Forum Post: What would make a "Wall Street guy" join in?

In some ways, I am a "Wall Street" guy, and in other ways I am one of the 99% you claim to represent. I want an opportunity to make a good living, honestly and fairly. But, like all of America, I am sick and tired of the powerful, moneyed oligarchy that runs America profiteering off the backs of hard working Americans.

That's why we need strong, transparent and fair capital markets and honest, smart leaders. The two aren't incompatible.

So what I'm saying is that I'm ready to join your revolution, to restore the system's integrity - not destroy it.

I don't know what Wall Street means to you. But to me, it means all the crony capitalists and market manipulators whose calculators and spreadsheets say the present value of their self-serving greed is worth discounting all of America's future.

That's the Wall Street that I'm committed to fighting - the Wall Street that's littered with greed and corruption.

If you're mad that Wall Street money has bought our Congress; if you're mad that there's an oligarchy of banker puppeteers pulling the strings of the U.S. Federal Reserve; if you're mad that Wall Street is hell-bent on toying with the stock market and turning the screws on fixed-income investors, parents, and retirees to expand their profit margins; and, if you are mad that "too-big-to-fail" banks can wreck the economy and get bailed out, only to become bigger bullies while tens of millions of Americans lose their homes, jobs, and retirement savings, then I am solidly with you.

Please don't get me wrong. It's not that there aren't plenty of other things in the United States that need fixing. I think we'd all agree we need to simplify and "fairify" the tax code, if not throw it out altogether. But, your movement is Occupy Wall Street, so let's stick to that.

So these are the goals I'd like for us all to undertake:

1.Break up too-big-to-fail banks so they aren't threatening our financial system . 2.Investigate failed banks for fraud, and indict and incarcerate guilty parties. 3.Scale banker bonuses progressively with long-vesting stock options. 4.Legislate pay claw-back provisions and criminal statutes for bad banker behavior. 5.Eliminate volatility-inducing high-frequency-trading and ETF program arbitrage. 6.Make all derivatives exchange traded, highly margined, and transparent. 7.Limit credit default swaps to two times the value of at-risk underlying credits. 8.Mandate exhaustive studies of the potential market impact of newly created financial products. 9.Create simple, effective, light-touch regulations with heavy criminal penalties . 10.Cap Wall Street's political contributions and make them transparent. 11.Audit the Federal Reserve and limit its lending to domestic banking institutions. 12.Give the Consumer Protection Finance Bureau (CPFB) criminal indictment powers, including over the Federal Reserve. 13.Make Wall Street answer to the needs of Main Street, not the other way around.

This "Wall Street" we're fighting against is not synonymous with capitalists. The enemy we share does not include the entrepreneurs and self-starters that have built this country up brick by brick.

So if you think socialism is better than capitalism, you can count me out. If you think that redistributing earned income from hard working Americans to support lazy, self-indulgent, able-bodied crybabies is fair, count me out. If you think that making a lot of money, fairly and honestly, is un-American, count me out. And, if you're thinking about violence or destroying other people's property, count me out. (post copied from Shah Gilani's column at http://moneymorning.com/2011/10/07/dear-occupy-wall-street-will-you-stand-with-me/)