Forum Post: The Bottom Line

The constant misrepresentation of what OWS is all about is simply not going to be clarified on this forum. Some people just do not want to discuss...they want to accuse. And that may be due to their own frustration in dealing with an economic situation that is tumbling into chaos. Michael Hiltzik lays out very clearly what has stimulated the OWS movement. He starts his article with the question: "How do you know when a protest movement is starting to scare the pants off the establishment?"

"One clue is when the protesters are casually dismissed as hippies or rabble, or their principles redefined as class envy or as (that all-purpose insult) "un-American." "

His article gives a glimpse of the financial manipulation that eventually led to the collapse in 2008. I would add one thing to all of this. The financial thugs on Wall Street were able to create this chaos because people within the 99% were basically of the same ilk as that of the Wall Street barons. We know what Wall Street did with mortgages. But that could not have worked if there were not people who wanted to pretend that they were going to pay for a home without the means to do so. This of course eventually led to economic chaos which tripped triggers of job loss and resulted in the financial collapse of many innocent people. Fixing Wall Street is only fixing half the problem. The other half of the problem stems from credit purchases for things beyond a house and car. That has to be brought to an end.

From Michael Hiltzik http://lat.ms/rnWtRU

"Implicit in the protests is the idea that the banks have resumed their old practices with barely a hiccup, while pleading that the modest regulatory changes that have been passed have somehow hobbled their ability to do business. How do we know this plaint is a sham? One only has to look at the handsome resurgence of profits in the financial industry since 2008. According to the government's bureau of economic analysis, those profits reached an annualized $438.9 billion in the second quarter this year, up from $122.2 billion in calendar 2008."