Julia
In Memoriam
- Joined
- 10 May 2005
- Posts
- 16,986
- Reactions
- 1,973
So well put, McLovin.
Occupy Wall Street
- Thread starter BradK
- Start date
- Joined
- 30 June 2008
- Posts
- 15,497
- Reactions
- 7,363
Saw and excellent article which outlined how dramatically America has changed in the past 30-40 years and why this is outraging many people.
Great graphs which drive home the points.
http://www.alternet.org/occupywalls...s_exactly_what_motivates_the_occupy_movement_
Great graphs which drive home the points.
http://www.alternet.org/occupywalls...s_exactly_what_motivates_the_occupy_movement_
- Joined
- 2 July 2008
- Posts
- 7,102
- Reactions
- 6
You certainly cherry-pick you reading material for left wing bias.
explod
explod
- Joined
- 4 March 2007
- Posts
- 7,341
- Reactions
- 1,197
There are many other links to the reasons for occupy wall street and the growing crowds around the world. And the momentum is building as the problems become clearer and worse.
Charachteristically the press are very selective in who they interview so as not to reveal the real reasons behind the moves.
The trend is up and I do not think any stop loss will change the tide whilst Governments flounder under the direction of the rich.
Tick to basilio for putting things up front.
- Joined
- 9 July 2006
- Posts
- 5,956
- Reactions
- 1,617
- Joined
- 26 January 2009
- Posts
- 322
- Reactions
- 0
following is an interesting article i was emailed from a friend in US, and its message is what the OWS protesters should be pushing, not the socialist drivle that seems to be all they are capable of sprouting
! BC76
the following is a few paragraphs of the december 2011 stansberry financial newsletter which is usually only available by subscription and is usually copyrighted material, but its author Porter Stansberry, has allowed... no actually make that encouraged, this edition to be freely circulated as he believes it to be very important infomation on the current financial situation we are all facing:
"I am speaking out now because I believe someone must. And I have the resources to do it. I am sharing these ideas with my subscribers because I know we have arrived at the moment of a long-brewing crisis." porter stansberry 12/15/2011
[In this month's issue, I'd like to try to define a few of the core reasons we're in this situation. I can't possibly analyze all the factors that have led to this decline. But I want to document the growth of graft in politics. I want to demonstrate – with real facts and examples – how public company leadership has deteriorated. And I want to document some of the things that are occurring in the broader society, all of which I believe are linked to this fundamental decline in our standard of living.
You see, I believe the decline of our country is primarily a decline of our culture.
We have lost our sense of honor, humility, and the dedication to personal responsibility that, for more than 200 years, made our country the greatest hope for mankind. I want to detail some of the factors that gave rise to the current entitlement society. We have become a country of people who believe their well-being is someone else's responsibility.
I've labeled these problems: The Corruption of America.
These problems manifest themselves in different ways across institutions in all parts of our society. But at their root, they are simply facets of the same stone. They are all part of the same essential problem.
The corruption of America isn't happening in one part of our country... or in one type of institution. It is happening across the landscape of our society, in almost every institution. It's a kind of moral decay... a kind of greed... a kind of desperate grasp for power... And it's destroying our nation.
The Ethos of 'Getting Yours'
Americans know, in their bones, that something terrible is happening. Maybe you can't articulate it. Maybe you don't have the statistics to understand exactly what's going on. But my bet is, you think about it a lot.
For me, a poignant moment of recognition came this month.
Bloomberg news published an article based on confidential sources about how Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and the Republican U.S. Treasury secretary during the financial crisis, held a secret meeting with the top 20 hedge-fund managers in New York City in late July 2008. This was about two weeks after he testified to Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "well-capitalized."
I knew for a fact that what Paulson told Congress wasn't true. I wrote my entire June 2008 newsletter detailing exactly why Fannie and Freddie certainly had billions in losses that they had not yet revealed to investors – $500 billion in losses, at least. There was no question in my mind, both companies were insolvent – "zeros," as I explained.
And yet, in front of Congress, the U.S. Treasury secretary was saying exactly the opposite. Either I was a liar... or he was.
Then... only a few days later... what did Paulson tell those hedge-fund managers?
He told them the same thing I had written in my newsletter. He told them the opposite of what he'd said publicly to Congress. He told these billionaire investors that Fannie and Freddie were a disaster... They would require an enormous, multibillion-dollar bailout... The U.S. government would have to take them over... And their shareholders would be completely wiped out.
Here you had a high-government official, explicitly lying to Congress (and by extension, the general public), while giving the real facts to a group of people who represented the financial interests of the world's wealthiest folks. The story didn't come to the public's attention for two years.
This was the most outrageous example of graft and corruption I have ever seen. Certainly it involves more billions of dollars in misappropriated value than any other similar story I can recall. These managers had the risk-free ability to make tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions, by using derivatives to capitalize on what they knew was the imminent collapse of the world's largest mortgage bank. Who picked up the tab? You know perfectly well. It was you and me, the taxpayers.
(One of the investment managers present at this meeting was Steve Rattner, who by that point was already deeply involved in another bit of graft, his efforts to bribe New York state pension-fund managers for large investments into his hedge fund, from which he earned perhaps as much as $100 million. He later settled the charges for a mere $10 million shortly after Andrew Cuomo was elected governor of New York.)
The Bloomberg story... about a crooked Treasury secretary handing a room full of crooked billionaires inside information worth billions of dollars... hardly caused a ripple. As far as I know, no actions are being planned against Henry Paulson or any of the hedge-fund managers involved. No other major media outlet picked up the story. I saw nothing about it from the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
What does that say about our country when even the most egregious kind of corruption – involving hundreds of billions of dollars – is simply ignored?
It seems like everyone in our country has lost his moral bearing, from the highest government officials and senior corporate leaders all the way down to schoolteachers and local community leaders. The ethos of my fellow Americans seems to have changed from one of personal integrity and responsibility to "getting yours" – the all-out attempt, by any means possible, to get the most amount of benefits with the least amount of work.
You can see this in everything from the lowering of school standards (revising the SAT) to the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional, college, and high school sports. Cheating has become a way of life in America.
I have an idea about how this happened... about the root cause of this kind of corruption and why it was inevitable, given some of the basic facts regarding how we've organized our government and our corporations.
Let me show you the numbers – the hard facts – behind what's happened to our country...
The Corruption of Politics
I'll start with one of the biggest factors in the decline of our civilization – the link between welfare, education, crime, and politics.
It is routinely alleged in national political debates that something is fundamentally unfair and un-American about the huge "wealth gap" between the poorest Americans and the wealthiest. Some politicians like to argue that the poor never have a real shot at the American dream, and as a nation, we owe them more and more of our resources to correct this injustice. Most important, it is alleged that only the government has the resources to correct this inequality.
This is a dangerous notion...
First, it promotes the idea of entitlement. Entitlement is a fairly new idea in the American political lexicon – perhaps because most of our nation's wealth is still fairly new. The American idea of entitlement argues that because you were born into a rich society, other people owe you something. The idea has become pervasive in our culture. It underlies the basic assumptions behind the idea of a "wealth gap." Implicit is the assumption that successful Americans haven't rightfully earned their wealth... that in one way or another, they've taken advantage of the society and have an obligation to give back most of what they've "taken."
As you'll see, I believe the idea of entitlement lies at the root of many of our most serious cultural problems.
The more obvious problem is the idea that the government is responsible for fixing the "wealth gap." But the government has proved wholly ineffective at dealing with poverty in America. The data is nearly conclusive that government efforts are far more likely to be the cause of the wealth gap than the solution.
The simple fact is, the government has to take resources from someone before it can dole them out to others. And this act of taking turns out to be economically destructive. It reduces the market's incentives for entrepreneurs. The more you take from the productive members of society, the less productive they become. That's the primary lesson of the history of socialism. Yet... many of our political leaders seem oblivious to this iron law of human nature.]
the full report can be viewed at the following link:
http://www.stansberryresearch.com/pub/reports/201112PSI_issue.html#continue
I feel so strongly about these ideas, I'd like you to forward this issue to everyone you know. We almost never allow this copyright violation... But in this case, feel free to forward as many times as you want. Print it up and pass copies around your hometown.
Porter Stansberry
Baltimore, Maryland
December 15, 2011
Stansberry & Associates Investment Research
1217 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 888-261-2693
! BC76 the following is a few paragraphs of the december 2011 stansberry financial newsletter which is usually only available by subscription and is usually copyrighted material, but its author Porter Stansberry, has allowed... no actually make that encouraged, this edition to be freely circulated as he believes it to be very important infomation on the current financial situation we are all facing:
"I am speaking out now because I believe someone must. And I have the resources to do it. I am sharing these ideas with my subscribers because I know we have arrived at the moment of a long-brewing crisis." porter stansberry 12/15/2011
[In this month's issue, I'd like to try to define a few of the core reasons we're in this situation. I can't possibly analyze all the factors that have led to this decline. But I want to document the growth of graft in politics. I want to demonstrate – with real facts and examples – how public company leadership has deteriorated. And I want to document some of the things that are occurring in the broader society, all of which I believe are linked to this fundamental decline in our standard of living.
You see, I believe the decline of our country is primarily a decline of our culture.
We have lost our sense of honor, humility, and the dedication to personal responsibility that, for more than 200 years, made our country the greatest hope for mankind. I want to detail some of the factors that gave rise to the current entitlement society. We have become a country of people who believe their well-being is someone else's responsibility.
I've labeled these problems: The Corruption of America.
These problems manifest themselves in different ways across institutions in all parts of our society. But at their root, they are simply facets of the same stone. They are all part of the same essential problem.
The corruption of America isn't happening in one part of our country... or in one type of institution. It is happening across the landscape of our society, in almost every institution. It's a kind of moral decay... a kind of greed... a kind of desperate grasp for power... And it's destroying our nation.
The Ethos of 'Getting Yours'
Americans know, in their bones, that something terrible is happening. Maybe you can't articulate it. Maybe you don't have the statistics to understand exactly what's going on. But my bet is, you think about it a lot.
For me, a poignant moment of recognition came this month.
Bloomberg news published an article based on confidential sources about how Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and the Republican U.S. Treasury secretary during the financial crisis, held a secret meeting with the top 20 hedge-fund managers in New York City in late July 2008. This was about two weeks after he testified to Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "well-capitalized."
I knew for a fact that what Paulson told Congress wasn't true. I wrote my entire June 2008 newsletter detailing exactly why Fannie and Freddie certainly had billions in losses that they had not yet revealed to investors – $500 billion in losses, at least. There was no question in my mind, both companies were insolvent – "zeros," as I explained.
And yet, in front of Congress, the U.S. Treasury secretary was saying exactly the opposite. Either I was a liar... or he was.
Then... only a few days later... what did Paulson tell those hedge-fund managers?
He told them the same thing I had written in my newsletter. He told them the opposite of what he'd said publicly to Congress. He told these billionaire investors that Fannie and Freddie were a disaster... They would require an enormous, multibillion-dollar bailout... The U.S. government would have to take them over... And their shareholders would be completely wiped out.
Here you had a high-government official, explicitly lying to Congress (and by extension, the general public), while giving the real facts to a group of people who represented the financial interests of the world's wealthiest folks. The story didn't come to the public's attention for two years.
This was the most outrageous example of graft and corruption I have ever seen. Certainly it involves more billions of dollars in misappropriated value than any other similar story I can recall. These managers had the risk-free ability to make tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions, by using derivatives to capitalize on what they knew was the imminent collapse of the world's largest mortgage bank. Who picked up the tab? You know perfectly well. It was you and me, the taxpayers.
(One of the investment managers present at this meeting was Steve Rattner, who by that point was already deeply involved in another bit of graft, his efforts to bribe New York state pension-fund managers for large investments into his hedge fund, from which he earned perhaps as much as $100 million. He later settled the charges for a mere $10 million shortly after Andrew Cuomo was elected governor of New York.)
The Bloomberg story... about a crooked Treasury secretary handing a room full of crooked billionaires inside information worth billions of dollars... hardly caused a ripple. As far as I know, no actions are being planned against Henry Paulson or any of the hedge-fund managers involved. No other major media outlet picked up the story. I saw nothing about it from the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
What does that say about our country when even the most egregious kind of corruption – involving hundreds of billions of dollars – is simply ignored?
It seems like everyone in our country has lost his moral bearing, from the highest government officials and senior corporate leaders all the way down to schoolteachers and local community leaders. The ethos of my fellow Americans seems to have changed from one of personal integrity and responsibility to "getting yours" – the all-out attempt, by any means possible, to get the most amount of benefits with the least amount of work.
You can see this in everything from the lowering of school standards (revising the SAT) to the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional, college, and high school sports. Cheating has become a way of life in America.
I have an idea about how this happened... about the root cause of this kind of corruption and why it was inevitable, given some of the basic facts regarding how we've organized our government and our corporations.
Let me show you the numbers – the hard facts – behind what's happened to our country...
The Corruption of Politics
I'll start with one of the biggest factors in the decline of our civilization – the link between welfare, education, crime, and politics.
It is routinely alleged in national political debates that something is fundamentally unfair and un-American about the huge "wealth gap" between the poorest Americans and the wealthiest. Some politicians like to argue that the poor never have a real shot at the American dream, and as a nation, we owe them more and more of our resources to correct this injustice. Most important, it is alleged that only the government has the resources to correct this inequality.
This is a dangerous notion...
First, it promotes the idea of entitlement. Entitlement is a fairly new idea in the American political lexicon – perhaps because most of our nation's wealth is still fairly new. The American idea of entitlement argues that because you were born into a rich society, other people owe you something. The idea has become pervasive in our culture. It underlies the basic assumptions behind the idea of a "wealth gap." Implicit is the assumption that successful Americans haven't rightfully earned their wealth... that in one way or another, they've taken advantage of the society and have an obligation to give back most of what they've "taken."
As you'll see, I believe the idea of entitlement lies at the root of many of our most serious cultural problems.
The more obvious problem is the idea that the government is responsible for fixing the "wealth gap." But the government has proved wholly ineffective at dealing with poverty in America. The data is nearly conclusive that government efforts are far more likely to be the cause of the wealth gap than the solution.
The simple fact is, the government has to take resources from someone before it can dole them out to others. And this act of taking turns out to be economically destructive. It reduces the market's incentives for entrepreneurs. The more you take from the productive members of society, the less productive they become. That's the primary lesson of the history of socialism. Yet... many of our political leaders seem oblivious to this iron law of human nature.]
the full report can be viewed at the following link:
http://www.stansberryresearch.com/pub/reports/201112PSI_issue.html#continue
I feel so strongly about these ideas, I'd like you to forward this issue to everyone you know. We almost never allow this copyright violation... But in this case, feel free to forward as many times as you want. Print it up and pass copies around your hometown.
Porter Stansberry
Baltimore, Maryland
December 15, 2011
Stansberry & Associates Investment Research
1217 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 888-261-2693
- Joined
- 20 May 2011
- Posts
- 1,544
- Reactions
- 1
They are not pushing for socialist drivel - they are pushing to end inequality. Economic and otherwise - why do people not go to jail for stealing billions, but go to jail for downloading a few songs? Why must the economic system rape the environment? What gives them the right to take lower paying jobs offshore while keep higher paying - and arguably more wasteful executive jobs?
Etcetera.
Etcetera.
Garpal Gumnut
Ross Island Hotel
- Joined
- 2 January 2006
- Posts
- 13,553
- Reactions
- 9,962
scm, I agree totally. I actually spent a few hours with the protesters in a southern city and would agree with you. I found them to be in the main a well meaning bunch but there were a hard core of crusty trots amongst them, and as an ole 1968er who was truncheoned for protesting and later for my anti-apartheid actions I can identify with their idealism, but not with the maddies. ( as in Phillip Adams Maddies )
Have a Merry Christmas scm, and if you wish me a "happy holiday" I will biff you, and keep up the intelligent posts mate.
gg
- Joined
- 25 October 2008
- Posts
- 80
- Reactions
- 1
following is an interesting article i was emailed from a friend in US, and its message is what the OWS protesters should be pushing, not the socialist drivle that seems to be all they are capable of sprouting
the following is a few paragraphs of the december 2011 stansberry financial newsletter which is usually only available by subscription and is usually copyrighted material, but its author Porter Stansberry, has allowed... no actually make that encouraged, this edition to be freely circulated as he believes it to be very important infomation on the current financial situation we are all facing:
We have lost our sense of honor, humility, and the dedication to personal responsibility that, for more than 200 years, made our country the greatest hope for mankind. I want to detail some of the factors that gave rise to the current entitlement society. We have become a country of people who believe their well-being is someone else's responsibility.
I've labeled these problems: The Corruption of America.
Porter Stansberry
Baltimore, Maryland
December 15, 2011
Stansberry & Associates Investment Research
1217 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 888-261-2693
Ironically, the person who wrote this newsletter, including the portion I quoted and bolded above, seems to be the selfsame (Frank) Porter Stansberry who was "nailed in SEC investment fraud lawsuit" and was fined $1.5 M http://briandeer.com/vaxgen/stansberry-fraud.htm
". . . the judge noted that Stansberry’s conduct “undoubtedly involved deliberate fraud” and “making statements that he knew to be false;”. Judge Garbis determined that Stansberry had “testified falsely at trial” and did not recognize his “financial culpability”, and further “If Stansberry were to provide an assurance, that there would be no future violations, the Court would not find him particularly credible. The existence of an injunction against future fraudulent schemes of the type involved here will provide a needed measure of security against recidivism. The Court finds, after weighing the relevant factors, that there is ample evidence of a “reasonable and substantial likelihood” that Defendants will violate securities laws in the future, absent an injunction.”
Stansberry was also involved in hyping an AIDS drug technology that lead to prosecutions for fraud http://briandeer.com/vaxgen-aidsvax.htm - "For all the incredulity among vaccine scientists, one man who stood above the herd with Drs Francis, Heyward and Berman was Porter Stansberry . . . . , an "investment analyst" with the Baltimore-based Agora group, who hyped the stock and claimed to have "proof"that AidsVax worked
Even as insiders and institutions dumped VaxGen, Stansberry's mailshots promised miracles.
(And I don't have time right now to even begin to take issue specifically with some of the claims and contentions he makes in his newsletter.)
- Joined
- 26 January 2009
- Posts
- 322
- Reactions
- 0
i dont subscribe to the porter stansberry newsletter, the first i had even heard of him was the email i received that i then cut and pasted on my previous post due to its content which i thought may be interesting to ppl on this thread,
the content of the linked article struck a chord with me as i felt it closely related to the global financial uncertainty we are experiencing and that the points made by the author seemed credible, considering the amount of corruption and deception on the part of both government and corporate "players" who's actions led us all down this disasterous path, although the article may have been somewhat exagerated in parts i believe it still had a factual basis and credible conclusions.
as to the allegations of fraud and SEC action against him, porter stansberry answers these allegations at the following link:
http://dailyreckoning.com/why-the-sec-sued-me-and-why-you-should-care/
i am not saying he is innocent nor guilty in relation to the SEC matter... i'm merely pointing out that the article i posted of his had a credible theory on how the lack of financial integrity of many wall street corporations & also the government of the USA has played a major part in the current chaos...
personally i believe he is spot on with his commentary, but that hasnt influenced me to become a subscriber to his newsletter.
i think 'artist' just googled 'porter stansberry' then used any negative information he found about the author for an ad hominem attack to try to discredit the authors position... as he didnt refute any of porters claims, just attacked the man who made them. a shabby tactic that adds very little intelligent information to the topic in question.
the content of the linked article struck a chord with me as i felt it closely related to the global financial uncertainty we are experiencing and that the points made by the author seemed credible, considering the amount of corruption and deception on the part of both government and corporate "players" who's actions led us all down this disasterous path, although the article may have been somewhat exagerated in parts i believe it still had a factual basis and credible conclusions.
as to the allegations of fraud and SEC action against him, porter stansberry answers these allegations at the following link:
http://dailyreckoning.com/why-the-sec-sued-me-and-why-you-should-care/
i am not saying he is innocent nor guilty in relation to the SEC matter... i'm merely pointing out that the article i posted of his had a credible theory on how the lack of financial integrity of many wall street corporations & also the government of the USA has played a major part in the current chaos...
personally i believe he is spot on with his commentary, but that hasnt influenced me to become a subscriber to his newsletter.
i think 'artist' just googled 'porter stansberry' then used any negative information he found about the author for an ad hominem attack to try to discredit the authors position... as he didnt refute any of porters claims, just attacked the man who made them. a shabby tactic that adds very little intelligent information to the topic in question.