Forum Post: Some Suggestions for Occupy Wall Street . . .

Suggestions for Occupy Wall Street (OWS)

A Work in Progress

(Your feedback is invited.)

1 - BANKING AND SECURITIES INDUSTRY CHANGES:

a. Make sure the Volcker Rule stays in place and keeps its teeth.

b. Bring back the Glass Steagall act, or similar regulation, that keeps investment banks and retail banks as separate entities; no one corporation or parent corporation should be able to own both an investment bank and a retail bank.

c. Propriety trading by a Wall Street firm should be outlawed.

d. A Wall Street firm should not be allowed to create proprietary financial instruments (“in-house” products).

2 - CAMPAIGN REFORM:

a. All campaigns in US government should be publicly financed entirely. No candidate should be allowed to use their personal wealth to fund their campaign for any office in any government in the US.

b. The US military shall provide its assets and logistics capabilities to lodge and travel candidates on the campaign trail.

c. Media outlets shall have to donate amounts of ad space equally to all candidates in any given campaign.

3 - CHANGES TO THE TAX CODE:

a. If a US citizen earns the majority (>51%) of their wealth from capital gains, the accrual of that wealth should be taxed as income and be subject to all local, state, and federal income taxes.

b. On a percentage basis, the poor should be taxed less than the rich. Income tax rates should progressively increase as a person makes more money (this is actually the way it is now, but it seems some would prefer to flip it on its head). It should be illegal for the tax rates (including effective tax rates) of high income earners to be lower than those of low income earners.

c. No one person should have a total income tax obligation (including all local, state, and federal income taxes) of more than 33%.

d. No corporation should be taxed more than 33% on its profits.

e. The vast majority of tax loopholes should be eliminated unless they can be proven to have a direct impact on the betterment of society.

f. If they have no income to report other than salary, salary workers should not have to file yearly tax returns; instead their withholding amount should equal their total income tax burden.

g. Enact a 1% federal sales tax on business-to-business transactions on all business (including foreign owned business) doing business in the US that have net sales exceeding $250,000 per fiscal year.

f. Eliminate the Bush era tax cuts now, not in a year, as all the economic data indicates these cuts did not create enough jobs or grow the economy sufficiently to warrant their contribution to the budget deficit.

4 - MORTGAGE INDUSTRY REFORM.

a. A mortgage on real estate that serves as housing (as opposed to commercial real estate) should not be allowed to be resold. An institution that writes a mortgage on real estate that serves as housing should have to hold that mortgage for its entire term. If an institution merges with or is bought by another institution, only then can these mortgages be reassigned, and must be done so in a transparent manner where all parties involved with the mortgages are aware of the new owner.

b. Mortgage brokers should have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their customers, and should be held liable if they give inappropriate or inaccurate advice to a customer. (Can you believe that this is not the case in most states, or on a federal level?)

c. Teaser rate mortgages should be outlawed. (What purpose do they serve except to lure people into mortgages they cannot afford and to create fees for banks and mortgage brokers?)

d. All home owners should be able to exercise a one-time deferment of their mortgage for a period of three months in the event a hardship (e.g., loss of a job, death of a head of household, severe illness).

5 - GENERAL LEGISLATIVE CHANGES:

a. It should be made illegal for a lobbying group or a lobbyist to write legislation and whip bills. Lobbyists can help guide lawmakers in making laws, but they should not be writing the drafts of laws themselves.

b. Corporations should not have the same rights as a person. If anything, a corporation should be held to a higher standard than a person due to a corporation’s size and potential to do harm on a large scale.