Paul Krugman: Wall Street Protestors 'Completely Right' To Criticize Banks

New York Times:

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Bob Duryea]

02:01 PM on 10/10/2011

Research what companies or subsidaries, or binding financial contracts major lending instutions are involved with. In searching this information the people will discover why instutions were " Too Big to fail". Why banks were quickly ridding themselves of toxic bundled mortgage securities , quickly selling off those assets at overinflated prices until the next investor discovered such investments were junk and not properly valued. Overinflated real-estate prices feuling this bubble for years reaped billions upon billions in profits while left unchecked for the proper and accurate default values. Now banks are suing each other over those " Default swaps" pointing the fingers at each other with the last financial instution holding the hot potato. Then crying for a bailout as their greed party came to a hault. These banks received help from the very people that the banks then took people's homes in order to protect their investors from losing their initial investments and gain liquidity in gaining tangible assets of real estate as to what was left. All of the behaviors, unknown of how homeowners' homes were fractionalized for profit by lenders and their associates, was a clever way of " Buying on the Margin" to profit even more from non-existent "speculated" over-inflated faulty unchecked real estate appraisals. Banks were fined and some CEOs free to walk as if just another bad investment deal gone sour while the world reverberated from those ponzi-scheme similiarities still taking it's tolls on taxpayers throughout the world.

[blndgenie]

08:07 AM on 10/10/2011

Were the occu- bag gers in Atlanta 'right' to refuse to allow Congressman John Lewis to speak? We know that people of co lo r spoke at tea party rallies, are those in atlanta r a cis ts?

[Kenz300]

08:52 PM on 10/08/2011

We need a financial transaction tax so that banks can help pay for the mess they created.

[Whistlejackett]

01:50 PM on 10/08/2011

Let the American dream die. Pay attention to your own dreams and take action. Make yourself happy and never again accept someone else's version of a dream.

[thesidetrek]

12:21 PM on 10/08/2011

I often agree with Krugman, but this time he's wrong. Banks are innovative private sector institutions and they can do whatever they are legally allowed to. When regulators understand what they do, maybe there'll be some consumer-friendly changes.

[Mnemesis]

01:07 PM on 10/09/2011

Back up your words. List the innovations that these banks have produced that was good for society and not their own greed.

[justobserve]

12:15 PM on 10/08/2011

Mr. Krugman: I totally agree with you! These people might have started a revolution we urgently need.

[GranE]

10:12 AM on 10/08/2011

I am responding to gu1tar's tweet. Yes, just lately congress voted to take over student loans because the banks scammed the students. It was too late for many students who racked up huge debt to get degrees and now have no jobs to repay their loan.

[dcb64]

10:01 AM on 10/08/2011

what people aren't willing to say, is that the protests are really against ht erise of facism in america. facism isn't nazi. they should just come out and use the proper word, because both tea party, and progressive can all agree against facism

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
corporatism
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Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Britannica Concise Encyclopedia


Theory and practice of organizing the whole of society into corporate entities subordinate to the state. According to the theory, employers and employees would be organized into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and largely controlling the people and activities within their jurisdiction. Its chief spokesman was Adam Müller (b. 1779 — d. 1829), court philosopher to the Fürst (prince) von Metternich, who conceived of a "class state" in which the classes operated as guilds, or corporations, each controlling a specific function of social life. This idea found favour in central Europe after the French Revolution, but it was not put into practice until Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy

[USAFree1]

07:07 AM on 10/08/2011

Why does the status quo always diss new ideas? Because it's the status quo. The reason that there are no specifics is because there is a very general feeling that there's something not right in about all aspects of US life. And it's spreading all around the world that there's just something not right anywhere. This feeling ranges from how government works to the food we eat to personal liberty. It's so big that demands can't contain it. This vague feeling has been building for three decades and I think may have hit a tipping point. I hope these protesters remember how Spiro Agnew (Nixon's VP) called all us anti-war protesters dirty, anti-American hippies. His unrelenting denigration of us lead to the Kent State and Jackson State murders of US citizens by the government. I'm disabled and poor so I can't be at these protests, but my heart and support is.

[GranE]

10:03 AM on 10/08/2011

It wasn't Spiro's but* that was drafted for an undeclared war. The rich mans' son never got a notice to report for duty. I will never, ever, understand how one American could fire on another because they exercised their right to protest government actions. Only in large numbers are the OWS protestors safe from that mindset. I wonder if that mindset had anything to do with the press not giving the movement publicity? If they do not handle it right another Kent State could irrupt but social media holds them in check, and thank goodness for it.

[lovethesinner]

01:56 AM on 10/08/2011

Paul makes a good point about this being a possible do-over for the Democrats, and they should jump on it. The demands of OWS read like a 21st century New Deal:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/keith-olbermann-occupy-wall-street-media_n_998093.html

Give it up, Mr. President... those bankers are never going to be your friend. Who's side are you on, anyway?

Obama - Biden 2012

[maxfax]

01:07 AM on 10/08/2011

There's never been a better time for Buffalo Springfield's "For What Its Worth" Redux.

[Carolab]

12:56 AM on 10/08/2011

Well done Paul.  The closest analogy I have been able to come up with is the New Deal Coalition, both in the way this is forming and in its demands and makeup.

What say you?

[fgrammit]

06:14 AM on 10/08/2011

i miss those growing up days under fdr and harry truman . the days when americans hung together, worked together, helped their neighbors shared rides to work to conserve gas praised the men and boys in uniform and we were ONE NATION UNDER GOD INDIVISABLE WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL( ALTHO AT THAT TIME OUR PLEDGE OFALLEGIANCE DID NOT INCLUDE "UNDER GOD "AND WAS NOT MADE TO THE LIKES OF GROVER NORQUIST

[zitlight73]

05:46 PM on 10/07/2011

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson. And that is exactly what the Federal Reserve has done, any candidate, any politician who talks change while ignoring the Federal Reserve should be hanged by his own puppet strings. I wish Occupy Wall Street well and I hope Gandhi was right;"“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

[Sir Guest-a-Lot]

06:57 PM on 10/07/2011

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/jefferson/banks.asp

Nice made-up quote.

[Binea]

11:14 PM on 10/07/2011

" Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner,Liberty is a well armed Lamb contesting the decision" - Ben Franklin. ( arm yourselves with true info"

[castlemike]

03:25 PM on 10/07/2011

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/why-occupywallstreet-doesnt-support-obama-his-nothing-to-see-here-stance-on-bank-looting.html

1. Violation of REMIC (real estate mortgage conduit) rules, which are IRS provisions which allow mortgage backed securities to be treated as pass-through entities. As we’ve indicated, the violations were clear cut and are easily documented. Moreover, when the senior enforcement officer in the IRS was alerted last year, she was keenly interested. But the word that came back was the the question had gone to the White House, and the answer was to nix going after these violations: “We are not going to use tax as a tool of policy.” So this is not a case of creative use of “loopholes,” this is prima facie evidence of an Administration policy of protecting the banks.

2. Consumer fraud under HAMP. Catherine Masto of Nevada has already delineated this case in her second amended complaint against numerous Bank of America entities (in fact, the evidently clueless President could find a raft of other litigation ideas in her filing). All the servicers engaged in similar egregious conduct.

3. Securities fraud by mortgage trustees and serivcers.

[zelduh]

03:15 PM on 10/07/2011

It seems that the protesters have made a DECLARATION FOR THE SEPARATION OF CORPORATION AND STATE.

(see http://occupywallst.org/forum/first-official-release-from-occupy-wall-street/)

Almost all of the protesters' claims will be resolved when "corporate persons" and the seriously wealthy no longer control Congress.

Once large corporations and the 1% no longer control Congress, the social issues WILL BE (finally) addressed by Congress.

[nowThenzen]

04:19 PM on 10/07/2011

good, also, we must realize the 1% CONTROL the large Corporations that control much of Congress.

[zelduh]

04:25 PM on 10/07/2011

Correct!

Congress are the pu ppets; the 1% are the pu ppet mas ters.

[Sir Guest-a-Lot]

07:00 PM on 10/07/2011

So, originally you all were complaining about corporations being involved in politics because corporations are not part of that whole "we the people" thing. Now it seems that you aren't content with just removing corporations from politics. Instead, you want to minimize the influence of certain people in politics. Interesting... completely unconstitutional and tyrannical... but interesting...

[fgrammit]

05:51 AM on 10/08/2011

when opinions are bought they are usless opinions when you sell yourself you are bound by the purchasers opinion and loose not only you rself esteem but all integrity as well. case in point, representatives ryan ,boehner,and canter

[GranE]

09:27 AM on 10/08/2011

So you are saying Corporations get a vote, then as private citizens they get a second vote. When they drop money in the Congressman's bag they get their vote. Get rid of the Congressman. simple