerading as hard news) and reinstitute the fairness doctrine across all news outlets to ensure that both sides get equal time.
I cant stand the end the fed argument. We might not like it but the government, four OUR OWN PROTECTION, should NOT have control of the money supply. And going without some form of monetary policy would send us into an unrecoverable recession.
Do I think Bernanke is the best fed chairman ever? Idk thats hard to say, I'm sure he would have looked a lot better if he didn't get screwed by DC, Fannie/Freddie, and subprime mortgages.
The Fed is just a tool, albeit one captured by a dominant private finance industry. If you are serious about ending abuses in banking and finance, call for nationalizing the banks instead.
no that's retarded did you read the whole thing or what? We can very easily have a north dakota type banking system without nationalizing any banks
But nationalizing banks is ideal, so why not do it? I have no desire to privatize everything, nor does the overwhelming majority of people.
wall street is the problem, corporate oligarchy is the problem. calling michale moore a socialist proves you are ignorant, don't know what socialism is, and are willing to ad hom a perfectly good person and thus have no conscience.
the "alarm" would certainly be alarming if it was true. instead its just a fiction you are using to spread disinformation and lies.
you have good points about the corporate oligarchy not being capitalism. you miss the point that we never had capitalism. yes the fed is a problem, no its not the only problem. One problem is people running around running "socialism" and lighting their hair on fire. Quit lying, quit spinning, and quit trying to yank our chain.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/thetruth-socialismcapitalismcommunismmarxism/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/capitalism-versus-corporatism/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/no-war/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/help-me-understand/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/capitalism-a-love-story/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/sociology/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/energy-101-solution/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/ethics/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/break-your-left-right-conditioning/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/nader-kucinich-and-paul/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/5-facts-you-should-know-about-the-wealthiest-one-p/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/i-am-homeless-joe-jp-morgan-chase-accidentally-for/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/can-we-end-the-fed/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/why-end-the-federal-reserve-and-what-do-you-replac/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/teaching-the-occupation/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/this-forum-needs-structure/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/ows-is-not-your-personal-billboard-for-your-politi/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/systems-theory-primer/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/organize-inform-take-action-effect-change/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/better-website-needed/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/stop-playing-the-devils-games/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/nonviolence-the-only-path/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/ows-not-against-capitalism/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/this-is-not-about-political-stripe-it-is-about-bas/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/national-initiative-for-democracy/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/a-third-political-party-the-movement-of-the-middle/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/300-fema-camps/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/ows-is-a-false-flag-operation/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/why-this-will-not-work/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/paradigm-shift-now/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/a-proposal-for-focus/
http://occupywallst.org/forum/stop-the-bullshit-posts-and-get-organized/
dude the whole point of this was to say that we haven't had capitalism in almost 100 years and idiots like michael moore that blame everything on capitalism are fucking stupid because they have never, ever, ever lived in a truly capitalistic society. Have you not heard him bashing capitalism before?? he did a fucking movie about how it is 'failure.' Are you try tell me he is not a socialist??? did you forget your meds this morning??
michael moore is a brilliant man, not an idiot. Hes been right about pretty much everything. You trying to tell me he is a socialist is pretty much proof you are the one offyour meds, off reason, off truth, just using tired old lame right wing ad homs against a perfectly decent human being. "Capitalism, a love story" was right on, was not socialist, did not demonize capitalism but in fact communicated that Moore thinks capitalism is a fine idea but not the evil version of it. He does not understand that the system we have is not capitalism, but other than that, hes dead on. You calling him a socialist proves you are ignorant of what socialism is, ignorant of what moore is about and using tired old uncanned far right ad homs.
Quit being part of the problem.
please explain his remarks from this video http://youtu.be/l97SuV6DThQ
what michael moore is calling capitalism is corporate oligarchy, and we need to end that, fast. emergency like.
yeah sure, take your meds
I am so sick of Libertarians endless mantra of 'End the Fed' I don't want or need to learn the minutiae of economic theory to set the system correct. Politicians need to be held accountable and financial institutions need to be forced to act responsibly. Regulatory agencies haven't been doing their jobs and the politicians don't care. Ending the Fed isn't going to change any of that. Sorry.
you obviously didn't read the entire article so why would you write a comment. it's about ending the fed AND putting the federal gov in check, exactly what you are arguing for
What I'm arguing for is a government that is responsive to the needs of the people it is supposed to represent. And sadly, I did read your entire rant. Not surprisingly, you didn't bother to really consider anything that I said in my comment. The endless echo of 'end the fed' distracts from other far more important action that needs to happen. Yes, the system needs to be restructured, but you make no logical argument as to how ending the fed would do that. So, no, I am not arguing to end the Fed. Cheers.
Jack you might need to see a doctor I think you have Stockholm syndrome!!! but after that, i wish you the best of luck on whatever winless battle that youre fighting... there is a way to dismantle the fed: http://www.moneytrendsresearch.com/non-violent-strategies-for-nationalizing-federal-reserve-system/
a debt money system will do just that, put everyone into debt. creating money and lending it to governments at interest will only lead to more debt because it is impossible to pay back without borrowing more. please learn about North Dakota's banking system, we can do this at a national level.
Bill Still "The Secret of Oz" a great informative video.
yeah it is
Private banks create the bulk of our money supply when they make loans. Through the Fed’s fractional reserve process what we use for money is issued as interest-bearing debt.
Our money system is controlled by private banks for their agendas, not for the common good. Our government has the power to issue money (Art.1, Sect.8) and spend it into circulation to promote the general welfare; including for infrastructure, education and health care; not misuse the money system for speculation as banks have historically done. Our lawmakers must now reclaim that power!
Private money creation through the fractional reserve accounting fosters an unprecedented concentration of wealth which destroys the democratic process and ultimately promotes imperialism. 1% of the American population claims ownership of over 40% of the wealth, and receives 24% of income, and vital infrastructure is ignored. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives a D grade to our infrastructure and estimates that $2.2 trillion is needed to bring it to acceptable levels. That fact alone shows the world’s dominant money system to be a major failure crying for reform.
http://www.Monetary.org
Oh my. Did I write this? XD Agree with you 110%. Here's my thread: http://occupywallst.org/forum/why-socialism-cannot-save-us-from-a-ws-occupant/