Forum Post: How many of you actually know what wallstreet is?
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 10:37 p.m. EST by CapitalismRulesPeriod
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How many of you actually know what wall street is? please explain in your own words what you think it is.
It's bad form to start a conversation with such obvious contempt.
This is a good video to start with because these people took Matt Taibbi's article: "The Great American Bubble Machine" and set to video (it is GREAT 10 minutes watch): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEhQrnKTQk0
It's a street. Lol
I suppose your question is to elicit a response like: "Wall Street is the financial system that mediates risk capital to optimal uses in furtherance of production. Financiers, traders and brokers on Wall Street move capital to its "highest use". But in point of fact, stock trading and "market making" have been replaced by HFT (High Frequency Traders) who arbitrage milliseconds,--we can well do without their "liquidity". "Wall Street " is only as good as the "backstop" that the Sovereign (the American Taxpayer) gives to it. "Wall Street" does bet or gamble with its own money, instead it clips "2 and 20" (2% and 20%) from pension funds. Yes, once America's capital markets were the envy of the world, but now emerging/developing markets have ripped a page from our play book (Singapore, Seoul) and they recriminate your Timothy Geithner for exporting the "American disease" of global instability. Yes, "Wall Street" created $600 Trillion in derivatives that is now pointed like dagger at the heart of the world economy. Please go back to what Wall Street was supposed to do: fund the next Apple, the next cure for cancer, ... anything but the "casino capitalism" that you have given us.
That's silly it were all the evil doers are and if you git killed you get 70 virgins..........no wait ummmmmmmmmm
Let's see, it's probably the temple at where you worship, where all the cops have constructed the barricades, while demanding "papers", like good Germans.
Doesn't it intersect Sesame Street?
a market place for financial products. if you like capitalism move to a 3rd world country without wellfare kthx.
i'm not on welfare and i never would be
Wall Street is a symbol of what our forefathers warned of, a system of two parties, that would represent a few and not the whole. It is a symbol of the greed that is certain to pervade a democracy if not kept in check by the majority. So a revolution would be in order to bring back the principals of democracy where all are represented instead of the few.
some very funny answers but at least some of you have gotten it right
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq2Aa2m1mcYwdE5pLVFtY0dfM1cwU3hMYjZUSjhsZmc&hl=en_US
Wallstreet is a place where we can invest our money into stock and sell.Purpose is to Give corporations and investors an outlet to meet .The stocks from what i understand grow and increase in value and as a bonus for lending money to the company as an investment im suposed to earn a divided of company profit. Thats off the top of my head.
Strictly speaking, wall street is a street. :) But I know that's not what you meant, so here: The way I understand it is the stock exchange and financial services industry is a vehicle for venture capitalism. It is a way for people to invest in companies rendering goods and services which need capital to begin and to build and expand. Also, it is a way for people themselves to attain capital for other wealth related investments like houses, cars, and college.
That was what was intended. However, shit has gotten way way way out of control. Now we have securities and repackaged securities and derivatives which are basically bets on top of bets. It's kind of the same stuff that caused the crash in the 20's. Spider trading and so forth. Wall street is necessary because people need capital and when multiple shareholders hold financial stock in a company and that company does well, everyone in the country benefits. That is in theory anyway.
The reality is that many, not all, but many corporations act as if they live in a bubble and do not have concern for either the sustainability of natural resources around them or who they harm in the process of "expanding at all costs". A company must be held accountable by the government with regulations so that they do not commit grievous actions against humanity such as crimes of labor, crimes of pollution, crimes of obstruction of political process (although arguably this is the responsibility of elected officials themselves.) We need to have accountable capitalism...a system which we have yet to see in this country.
Let us not forget, if the robber barons had not initially screwed over the every man, (remember the song 16 tons?...I owe my soul to the company store...) there would not need to be regulations and a hearty, well founded mistrust of big corporations. Power corrupts and it must be held in check just as each branch of the government is by another branch which has great power as well.
A+ you are the first person to actually answer the question though with your obvious opinion thrown in ,good job
yay
i've been wondering the same thing myself. who exactly is this ows movement targeting? or did they pick this name as a catchall for those "tired, poor and huddled masses," those "wretched refuse, homeless and tempest-tost." looking for an outlet to vent and Wall Street seemed like a catchy moniker for the movement? if wall st is all those - "such as" investment firms, hedge funds, corporations and traders, who do business at the stock exchange, then wouldn't they be friends of the federal reserve? but the fed doesn't seem to be decrying this movement. banks don't technically appear wall st to me? they were just the conduits of this massive fraud scheme that urged (by the likes of Presidents Clinton and Bush, Jr.) home ownership no matter how qualified a buyer one was. I mean one would have to be grossly incompetent to not be able to see that some who were granted loans were not qualified to receive loans. freddie mac, fannie mae, subprime lenders, secondary loan market, the hedge funds - they were all in on the game! so in the end when the pirates of wall st did away with a significant sized bounty from the fed, then the fed needed government's help. Hey! weren't these the CEO's of the United States of America who shepherded all the lambs to the precipice called the American Dream? but the US govt can't bail out investment houses! so the banks were force-fed to swallow these whales; all the whales were made extinct except for goldman sachs. a lot of this firm's players have played a crucial part in the governance of this country over time. remember the investigation govt was supposedly carrying out into goldman sach's sale of a sub-prime mortgage bundle to germany; whatever happened to that? so if people's anger is now being aimed at banks too, the question then arises: are the investment firms wall st because the investment houses merged with banks? have the battleground lines been drawn between the fed and wall st? they say that our world has become more connected than ever before. i think the world's financial systems have become so inter-dependent and inter-twined that this behemoth ball of yarn has gotten unbelievably tangled. and don't get me started on currency aka "legal tender." the rate at which financial worth has been inflated on paper, imagine if all the people in the world wanted all their savings and investments liquidated and in currency? can you imagine that disaster? so the current financial system simply can't be discarded; it has to be meticulously sorted out by people who give a damn for their fellow human. and i think that's the reason this movement began. people are hurting and they know the people who were given the charge of looking after its citizenry have failed them. i mean, sale of ultra luxury goods has risen - doesn't that say something? and when you hear that, the rich become part of the problem as well, and therefore, part of wall st. who knows, maybe the chinese and the isreali are wall st too? i mean your average person doesn't even realize that the fed is not part of federal anything, and i believe that is by design - to keep the finer workings of our financial institutions a mystery. how are we to define wall st then?
I had the assumption that wall street was a group of adjacent corporate headquarters, But when I googled it I found out that It was used to refer to like a banking firm situated near Wall Street in lower Manhattan. Now it has retail and commercial banks and insurance companies. Its also where a lot of trading happens NYSE, ASE, NASDAQ, etcetera etcetera…
He is the economic recovery to previous page! To provide effective brokerage services!
It's nothing more than a symbol of our corrupt and dysfunctional financial system.
It's where people whut control the markets, lend to prey, and blindly chase quant formulas to speculate in electronic currency, hire hundreds of serfs to work for them. Wall Street is a canyon that empties people out onto the streets like a river at the end of every work day. It's the symbol of money talks, shit walks. It's the home of fiduciary capitalism gone mad without a shred of social responsibility. And now it's where thousands of hands-on economic experts--who've lost jobs, pensions, mortgages and health care--rally to protest.
Whut r yur own words, pleeze?
wrong
so enlighten us (in your own words, if possible)
It is literally a street, but what happens on wall street is they trade stock.
Wall Street is fear. The opposite of fear is love. Love is our one demand.
What I want from my society is love. I want to walk into any neighborhood in the world without fear. I want to know that everyone is cared for. I want to trust that people in leadership are fit for it. I want love to be normal.
http://blag.whit537.org/2011/10/occupation.html
actually it is the opposite you fear corporations even though all they do is sell you things and you had the wrong answer
It's a street with some walls. Signed Socialism forever. FIght the Plutocracy and Work for Democracy.
Tear down the wall (street)!
ows from start has been democratic and all republicans do nothing but demonize the movement read the signs listen to the people and see tax rich get money out of politics end wars have never been backed by republicans tax cuts for middle class modernize roads and bridges invest in middle class not banking class by raising minimum wage thats the occupy wall street message
actually we want the tax cuts to be across the board not just for the rich or the middle class
read the signs and talk with the people you will see that we will never support a republican view
trust me i believe you
so move along you are not ows
but i do enjoy arguing with you guys
but you are hurting our movement by dividing us on a message
you were never unified in the first place
no we are controlled chaos and republicans are scared
Wall street is a street in NYC with buildings on it, symbolic to many of the mega-rich, corporate gambling, and lately, our financial troubles.
This isn't an attack on the rich. There is nothing wrong with being rich. There is a problem with being rich and stealing from the poor. There is a problem with few people controlling the wealth, and to that end there is a problem when those who control the wealth are not helping their country and society progress.
David Walker, former US Comptroller General and chief of the GAO, warned before the 2004 election that if large economic changes were not made, by 2009 the United States and its taxpayers would not be able to afford the interest payments on the national debt. A study authorized by the US Treasury in 2001 found that in order to keep servicing the debt at its current rate of growth, by 2013 income taxes would need to be raised to 65%. If the United States cannot afford to pay the interest on its debts, that would be the final stage of economic collapse and hence result in a total textbook bankruptcy. The systematic crisis would in turn spread to the rest of the world.
How did this happen? Why is the US national debt $14,819,350,000+? Of the 203 countries in the world today, only four (!) do not owe others money. The collective external debt of all the governments in the world is now above 40 trillion dollars and this number doesn’t include the massive about of household debt in each country.
The whole world is basically bankrupt. But how? How can the world as a whole owe money to itself? Obviously, it’s all nonsense. There is no such thing as ‘money’. There are only planetary resources, human labor and human ingenuity. The monetary system regulated by Federal Reserve is nothing more than a game… and an outdated and dysfunctional one at that. Those in positions of social power alter the rules of the game, at will. The nature of those rules is guided by the same competitive, distorted mentalities that are used in everyday “monetary” life, only this time the game is rigged at its root to favor those who run the show. For example, if you have 1 million dollars and put it into a CD at 5% interest, you are going to generate $50,000 a year simply for that deposit. You are making money off of money itself… paper being made from other paper … nothing more - no invention - no contribution to society – no nothing. That being denoted, if you are a lower to middle class person, who is limited in funds, and must get interest based loans to buy your home or use credit cards, then you are paying interest to the bank, which the bank is then using, in theory, to pay the person’s return with the 5% CD! Not only is this equation outrageously offensive due to the use of usury (interest) to ‘steal from the poor and give to the rich’, but it also perpetuates class stratification by its very design, keeping the lower classes poor, under the constant burden of debt, while keeping the upper classes rich, with the means to turn excess money into more money, with no labor. That reality aside, there are other games in the system which have worked for decades, but are just now starting to bloom into the inevitable mathematic disasters that should have been anticipated 100 years ago. The point is, our system is broken. Simple policy change will not solve our debt problem. We need to alter the governmental paradigm if we wish to repay our debt. We need to end the Federal Reserve Board.
This is not a liberal or conservative issue. This is a matter of upholding the Constitution. Congress gave over the power of the purse in 1913 to a quasi-public-private bank called the Federal Reserve which manipulates global currencies. This is wholeheartedly unconstitutional, and at this point it's become immoral.
the question was do you actually know what wall street is.
Wall Street is the symbol of the financial world. The financial world that includes banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, etc etc.
not the symbol the actual thing
Wall street disctict is in Manhatten, near China town, and is usually regarded as the largest financial center in the world. People have been trading there since the 1700s, when investors would meet under a tree to trade securities. Not only is it the home to the New York Stock Exchange(and other stock exchanges), but it's also typically associated with the largest Banking/Investment/Insurance firms(Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, etc.). Interesting fact, though. These Banking/Investment/Insurance firms, which are usually called "Wall Street firms" are actually located on Park Avenue.
The Federal Reserve's godson.
Wall Street is a street in lower Manhattan.
true but i meant what happens there
Sure trading. Commodities, stocks, bonds, derivatives. Things like that.
What are those? How are they used? Who uses them?
Well everyone uses commodities. Oil, gas, grains, meats, precious metals. Stocks are partial ownership rights to a company and many people invest for different reasons. Bonds are loans. Who the hell knows what derivatives are. What's the point?
The point is that if you don't know what the Financial Industry actually does, what type of players there are, the products that are used and how they are used, you really don't have enough information to form a proper opinion.
I agree. Education seems to be a big problem with the masses. I understand the anger but I am finding it's misdirected a lot. Government is to blame 100x's more than Wall Street. Without government Wall Street has no power to plunder from the people. Government has caused this problem and they can not fix it they need to just get out of the business of regulating business allow people to exercise their right to free association within the market.
I'll agree with most of that statement. But considering that the Financial Services Industry has been severely set back itself, I would hardly consider the industry as plundering the people, as many people on here put it.
Lehman, Bear Sterns and others don't seem to be better off. Certainly the employees, the employees of those firms that supported them and shareholders are not better off. Nearly every large financial firm is currently scrambling to make it in the black this year, all stock prices are drastically off their highs and most firms are laying off workers. Without question, some individuals made out handsomely (for various reasons - some substantiated, some not) but the vast majority of people who work in financial services are not better off today than they were 5 years ago.
I'm not by any means implicating the everyday Joe that works in the financial industry. Those top dogs that walked away smiling while they watched their former employes walk away from their desks with boxes in hand as they walked off with taxpayer money are the ones to blame. I know exactly what you are saying. I work for Verizon formerly Worldcom and I had nothing to do with the money that Ebbers stole from this company. I was hurt by it because I watched my 401k disappear due to his criminal actions. I think we are on the same page.
good job you answered the question A+
So are you saying that this should be a movement against the Washington politics that cause these problems through crony capitalism and bailouts instead of against wall street who benefited from the corruption in DC?
capitalism currently rules, because it doesn't follow the rules.
that wasn't really the question now was it.
I do. :) It's the Financial District of NYC , and on Wall St. is the home of the Stock exchange. lol for the rest who don't know what and how the stock exchange works. Here you go. Stock Market Basics: How the New York Stock Exchange Works - Tutorial Cartoon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t_nA3gTkSI
No I'm not one of these 99%ers , lol I was curious to see what some of these peoples answer were. Wow is all I got to say. lol
good job you answered the question A+
BTY , I only have a high school diploma , but I am a homeschooler. Now I'm so glad I decided to take my kid out of school. I'm not even sure college is a good place to send him after reading these answers. You people blindly follow others , spouting off crap that you don't even understand , or even bothered to educate yourselves. You are a disgrace to yourself , your family , and to this country. You people don't want reform you want to turn this country into more of a nationalist , socialist , communist country. Open a history book and see where that lead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmgaW_K6rm0
The better question is what it isn't. To that end we need a comprehensive strategy, and related candidate, that implements all our demands at the same time, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management System of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategic Legal Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
if you want to be 1 of 100,000 people needed to support a Presidential Candidate – such as myself – at AmericansElect.org in support of the above bank-focused platform.
not you again
Wall Street represents the evils of capitalism. We need to replace it with a more socially compassionate economic model such as socialism or communism
that wasn't the question i meant literally what happens on wall street also if you don't like capitalism move to a socialist or communist country.
Maybe they would love to move to Venezuela? Chavez Loves you guys.
Chávez tackles housing crisis by urging poor to squat wealthy parts of Caracas http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/26/venezuela-chavez-housing-crisis-squats-
Chavez Orders Seizure of Houses on Caribbean Resort Islands http://cnsnews.com/news/article/chavez-orders-seizure-houses-caribbean-resort-islands
Chávez condemns Wall Street protest 'crackdown' http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/09/chavez-condemns-wall-street-protest-crackdown