Durbin, Kirk Weigh in on Occupy Movement

Lonely days, lonely nights. 

BofA shifting troubles to the taxpayers, psst...real class war rolls on....:

Bloomberg News reports that Bank of America (with Federal Reserve approval) put Merrill Lynch credit-default swaps into BofA’s deposit-holding arm after a credit downgrade caused counterparties to demand it put up billions more in collateral.

Got that? Probably not, so let’s put it another way: Bank of America
moved risky insurance contracts to a taxpayer-insured company,
ostensibly to save money. The FDIC, which would now be on the hook for losses if the derivatives collapse, is not happy, and the move raises more questions about the health of Bank of America, which has already seen its market value sliced in half this year.

So this move amounts to a direct transfer from derivatives
counterparties of Merrill to the taxpayer, via the FDIC, which would
have to make depositors whole after derivatives counterparties grabbed
collateral

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/b...

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com...

If BOA improves Buffet wins,
If BOA fails, it's the taxpayer's problem.

Not bad odds!

It's started.

First it was complete dismissal, now we're in the desperate throes of the "ridicule" stage.

Mmmhmm. Pointing out that their messaging needs improvement and that they should focus on more specific policy proposals is "ridicule". Yeah. You should really just go all the way in now and criticize other people for exaggeration again.

Idiot.

The 99% is a good way of illustrating in simple terms that an tiny sliver of the elite owns most of this country's wealth and controls its political system.

People, especially independent voters, don't want a class war. They want sensible, achievable policy proposals to solve the country's problems, and just bitching about rich people isn't a solution. But then I guess if you don't think elections even matter, that absolves you of having to deal with such complexity and allows you to just bitch and pretend that your bitching matters.

*snore*  All you want to do is instigate fights:  (like you-know-who here)  I hadn't even responded or mentioned you at all.....

It's boring.  You are completely useless to engage with so I'm not going to do it.

Mmmhmm. No answers. That's what I thought.

::rolls eyes::

I can't wait to see how mad and lonely you get.  Like I've said, you always get sooooo angry.  Now you're going to be both angry and lonely.

Not surprisingly, you've got it backwards. Not having to even see your idiotic bullshit is what I want... if Disqus had an "ignore" feature like other forums, I'd have used it for you months ago. So, please, do try to make me "lonely". Do me a favor. Idiot.

Bernard Harcourt was very good on WBEZ this morning.  It was frustrating to see him get cut off right when he was nailing it regarding "demands"

Occupy Wall Street’s ‘Political Disobedience’

In the end, if the concept of “political disobedience” accurately
captures this new political paradigm, then the resistance movement needs
to occupy Zuccotti Park because levels of social inequality and the
number of children in poverty are intolerable. Or, to put it another
way, the movement needs to resist partisan politics and worn-out
ideologies because the outcomes have become simply unacceptable. The
Volcker rule, debt relief for working Americans, a tax on the wealthy —
those might help, but they represent no more than a few drops in the
bucket of regulations that distribute and redistribute wealth and
resources in this country every minute of every day. Ultimately, what
matters to the politically disobedient is the kind of society we live
in, not a handful of policy demands.

Ultimately, what matters to the politically disobedient is the kind of society we live in, not a handful of policy demands.

Which is why they're often so utterly irrelevant.

The 99% is a good way of illustrating in simple terms that an tiny sliver of the elite owns most of this country's wealth and controls its political system.  Of course there are a lot of people up in those higher six figure brackets of the 99% that disagree (like some chicagoist commenters), but 40 or 50% isn't quite as snappy. 

The bottom line is that when they come up with a good simple slogan like that they are ridiculed, when they try to take a nuanced approach to problems that are more complicated than Glass Steagall or Citizens United then they are also ridiculed. I suggest they stop paying too much mind to those people who will ridicule them no matter what they do.

Ignore
Ridicule
Fear
Fight

Reinstating the GSA, restricting the amount of lobbyist money flowing into Washington, and repealing the idea of corporate personhood, need to be the causes for this movement to pick up. Everything else flows from those three. Right now their message is too multifaceted and thus confused. 

I think those are all pretty worthy goals. Undoing Citizens United, though, is definitely the tallest order. And that's why the next election is going to be so critical: if President Obama doesn't in this term, the next term may very well see one or two shots at a SCOTUS seat.

Incidentally, even as a person that is sympathetic to these causes, there has not been a less successful political slogan than "I am the 99%." It has no concrete message other than antagonism (us vs. them) which just feeds Fox News' "class warfare" angle. I would come up with something better, but I am  not the creative type.

I know that some people in these demonstrations would welcome open warfare with the elite, but this seems like the wrong path for our country to go down. I am anything but anarchistic.  

Yeah, I don't particularly care for the 99% thing either. Effective political movements focus on an at least loose-but-clearly-defined set of achievable policy goals, and then work to get people elected to implement them. "The richest people in the country are assholes!" is... not that, and that's what "I am the 99%" basically boils down to in my mind.

FWW, the Fawkes masks seem to be favored by the Ron Paul / Libertarian / "End The Fed" types who've been down there. But it's ridiculous to focus on one dude's sign as some kind of representation of the movement.

No offense, but I'm stunned that people don't know about Glass Steagall, I thought it kind of went without saying, like Citizen's United.

"But it's ridiculous to focus on one dude's sign as some kind of representation of the movement."

It's called "using an example to make a point."

"I'm stunned that people don't know about Glass Steagall, I thought it kind of went without saying, like Citizen's United."

Weren't you the one complaining about how uninformed voters were during the last election? Like, your co-worker didn't even know who was running for mayor or something? Do you think they know the intricacies of Glass-Steagall (or even what you're referring to by "Citizen's United")?

I'm talking about people who feel compelled to comment on the lack of message from OWS, not knowing about Glass Steagall.

It's called "using an example to make a point."

Fair enough, I think it was a bit disingenuous.

There is an appreciable portion of the population that doesn't know there are fifty states. Glass Steagall is far from common knowledge.

And in any event, my fear/suspicion is that a sizable chunk of the Occupy people are (like you-know-who here) more of the "vilify somebody first, come up with sensible, measured, achievable policy solutions later -- or never" mindset. And I think we all know how well that's gonna work out.

Don't get me wrong, I hope they confound my expectations and come up with a concrete and practical policy platform and substantively drive the debate going forward; "We need to reinstate past banking regulations!" is a much more effective message when it comes from citizen activists than when it comes from politicians. Thus far, though, I really don't see it. At all.

 And one more thing ... while you didn't see it at first, as time goes on you see more and more people going to things like Glass Steagall to form their base message. Give it time, and that kind of message may move to front and center. They're getting it.

Good points all. I think we're both on the same page that we hope it works out... there's very little question in my mind that the country is desperately in need of an organized, reasoned, legitimate political force from the sane left. Time will tell if Occupy grows into that, and if it does, great.

The heart of my disagreement with you on this is that I'm a bit more optimistic concerning the makeup of this crowd, both in terms of what it is now and what it has potential to be. Sure, you have people like (as you reference him) Voldemort. But you also have people like Aaron Cynic and Kevin Robinson, people with whom I have often disagreed but far more often than not found rational. And, moreover, you have an increasing number of just normal, regular people who in one way or another have found themselves on the wrong side of this economy. (I keep hoping Aaron will profile some of these people.) Unemployed union people, single parents who can't afford health care, people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. These are people desperate for a voice, and as long as this movement doesn't jump the shark and go whole hog for a 1968 vibe, more and more of them will latch onto this.

I understand completely where you're coming from with regards to the history of movements from the left, and this may very well go down that path. I'm just saying I see potential here. It's delicate, but it could be something, and I'll support it as long as I see the potential.

@twitter-1701181:disqus you are the first person I've seen to mention a specific goal, so I thank you for that.  You also educated me, as I'd never heard of the Glass-Steagall Act.  For similarly uninformed people, this very brief summary was posted in 2003:

http://www.investopedia.com/ar...

There's also stuff on Wikipedia, but I think the above article is interesting in that it was written WELL before the current financial crisis, and with a slant towards the idea that repealing the act was a good thing.  However, the history lesson laid out in it is remarkably similar to what happened in the mid 2000s after regulations were relaxed.  And what did those actions which prompted the original Act bring about?  The Great Depression (which of course was a confluence of many many things, not just out of control financial institutions).

But Prescott has a point -- a dude in a clown mask is not going to inspire confidence in a lot of people.  And despite the younger generation's infatuation with Twitter, it is NOT the place to have intelligent and meaningful political or intellectual discourse, especially with a member of Congress.  They barely acknowledge email.  And I would wager that most of them do not read or post to their twitter feeds -- they have some 20 year old intern tally the positive and negative tweets per day and get an idea of they are generally popular or not.

A well-written letter will go a much longer way towards getting some actual attention.

As for Kirk saying that we're unfocused and have no coherent argument - how much more explicit do we have to be than saying that we want to see Glass-Steagall reinstated? How, given that that regulation was in place during the majority of the century in which American business dominated the globe AND was critical regulation in correcting the wrongs that caused the Great Depression, would that likely send us into a "deep recession". I've @ messaged him on Twitter repeatedly but no response to this IL resident (as expected).

How much more explicit do we have to be than saying that we want to see Glass-Steagall reinstated?

That's a drum I've personally been beating for a long time: if you look back at most major financial crises around the world, you can see that one common trait that many of them share is that, at some level, commercial banks got too involved in investment bank-type speculative behavior. The Great Depression, the secondary bank crisis in the UK,  the Latin American debt crisis of the 80s, the Japanese clusterfuck in 1990, to some extent the Scandinavian mess in the 90s (particularly in Finland), the banking crisis that blew up Asia in the late 90s, the S&L crisis in the early 90s... in all of these cases, commercial banks NOT acting like commercial banks and acting more I-banks played at least some role, even if perhaps a small one in some cases. And while it's perhaps not the only cause in our most recent crisis, it's certainly one of them -- and probably one of the biggest.

GSA put in place many regulations to curb that kind of behavior; as a result, if you wanted long-term, stable, but perhaps moderate growth you'd want to be a commercial bank. If you wanted shorter-term and probably bigger gains and could tolerate more risk, you'd want to be an investment bank. So GSA had the net effect of corralling risk into the places it belonged: the idea that when you deposit your paycheck into a bank that it shouldn't be used to stake some banker's gambling habit is just common sense. But if you did want to gamble with it, you'd know where to go. An I-bank. But today, after Gramm-Leach-Bliley, "commercial bank" vs. "investment bank" is, from a regulatory perspective, largely a distinction without a difference, and it's pretty easy to see, just from looking at history, the kinds of problems that'll cause.

So I applaud you for bringing that up, and I encourage you to keep hammering that point home. But to this observer, I think your assertion that Occupy has been really trying to get that message out just isn't accurate. Which is kind of a shame, as it's really what this whole thing should be about, IMO.

"How much more explicit do we have to be than saying that we want to see Glass-Steagall reinstated?"

Apparently a lot more -- for example, in the picture used with this post, I'm not really seeing anything about specific financial regulation recommendations with a Guy Fawkes mask and a sign with a tired trope. You also have to realize that a vast majority of the 99% don't have any idea what Glass-Steagall is.

Instead of "@ messaging" Dick Durbin on Twitter (this may be a bold recommendation, but perhaps a phone is a better direct line of communication to a 66-year-old Senator), maybe you would be better off helping spread the word in simple terms -- absent of politically charged language -- as to how allowing investment and commercial banks to intertwine affects the 99% on a personal level. Provided, of course, that you can.

Valid points, Prescott. It seems to me, however, that "helping spread the word in simple terms -- absent of politically charged language" hasn't really been all that effective.

Occupy has been front-page news for several weeks now. Quietly spreading the word absent of politically charged language hasn't.

The front page news that the populous at large is filtering is that there are a bunch of people camping in a park because they're angry at rich people, and banks, or whatever. And I didn't say anything about spreading the word "quietly," or that it was the only option. I think there just needs to be more education being put out there on top of witty (or not) signs. For instance, twocee below provided a helpful link to inform people about the specifics of Glass-Steagall. As he/she also pointed out, the movement isn't doing a very effective job getting in the face of politicians or justice officials -- the only ones that can actually implement reform or accountability. That's why the March for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 was on Washington, not NYC.

I think it's becoming more effective as time goes on, the word spreads and the message sinks in. There's something about this movement that people want to gravitate toward, and I think to a degree you just have to give it time and let that happen. A true movement will not be forced down anybody's throat, and it won't be born of radical screaming. We've had decades of watching politically-charged protest movements try to get themselves arrested, and far more often than not it's come to nothing. Occupy Chicago--at least until this weekend--has been something different. It is my fervent hope that it's given time to germinate, so that it grows on its own.

Good points all, Prescott.

And, just as a side note, that movie with the mask sucked, and I don't read "graphic novels" to those masks just make me think of a stupid movie.