Forum Post: Top Ten reasons the Banks and Bankers on Wall St. should NOT be viewed as villainous swine. Feel free to add your own.
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 14, 2011, 9:26 p.m. EST by unarmed
(213)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
1._ 2._ 3._ 4._ 5._ 6._ 7._ 8._ 9._ 10._
Because the real enemy is the Board of Directors.
[Removed]
they would make horrible bacon...
They have allowed me to take trips to incredible places on this planet. No interest credit cards for 6 months. See places frugally. Pay it off in those 6 interest free months. Earn points to pay for hotels on your next trip. I'm sure there are other ways to see the world, but that's the way I've done it since I was in my 20s. The only debt with interest I owe is on my house. I've been all over the world very cheaply.
Signed a public servant who takes advantage of their system rather than letting it take advantage of me.
They are to rich to be swine. They are villainous pearls, jewels, and they are only rich because we let them be. How much money have we collectively loaned them? Look in your pocket, in your bank account. Those Federal Reserve Notes you are holding are not money they are DEBT. The Federal Reserve BANK'S debt.
The vast majority do not do anything illegal.
That's 'cause wallstreet wrote the laws for them.
Occupy wallstreet!
The laws can only change in Washington, not Wall Street. Campaign finance to get the money out of politics and the rest will take care of itself.
Wall $t OWNS Washington !!! Q.E.D. ... ad nauseum .. {~*~} .
Then I guess the laws won't change.
YES but only IF Defeatism is your CHOICE ...
Then I guess the breathing status of those on Wall Street WILL change.
Money will always find its way into politics--even with "campaign finance reform"--as long as Washington keeps collecting and doling out so much of taxpayers' money. If you want to get money out of politics, stop it from being such a lucrative investment. If we stop Washington from collecting and redistributing so many trillions of dollars, political spending will shrivel overnight.
That's a start, but what of the corruption on wallstreet? If you don't make changes there ( and it is a bit symbolic), it will just start all over again. So,ignore it and hope it goes away?. Wallstreet MUST change too.
They don't do anything illegal. I have no problem with companies trying to do everything they can legally do to make a profit. I mean we all try to pay as little tax as we can.
I'm sorry, but that's just too one sided. How do you find all the laws wallstreet payed to write and change. How?
The worst of it is, we paid for it. Every bribe!!!!!! EVERY single one!!!! Every front group, foundation, think tank and things I never heard of. WE paid for it! We pay for ALEC too. The entity that writes the laws for the republicans who are too lazy to write their own!!!!!!! TOO LAZY! None of those things come cheap.
I consider that a very large TAX levied on ME by the corporations! A form of TAX that writes my laws without representation! I have no say. I have no vote, in what laws these people are writing and for what purpose. NO say!
And don't give me that crap about "choice". It's bull shit.
Look up studies on choice. Find the study that explains how from 4 choices up to 6, chances of making the "optimum choice" went down. From 7 and up it was close to impossible. Know that the US is and has been #1 in marking penetration for a very long time. This study was done several years ago. Sold to marketing and PR firms all over the world.
We are all a victim of that. Even you. They have been adopting behavioral science to the marketing world all along. They're very good at it.
It's effective, or they wouldn't do it. You can't really escape it without living in a cave. None of us are immune. We pay for that too!!! All of it.
At least the government sometimes paves a road. Sometimes feed the poor. Sometimes. Corporations just want to finagle a way to buy them, so they can charge us more to drive on them. We'll pay for their finagling too.
There are TWO very real sides to the problem.
I've seen a million people march on Washington, to no avail. I've seen 100,000 in Madison, to no avail.
Why try the same thing over and over, to no avail? Sounds like a distraction.
Occupywallstreet!!
Ahh ! The 'Nuremberg' Defence !! Can't wait for The Trials !!! ;-)
Don't you do everything you can to minimize your taxes? Do you offer to pay more tax than you legally have to?
Maybe ... but I am a Bona Fide (and please excuse the tautology) Human Person and I claim 'inalienable rights' above and beyond those accorded to Entities claiming 'Corporate Personhood' !
This Distinction and Realisation is Absolutely Fundamental to All things 'Occupy' !!
ad iudicium !!!
I own a business. When I do my business taxes, I seek to minimize them. When I do my personal taxes, I seek to minimize them. I really do not see what the difference is.
If you choose not to see a difference between you and your business, then that is your choice.
IF you Choose NOT to see a difference between you, your business and BoA or GE or IBM or Goldman-Sux etc., then I truly pity the depth and extent of your "Corporate"-M.$.M. (ABCNNBCBS / FUX-SNEWzzz et al) Programmed Mind-Management !
Good Luck with deprogramming your$elf !!
ad iudicium !!!
Honestly, I do see a difference, it just does not bother me. Companies exist to make money. Plain and simple. I invest in those companies you list, as do millions of Americans via their pensions and 401K plans, or via corporate bonds. When they make money, I make money too. Granted I don't make as much as the CEO, but I still make money and my 99% lifestyle improves
IF "it just does not bother" you, what are you doing on these threads ?!
Would you like the rest of The 99% to be equally "Not Bothered" ?!!
Cui Bono ?!!!
I just want to see the money out of politics. Not just for financial issues, but social issues too.
;-) Well, 'Mooks', in that case we have a point of fundamental agreement and I wish Peace and Prosperity to You and Yours and Protection over your Home and Hearth. pax et lux.
I can't think of any either, except maybe that guy in the It's a Wonderful Life movie, but that was just a movie.
Agreed. so. now what. The least useful aspect of the whole thing is that its non violent. this does not help the agenda at all.
Its also orders of magnitude larger and bigger than it was supposed to be and growing at an exponential rate.
What perhaps you may fail to understand at first is that there has been a dam. Holding back. The waters of the light of truth. Crack. Snapple. Pop. 200 years of lies. 200 years of propaganda. 200 years of science creeping on while the elites tried to freeze the knowledge of the proles in 1800. 200 years of sociology knowledge. 200 years of education reform science. 200 years of oil and coal while all the whole while we could have had geothermal.
Crack. snapple. Crack. Crickkettyy pop. snapple Crack.
How long could the lies hold up? how long could they keep the proles ignorant and wholly self destructive?
How long could they prevent a genuine consensus process?
Corporate Oligarchy is a Dead Horse walking. It looks alive, but it actually died in 2000 with the Election of Bush. Assorted fatal systemic errors are killing it, and without a vital solution for a new and dynamic evolutionary revolution, all of humanity, including the elites, would die.
they need this revolution just as much as the rest of us.
And there is nothing they can do now to stop it, their only power is to try to censor it, control it, co-opt it, and fail, until we elect them out of office and then take back our government.
"Beasts of burden"? lol. Yes, the Collosophant. Carrying civilization forward on our shoulders while they the mere parasites lives off and on us.
It was a handy arrangement for them, but we could have crushed them at any time at our whim, and they have failed to realize this. The police in Oakland are realizing this. 50 mounted horses are just riot targets. Beat enough people up in front of a crowd of ten thousand, and it could just get a lot uglier than any fight they want to pick. WE THE PEOPLE are WAKING UP. And we are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more.
Snap. crack. krick. pop. 200 years of evil control. 200 years of dumble down. stretching. Creaking. splintering. When it breaks there will be no safe place for any oligarch to hide. their trillions of dollars will not buy them the elections any more and their lies will be known to the public and they will live in shame, and most of them will end up in federal prison.
When the bough breaks, the cradle will rock...
humpty dumpty...
a thousand metaphors and narratives. I'm glib today, actually, and reminded of this song, in 1776.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1213z9KHNs
http://occupythiswiki.org/wiki/Issues_%2B_Political_Platform_Items
The burden of proof that a person or institution is "villainous swine" is on the accuser. Please provide ten reasons why each and every banker and bank on Wall Street should be viewed as villainous swine. Broad characterizations will not do, as this is not Stalin's Soviet Union.
Please provide what's wrong Nazis without making broad characterizations about Nazis.
By the way, I'm not comparing bankers to nazis. I'm simply stating a point that in his statement, it is implied that broad characterizations are what he was asking for. He obviously didn't post this for sake of accuracy or political correctness.
It is fair to say what's wrong with the Nazis with broad characterizations because they were a political party with a despicable set of mandatory beliefs. Bankers, by contrast, are a bunch of individuals who do not follow any particular creed. Some are good and some are bad, just like lawyers and pharmacists and organic farmers.
That said, we didn't hang all of the members of the Nazi party. We indicted and punished individuals for individual crimes.
We fully intend to indict and punish bankers for individual crimes also. But as long as they keep fighting all culpability, we can't distinguish.
Classifying an entire category of human beings as villainous swine is fascistic in the extreme.
Not stating why they aren't is denial.
I see you're not denying that you're fascistic.
If you give me a specific allegation against a specific person or bank, I will say why I agree or disagree. How could one possibly respond to your sweeping Stalinist indictment of your class enemies?
Straight out of todays headlines, what's your opinion, villainous?
"Bloomberg reports that Bank of America (BAC) has shifted about $22 trillion worth of derivative obligations from Merrill Lynch and the BAC holding company to the FDIC insured retail deposit division. Along with this information came the revelation that the FDIC insured unit was already stuffed with $53 trillion worth of these potentially toxic obligations, making a total of $75 trillion."
That was two weeks ago headlines, but thanks for posting it. B of A is not in fantastic shape
Hi unarmed, Thank you for the post and the link. Shocking. Best Regards, Nevada
That looks pretty bad, but the level of villainy would depend on whether this was against the law. If it was legal, I put most of the blame on our government passing out corporate welfare, not the bank that accepted it. End corporate welfare and shrink the government. Then the corporations won't have any use for their armies of lobbyists.
This was against the law pre-1999.. You don't think Bank of America Holdings could seriously just dump their toxic investments on Merril Lynch if it was a separate and distinct company, do you??
These are exactly the problems that Glass Steagall was founded to address.
"Pretty bad", is all you can say. If things go south the American Tax Payer is stuck paying $75,000,000,000,000. And all you can say is pretty bad? Not to mention the fact that although America is INSURING this gamble, America GETS NONE of the profit. That's a better scam than ANY mob boss ever had, agree?
Totally agree. They and the government are complete asses. these banks should have been put in receivership.
If they declare losses and move on utilizing insurance I do believe it would cause massive, massive protests. Let's see if they have the cojones to even try it.
While the American people and their economy serves as the collateral, the taxpayer serves to insure... with the ability to default that's some really shady insurance. But it's exactly this gamble that serves to prop up risk.
Headlines from today's papers where? Could you supply a link? thanks.
Link
http://seekingalpha.com/article/301260-bank-of-america-dumps-75-trillion-in-derivatives-on-u-s-taxpayers-with-federal-approval