Forum Post: What Occupy Wall Street Should Ask For
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 3, 2011, 10:29 p.m. EST by aarongreenspan
(36)
from Palo Alto, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
There needs to be a clear message coming from the public regarding exactly which changes are being sought. Perhaps there are too many views for everyone to agree, but from what the New York Times is reporting, it appears that there just isn't enough understanding of the regulatory hairball that governs our nation's financial system in order to untangle the mess -- which is hardly the public's fault. Here's my own view on what we should be demanding:
Reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act. This law kept retail banks separate from investment banks from the Great Depression until 1999, when Larry Summers thought it was no longer necessary. Citigroup in particular benefited from the repeal in the short term, but in the long term it allowed banks to take on insane amounts of risk, which eventually led to the 2008 financial crisis.
Federal preemption of state money transmission laws. Money transmitters, such as PayPal (and FaceCash, which my company operates), are the best hope consumers have for an alternative to traditional banking services. With banks instituting fees left and right for debit card use, checking accounts, ATMs, and other supposed benefits, one would think that an entire industry of money transmitters would be popping up in order to take advantage of consumer anger. That's not happening because the financial lobby has made money transmission illegal in most states without licenses that come at exorbitant expense. Right now, every state has a different law -- just a few days ago (September 30), the New York Department of Banking changed its interpretation of New York law to make it harder for money transmitters to compete with banks in the State of New York. The current system is insane, hurts consumers, and should be centralized at the U.S. Treasury (via FinCEN), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or Federal Reserve. In order for this to happen, Congress needs to act.
Criminal investigations of government and banking officials. There's a long list of bank CEOs who aren't in jail but should be. There's a similarly long list of government officials who paved the way for them but never got caught. Right now more entrepreneurs are being threatened with jail time for violating money transmission laws than former bank CEOs.
Elimination of Wall Street bonuses. For a while the investment banks decided that it would be bad PR to keep on giving away six-figure bonuses to traders--"a while" meaning a few months. Wall Street bonus culture is toxic and needs to be fixed.
New taxes and SEC requirements for extremely high (greater than 500,000) levels of executive compensation. The last CEO of Hewlett-Packard, a publicly-traded corporation, walked away with more than7 million as part of his golden parachute after only 11 months on the job. During that time he made a series of catastrophically bad decisions that hurt the company's brand, employees, and stock price. Yet this is hardly an exception; criminal levels of compensation are the norm among CEOs of large companies, and Board of Directors rarely if ever account for the reasoning behind fat paychecks. At least embarrass them a little.
New semantic rules. How exactly is a "savings" account going to help you save any money with an interest rate of 0.05%? With1,000.00 in deposits, you might earn two quarters per year. It should not be legal to call such an account a savings account, especially when fees are attached.
Required disclosure for credit default swaps and other unregulated securities. Though it might in rare cases be necessary for some transactions to remain confidential for a time, there need to be records. Half of the battle in the mortgage mess is figuring out who owns what. We live in an age where two-terabyte hard drives cost100. It's ridiculous that we don't know this information.
One banking regulator. Your bank might be regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (http://www.occ.treas.gov). Or the FDIC (http://www.fdic.gov). Or the Federal Reserve Bank (http://www.federalreserve.gov). Or the California Department of Financial Institutions (http://www.dfi.ca.gov), if you live in California. It gets complicated quickly. Complexity is bad when you are trying to prevent fraud.
Simpler taxes now. Everyone is always arguing about how high tax rates should be, but have you bothered to look at the forms? If the Secretary of the Treasury (who oversees the IRS, among other divisions) can't figure out how to do his own taxes, then we shouldn't have to either. It should not require a CPA or any other degree to figure out how much to pay the government.
This is just a start. The financial system is complex and even the most knowledgeable experts only understand a fraction of what is going on at any given point in time. But it's better than nothing.
This is a great contribution, I personally am on board with almost all of it!
Welcome!
Check the link after the edit mark on this page for a working list of goals http://occupywallst.org/forum/first-official-release-from-occupy-wall-street/
and this Warning from the original Tea Party before it got hijacked http://occupywallst.org/forum/an-open-letter-and-warning-from-a-former-tea-party/
There is a 4-5% TAX on every consumer, business and government transaction made using a credit card. This TAX goes into the coffers of the banks and not the government which can use it for the good of the country. If the government wanted to add a 5% tax to everything including groceries and other essentials, there would be an uproar. Has anyone heard an anti-tax person complain about this tax placed upon us by the banks?
Corporate Free Speech There needs to be better corporate representation. Money is speech. Every individual, even individual stockholders, "ownership," has a right to free speech. Free speech means no one can force or prevent an individual's speech. Ownership has the right to direct the corporation's speech and political contributions. Majority control of contributions may violate an individual's free speech. Corporate management can speech for the corporation, but ownership needs to authorize that speech. No speech or money spent on political contributions may be made without ownership authorization and such contributions must be taken from the individual's dividends. No dividends means there is no allowance for contributions. Corporate management must poll the ownership to determine the amount and placement of all individual stockholder directed contributions. The assignment of all corporate contributions must be made public so that ownership can verify the correct placement of their contributions. Management can not make contributions on the behalf of nonresponsive ownership and thus can only make contributions for which they have been directly authorized.
Money is speech. Corporations are people, because people get the money. Free speech means people are not forced to pay for someone else's speech. Corporations may not force to pay or deny dividends, to a person who does not approve of money spent on speech. Corporations may only spend money on speech that is taken, by approval, from the people who get the money. Every person who gets money, from the corporation, must approve the money spent on speech, in order to protect the right to free speech. Since the money spent on speech is identifiable with a person then that money is subject to caps associated with that person and must be reported. Also, tax consequences flow, to each person, for tax exempt contributions. If the corporation feels that the cost of polling and reporting the money spent on speech is prohibitive, then the corporation is prohibited from spending on speech. Corporations spend money on product ads and any political placement in a product ad must have unanimous consent of ownership.
Yes usury was a Christian principle. The left should reclaim Christianity as well. At least for all the leftist ie real Christians. You know, such forgotten things as love thy neighbor (not kill him), really be for peace and not war, Jesus helped the homeless, thou shall not kill (ban capitol punishment), the meek ie not rich shall inherit the earth, etc etc etc.
We need a usury law to limit the maximum interest banks may charge at 12% to !5%. Civilized nations have always had usury laws to protect labor from capital (the rich). Congress sold us out in the 1980's with "financial reform which superseded the usury laws which every state had in place until then.
What we need is another New Deal. And the reinstallation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which will kill 2 big birds w one stone: 1. Employment. 2. Fixing our crumbling, to put it mildly, infrastructure; upgrading our national parks, etc. Or heck having them pave our roads that are all turning back into gravel.
What we need is another New Deal. And the reinstallation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which will kill 2 big birds w one stone: 1. Employment. 2. Fixing our crumbling, to put it mildly, infrastructure; upgrading our national parks, etc. Or heck having them pave our roads that are all turning back into gravel.
http://visionofsolutions.blogspot.com/
We wont need to ask if this group works together and brings the country together. We won't have to ask we will just take back what is ours. Asking is what a submissive does. We are the power. ( if we take it back) we will dominate