CHARTS: Here's What The Wall Street Protesters Are So Angry About... The "Occupy Wall Street" protests are gaining momentum, having spread from a small park in New York to marches to other cities across the country. So far, the protests seem fueled by a collective sense that things in our economy are not fair or right. But the protesters have not done a good job of focusing their complaints—and thus have been skewered as malcontents who don't know what they stand for or want. (An early list of "grievances" included some legitimate beefs, but was otherwise just a vague attack on "corporations." So, what are the protesters so upset about, really? Do they have legitimate gripes? To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes. And if America cannot figure out a way to address these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized," as sociologists might say. In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between "labor" and "capital," there has rarely—if ever—been a time when "capital" was so clearly winning.
Occupy Winston-Salem OccupyStream - Live Revolution Occupy Portland Outsmarts Police, Creating Blueprint for Other Occupations Photo by Paul by Lester Macgurdy The Portland Occupation stumbled upon a tactical innovation regarding occupying public spaces. This evolution in tactics was spontaneous, and went unreported in the media. The tactical evolution that evolved relies on two military tactics that are thousands of years old- the tactical superiority of light infantry over heavy infantry, and the tactical superiority of the retreat over the advance. Heavy infantry is a group of soldiers marching in a column or a phalanx that are armed with weaponry for hand to hand, close quarters combat. Light infantry are armed with ranged weapons for assault from a distance. Protesters function fluidly as either light or heavy infantry. Because of the lack of organization in a crowd of protesters, light infantry cops firing tear gas, etc. has little effect because it just serves to disorganize a group that relies upon disorganization in the first place. Photo by Lauriel
The Great American Bubble Machine | Politics News The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. Invasion of the Home Snatchers By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. The Feds vs. Wall Street's Big Win
A Serious Occupation: Workers Occupy Goose Island Factory | Occupied Chicago Tribune Armando Robles, a worker at Serious Materials and president of UE Local 1110, raises his fist inside the occupied factory. Photo by Aaron Cynic. A little over three years since the Republic Windows and Doors workers in Chicago won back their pay and benefits from the closing company by occupying their Goose Island factory, they are at it again. The workers are occupying the same factory, now owned by Serious Materials, to protest being laid off without notice after the closure of the factory. “We are not leaving until we are satisfied,” Melvin Maclin, a worker at Serious Materials and vice president of UE Local 1110, told the Occupied Chicago Tribune . Arise Chicago issued an action alert announcing the action: UE [United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America] union is occupying Serious Materials factory, the former Republic Windows, right now . Pizza was delivered to the occupying workers, but met with some resistance from Chicago police present. Updated: 9:40 p.m. 10 p.m.
How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan. It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting. Four months earlier, Bear Stearns Cos. had sold itself for just $10 a share to JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Now, amid tumbling home prices and near-record foreclosures, attention was focused on a new source of contagion: Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, which together had more than $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities and other debt outstanding, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue. Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. “If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you’re not likely to take it out,” he said. A Different Message At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Stock Wipeout
In a 325-Page SEC Letter, Occupy's Finance Gurus Take on Wall Street Lobbyists Yesterday, a group affiliated with Occupy Wall Street submitted an astounding comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Point by point, it methodically challenges the arguments of finance industry lobbyists who want to water down last year's historic Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms. The lobbyists have been using the law's official public comment period to try to kneecap the reforms, and given how arcane financial regulation can be, they might get away with it. But Occupy the SEC is fighting fire with fire, and in so doing, defying stereotypes of the Occupy movement. Its letter explains: Occupy the SEC is a group of concerned citizens, activists, and professionals with decades of collective experience working at many of the largest financial firms in the industry. Proprietary trading by large-scale banks was a principal cause of the recent financial crisis, and, if left unchecked, it has the potential to cause even worse crises in the future.
Revealed: huge increase in executive pay for America's top bosses | Business John Hammergren, CEO of healthcare provider McKesson, earned $145m last year. Photograph: George Nikitin/AP Chief executive pay has roared back after two years of stagnation and decline. America's top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year, according to the largest survey of US CEO pay. America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m. The Guardian's exclusive first look at the CEO pay survey from corporate governance group GMI Ratings will further fuel debate about America's widening income gap. Last year's survey, covering 2009, found pay rates were broadly flat following a decline in wages the year before. This year's survey shows CEO pay packages have boomed: the top 10 earners took home more than $770m between them in 2010. Still, there are no bankers among this year's big winners.
Occupation Nation Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion From Fed Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Fed Chairman Ben S. “These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. (View the Bloomberg interactive graphic to chart the Fed’s financial bailout.) Foreign Borrowers It wasn’t just American finance. Peak Balance The balance was more than 25 times the Fed’s pre-crisis lending peak of $46 billion on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon. Odds of Recession Liquidity Requirements ‘Stark Illustration’ 21,000 Transactions Rolling Crisis
10 Steps We Can Take Right Now to Build the New Economy | Economy Are we ready for a new economy? And a new politics? First, some definitions. I think we can define the new economy as one where the overriding purpose of economic life is to sustain and to strengthen People, Place, and Planet, and is no longer to grow Profit, Product (as in gross domestic), and Power. And a new politics? Well, then, let’s explore how we can begin the process of transformation to a new economy and a new politics. Step 1 The journey to a new political economy begins when enough Americans have come to two important conclusions. A growing number of Americans are already finding it impossible to accept the deteriorating conditions of life and living. Step 2 What I call progressive fusion. Critical here is a common progressive platform. A powerful part of the drive for transformation must be a compelling envisioning of the world we would like to leave for our children and grandchildren — a new American Dream, if you will. Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7 Step 8 Step 9 Step 10
Tax gift to the rich Todd Dagres, a prominent venture capitalist and independent movie producer, earned $3.5 million in 2003, and paid not a cent in federal income tax. The IRS challenged the math, and sent Dagres a bill for $981,980 in back taxes, plus $196,369 in penalties. So Dagres lawyered up. His attorneys waived one lucrative tax break to exploit an even better one, and claimed victory in the case in March. In the course of the dispute, Dagres offered five years of his tax returns as evidence in U.S. Dagres earned $58.5 million over those five years — ranking him among the richest 0.1 percent of Americans. Dagres, 51, is not alone. The trend has gotten quite pronounced in recent years, especially for the very, very rich who, like Dagres, earn most of their income from investing and can exploit the low rates on capital gains. During that time, the combined taxable income of the top 400 soared from $16.3 billion to $91 billion. There is more than revenue at stake. Wrinkle in the Tax Code Flip-flop
100 Million Poor People In America And 39 Other Facts About Poverty That Will Blow Your Mind Every single day more Americans fall into poverty. This should deeply alarm you no matter what political party you belong to and no matter what your personal economic philosophy is. Right now, approximately 100 million Americans are either "poor" or "near poor". For a lot of people "poverty" can be a nebulous concept, so let's define it. When it comes to poverty, most Americans immediately want to get into debates about tax rates and wealth redistribution and things like that. But the truth is that they are missing the main point. The way we slice up the pie is not going to solve our problems, because the pie is constantly getting smaller. Our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted, the U.S. dollar is slowly losing its status as the reserve currency of the world and we are steadily getting poorer as a nation. Don't be fooled by the government statistics that show a very small amount of "economic growth". So that means we are getting poorer as a nation. #9 According to the U.S.