It's offical. The protestors are getting stupider.

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Naeo

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Things I've learned from this topic:

1. All rich people and all corporations are rich by virtue of swindling, lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving, and buying off every politician they can to preserve their wealth. None of them ever put in a good day's work for their untold fortunes. They also control the government and get laws passed that work directly in their favor and against the favor of the rest of the country. And they are the only ones that control the government.

2. The police hate freedom, man. I mean, they're like totally laying an unwarranted beatdown on anyone who opposes the system, because those damn rich people and corporations own the police and give them orders to stop these protests. But also, like, man, the police just hate the common man, dude.

2.A. But at the same time, there are no instances whatsoever of police exhibiting poor judgment calls or unreasonably overstepping their bounds.

2.B. Cops getting hit or whatnot by people of an indeterminate threat should absolutely not react in a way so as to subdue said person who, for all they know, may have a concealed weapon and be planning to cause the policeman in question serious bodily harm.

3. Risking crashing a bank is a good way to solve the problem of an economy in the shitter.

4. All rich people hate all not-rich people and are always conspiring to keep them out of the elite circle of "people who are already rich". Refer back to point 1.

6. Everything about this protest is black-and-white in absolute terms. It's a struggle of the disenfranchised against the cheating, lying, immoral, corrupt, degenerate, freedom-hating, filthy, psychopathic, apathetic, and other nasty adjectives rich people, corporations, and government. It's a struggle of the virtuous middle/lower/underclass against the demonic upper class that needs to be abolished or destroyed. Everyone who opposes this virtuous, righteous struggle must hate freedom and America and be part of the secret cabal ruling the world that goddammit I'm not a part of.

Conclusion: everyone, on every side, is insane, noncritical, biased, ignorant, propaganda-happy, inflammatory, and stupid in direct proportion to how vocal they are. Try opening your fucking eyes for once. Nothing is as clear-cut as you think it is, and everyone is wrong. Some rich people legitimately earned it. Corporations do not own every aspect of this country, otherwise, they'd have put this protest down long ago. The protesters aren't some group of righteous social crusaders out to expose the evils of the system. Yet at the same time, corporations and bank and just as much, the citizens of this country are not without blame, and these protesters are some group of crazy hippies bitching about "whaaaaaaa I'm not rich" (well, a fair number of them aren't). They are raising some legitimate issues, even if they are going about it in a pretty damn stupid way.

And this is where I abandon this topic and all further OWS ones, because as someone said earlier in this topic, it's like all your reactions are scripted. I've seen the exact same reactions every time anything remotely controversial pertaining to politics comes up, and it's absolutely fucking hilarious. And then it's depressing. And then it's enraging. And I'm not having anything more to do with the bile flying around here, having contributed my fair share in this one post.
 

BLAHwhatever

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I dunno. All the vids I've watched in this thread aren't very convincing. Sure, you see people get restrained, wrestled to the floor. But the cameras only capture that, not what happens before that, what provoked the policemen/women. "Oh there someone gets arrested, quick, film it and yell shame and scream your lungs out as if the fella got murdered."

I guess it's one of the things you had to be participating in to really know the truth. Those Vids aren't 100% conclusive in my opinion
 

zerobudgetgamer

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So, just to make sure I've got this correctly: These people are planning on doing a Bank Run, a procedure that, while probably nowhere near as devastating as the most notorious of Bank Runs - the ones that caused the Great Depression - could still have lasting consequences on not just the banks, but the economy as a whole. They wish to do this...because they're mad that they're gonna have to pay $3-5 a month? And only if they use their debit card that month??

I'm sorry, but I didn't know about the OWS's goals until now, and this made me look them up. From what I can see on the Wiki, their concern is more about how big corporations and businesses have wheedled their way into the government, which, despite being a bit over-exaggerated, is nonetheless somewhat true; most political campaigns require costs of several million dollars, and that money has to come from somewhere. So I suppose I'm saying I can see where they're coming from, even if they're being a tad overzealous about things.

But this Bank Transfer Day...this is just sheer stupidity, from what I can see. If anything, they're probably going to cost these banks more money than the ~40,000 would lose having to pay the monthly fee, and as others have said, that's only going to hurt the 99% far more than it will the 1%.
 

ChaoticLegion

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Versuvius said:
It's a good way of proving the point that the banks are creating a false economy. Which is bad.
,m oyhkujicvccccikujm yhtgbrfvdexvgbhynujmik,

Ok, now that I've finished race rolling my keyboard (yes I actually did it), you sir seriously need to take an educational class on how economics work.
 

Roy Smith

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Treblaine said:
These people are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.

The thing is this will be NOTHING BUT about the police brutality because the protesters don't have any other case to argue, their demands are childish and unworkable trying to be forced through by disruption and provocation.
200 million people aren't going to let a few thousand kids with virtually no life experience turn the country upside-down.

I'm astounded how many of them mention their student loan debts? So? I'm astounded they are protesting at Wall Street, why not their college?

As for the Guy Fawkes masks - V for Vendetta was crappy movie kids.
 

YawningAngel

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Artificial runs on banks simply do not work. If it is KNOWN that the run is due to a conspiracy rather than a genuine lack of confidence, the bank will be able to borrow sufficient capital to cover the temporary shortfall.
 

Twilight_guy

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The great depression had other causes, like the dust bowl and the crash of the stock market but the bank panic was an important factor. Of course I have no idea why they would want to crash the bank. That would means that people would be unable to access their money since banks give them access to their accounts and thus the money many people do have would go away and all the people who work at the bank would be out of a job. I guess maybe they stick it to one corporate board but its basically torching Tibet in order to show China.
 

bojac6

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They're just transferring money to Credit Unions. There's no actual cash, it'll all be electronic transfer.

It's a very capitalist response. If your bank is making decisions that you don't like, transfer money to another bank (or a union). I don't see what all this fuss is about.
 

Danny Ocean

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Jun 28, 2008
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chocolatekake said:
Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but it's not the banks that are doing that. It's the government. We have nothing actually backing our money because we've been off the gold/silver standard for a while. And aside from that, the banks don't really have that much in the way of effect on the economy.
The financial sector has a massive effect on the economy. Seriously. I don't know who's taught you your economics, but they didn't know what they were talking about.

This recession was not caused by a lack of a gold standard, and a gold standard would not have prevented it. You can still lend more money than you have no matter how you determine the value of that money. That's why this same thing has happened throughout history irrespective of the presence of a gold-standard.

It was not the government's fault in any way except the low-cost housing initiative, but then they didn't force the banks to cash in. They did that themselves because they didn't really think about it hard enough, mathematicians are young, CEOs are greedy, and they are obliged to maximise profits for their shareholders; among other reasons. You could say it was the government's fault for not regulating enough, and you'd technically be right I suppose, but you'd look like a bit of an ass who just wants to hate on the government all the time.

Of course, people without the incomes could have not borrowed, too. I don't know how such an act of mass retardation- in government, in the markets, in the minds of the people- could have happened.

What I do know is this: the exact same fucking thing will happen again unless something is radically changed, because the recent crash wasn't really down to discrete acts of idiocy- those being neccessary but not sufficient- it was really down to the system.

And by that I don't mean 'the man' or anything like that. There's no conspiracy... at least... I hope there isn't. O.O

Genuine Evil said:
also yes a large scale withdraw is a bad, bad idea .
DarkRyter said:
I wish I had more than a tangential understanding of economics.
He neglected to mention three things:

1) We did have a run on Northern Rock in the 2007 one. I expect there were smaller runs in the USA. It's harder for you because you're so spread out.

2) The great depression was not caused by a run on the banks, rather the run on banks was a symptom caused by banks lending too much money to people who couldn't pay it back. Sound familiar? That's right. This exact same thing happened before. That's why the bigwigs entertained the notion of bailing out the banks rather than letting the financial sector collapse completely and rebuild itself, because another World War wasn't forthcoming.

3) Although depositors didn't run on the bank to withdraw all their money this time around, every other bank went to every other bank demanding their money to be repaid. They were all so connected that they ran on eachother. Like in the Great Depression, but faster because it's all electronic now.

It's like a run on banks, except it's banks doing it to eachother, and none of them can pay eachother back because the either don't own enough stuff which they can sell, or the stuff they do own is suddenly not worth anything. In the most recent one, and in the great depression, that thing was housing. They're a safe investment in the long-term, because population goes up yada yada, but in the short run they were not able to sell those houses they gained from people defaulting on their mortgages because so many people had done so that there were so many houses on the market that they started losing value.

So the bank who owns the houses that are now losing value has lost some expected revenue, so he puts up his interest rates and causes his own little vicious cycle of people defaulting. To try and get himself out of it he goes to other banks to borrow, but because they were all doing the stupid thing and lending to people who they shouldn't have lent to, they can't lend him any money to pass to the bailiff from the other bank who's knocking at his door.

So that bank collapsed, so they (almost) all collapsed.

So then, you've got all these remaining banks who have severely cut back. They're super-careful now (just when we don't want them to be), because they could so easily go bankrupt. Plus they're running on government life-support in the form of the bail outs. They don't want to lend to people, so companies get massive cash flow problems (because they can't borrow to pay their raw materials suppliers before they make the money from selling their product) and other sectors suffer, too. Not only that, but because the banks don't want to invest their money anywhere remotely risky, no new enterprises are being funded, either. This creates a self-fulling prophesy. "We won't lend, because the economy is bad."->Not lending makes the economy bad->"The economy is bad, so we won't lend."

I'm going to emphasize the effect on cashflow by putting it on its own line. Not all loans are for big things like houses. Most go into keeping the world spinning, so to speak.

What investment is happening is apparently happening abroad. That's where all the cheap labour is. No need to buy all that expensive capital for the high-tech US industries. Meanwhile, the bank bosses are raking in mind-meltingly large bonuses- amounts of money average people earn in an entire lifetime, but they're not doing any Americans any good, so what the hell, man? They bailed out the banks, so the banks should help fix the recession!

I think that's basically it.

Oh, wait, no. There's hypocrisy here.

Some of the people most vocal in their disapproval of this planned bank run are the same people who campaigned that the banks should've been allowed to fail to begin with. That's a 360-degree about face. Perhaps they're being pragmatic. Perhaps they're being reactionary. Perhaps they just want ratings. Who knows?

It's fun to post outside of Religion and Politics.

AnotherAvatar said:
Credit leads to false wealth, and wealth in any form leads to excessive greed.
But it doesn't always lead to false wealth.

I can't understand why you'd think credit would be a wholly bad thing. It's just not. Really. Savings->Investment, Cashflow, Not-too-big-deficits-when-they're-needed, venture capital, funding. Once more, investment. The ability to officially say 'I'll pay you back later' to the tune of millions of dollars has been invaluable to the economic growth of the last 300+ years, and with that growth has come increased standards of living, smarter, safer, and freer people everywhere, not just in the West.

Seriously, without loans, the world would be a much darker place.

Not least because Edison and Swan needed to take out loans to roll out their DC power plants, and Tesla needed loans from someone whose name I've forgotten to compete using his AC design. Honestly I don't know why Edison gets so much fame. He didn't even invent the lightbulb alone, and his DC system was rubbish!

But anyway...

People can't afford these giant engineering projects that make all our lives better, even in groups. Think of power stations, hospitals, giant bridges, the New York sewer network, airports, supermassive fuel tankers. All these great things require credit to exist.

Sure, hate on the banks or whatever, but to say that credit is an unambiguously bad thing is an idea so countervailing to reality that its implementation on a macro scale would mean economic suicide.
 

Fiz_The_Toaster

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Naeo said:
Things I've learned from this topic:

1. All rich people and all corporations are rich by virtue of swindling, lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving, and buying off every politician they can to preserve their wealth. None of them ever put in a good day's work for their untold fortunes. They also control the government and get laws passed that work directly in their favor and against the favor of the rest of the country. And they are the only ones that control the government.

2. The police hate freedom, man. I mean, they're like totally laying an unwarranted beatdown on anyone who opposes the system, because those damn rich people and corporations own the police and give them orders to stop these protests. But also, like, man, the police just hate the common man, dude.

2.A. But at the same time, there are no instances whatsoever of police exhibiting poor judgment calls or unreasonably overstepping their bounds.

2.B. Cops getting hit or whatnot by people of an indeterminate threat should absolutely not react in a way so as to subdue said person who, for all they know, may have a concealed weapon and be planning to cause the policeman in question serious bodily harm.

3. Risking crashing a bank is a good way to solve the problem of an economy in the shitter.

4. All rich people hate all not-rich people and are always conspiring to keep them out of the elite circle of "people who are already rich". Refer back to point 1.

6. Everything about this protest is black-and-white in absolute terms. It's a struggle of the disenfranchised against the cheating, lying, immoral, corrupt, degenerate, freedom-hating, filthy, psychopathic, apathetic, and other nasty adjectives rich people, corporations, and government. It's a struggle of the virtuous middle/lower/underclass against the demonic upper class that needs to be abolished or destroyed. Everyone who opposes this virtuous, righteous struggle must hate freedom and America and be part of the secret cabal ruling the world that goddammit I'm not a part of.

Conclusion: everyone, on every side, is insane, noncritical, biased, ignorant, propaganda-happy, inflammatory, and stupid in direct proportion to how vocal they are. Try opening your fucking eyes for once. Nothing is as clear-cut as you think it is, and everyone is wrong. Some rich people legitimately earned it. Corporations do not own every aspect of this country, otherwise, they'd have put this protest down long ago. The protesters aren't some group of righteous social crusaders out to expose the evils of the system. Yet at the same time, corporations and bank and just as much, the citizens of this country are not without blame, and these protesters are some group of crazy hippies bitching about "whaaaaaaa I'm not rich" (well, a fair number of them aren't). They are raising some legitimate issues, even if they are going about it in a pretty damn stupid way.

And this is where I abandon this topic and all further OWS ones, because as someone said earlier in this topic, it's like all your reactions are scripted. I've seen the exact same reactions every time anything remotely controversial pertaining to politics comes up, and it's absolutely fucking hilarious. And then it's depressing. And then it's enraging. And I'm not having anything more to do with the bile flying around here, having contributed my fair share in this one post.
You don't have to respond to this, but I love you for this post.

I agree with everything you typed there, and it's the major reason why I didn't post anything about OWS until just now.
 

retyopy

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The flame war... It's beautiful!

OT: Yeah, they're stupid. Stupid enough to actaully crash the economy completely? Who knows!
 

OldNewNewOld

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Even tho it will cause problems to the "99%", it will also send a message that the banks can't do as they want. I think that's the point.

If people protest and don't go to work, the will not get money. They are having problems because they protest. But if they protest, the company will have no worker, it will not have any products to sell, the company will have an even great loss. So the company WILL accept the terms of the protester in order to prevent bankruptcy.

That's the same principle here. People will bring the banks in even worse situation than the 99%, which will force the bank to either accept the terms, or go bankrupt.

Yes, it will have many negative impacts on the "99%", but will have a bigger impact on the whole countries economy, which is their intention.
 

richd213

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@Kopitakatsu: I'm quite worried that your explanation of the wall street crash only includes short term effects like stock market panic. Why have you missed out long term effects like overproduction and loans that people couldn't afford to pay back? The reason the market crashed was because of inequality of wealth.
 

retyopy

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Most of the posters here seem to think that there is only black and white, and no shades of grey.

THEY'RE WRONG. Maybe.
 

Danny Ocean

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retyopy said:
Wait a minute... I just realized... Everyone on this thread are fucking idiots. Seriously.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, There was good vs. evil. And then they both exploded. Their blood mixed together, and from that day forth, no one could be fully good or fully evil.

Bottom line: THINGS ARE NEVER IN BLACK AND WHITE. there will always be shades of grey. ALWAYS.
This just in: homosexuals are gay, the sky is blue, gifts are free, bonuses are added, summaries are short, hot drinks are hot, and most ideas cannot be adequately simplified into a boolian face-oooff!!

Captain Obvious strikes again!


Seriously, if you're just going to wade in here to tell everyone else they're stupid you can skip on replying to this.
 

Ruwrak

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Kopikatsu said:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44800021/

So, a group of the Occupy Wall Street protestors decided, 'Hey. Let's make a Bank Run!' (For those who don't know what that is, it's when a bunch of people go to withdraw their money at the same time with the purpose of causing the bank to crash. This happens because the banks don't actually have large amounts of money in them. When you put money in the bank, they loan that money out to other people.)

When this happens on a wide scale, it's called a bank panic. Know what happened the last time a bank panic occurred? The Great Depression. And no, that wasn't coincidental. The bank panic directly caused the Great Depression because everyone attempting to withdraw money that didn't exist caused the economy to completely collapse. Which leads me to my point-

Crashing the economy would mean that the 99% will be the only ones who suffer. The people with obscene amounts of money will just ride through the inevitable rampant inflation like nothing happened while everyone else loses everything because they can't afford $1,000 loafs of bread.

People keep bitching about police brutality that isn't even happening. Maybe the police actually do need to start beating some sense into these people.
This again? Oh, not referring to your statements but to this... this... "let's better the world" chatter. You can protest all you want, but time spend protesting could have been time searching for a job and make the most of a crappy situation.

I can't seem to shake the feeling that protests like this only cause more anxiety, fear and in the end because of this, another depression. One affecting the other and one leads to the next. Would it be better to just keep yer head tucked and work? Behave like mindless sheep and pretend to be blind?

I dunno, but sometimes I think it's better.
That or retreat as a wildlife hunter somewhere up in the mountains.
Must be good there. Away from all the panic causing things.

Not to mention they won't sent a taxcollector my way that easily.
 

Aerodyamic

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Rule Britannia said:
The whole occupy wall street is the dumbest shit.
"That guy has more money than me, it's not fair!" well he kinda worked for it.
"They are the ones that ruined the economy" well not really they may have started it but everybody contributed to it.
The point of the protest is to bring awareness to the fact that 99% of the population is forced to pay the penalties assessed against the 1% of the population that were involved in (or condoned) a variety of shady, immoral or downright illegal fiduciary acts.

That said, some of those people have to realize that 99% of the population doesn't have time to protest, because some of us are too busy making sure that we keep OUR financial situation on the black side of the bottom line; in fact, I think that's the point of the "53% protesters" on youtube, isn't it?

(Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about the "53%'ers")