Tag: Economy

If you can’t beat them then try to hijack their cause.

When I first wrote in defense of the Occupy Wall Street protests a couple of weeks ago, I suggested that much of the scorn then being expressed by many progressives was “grounded in the belief that the only valid form of political activism is support for Democratic Party candidates.” Since then, even the most establishment Democrats have fundamentally changed how they talk about the protests – from condescension and hostility to respect and even support – and The New York Times today makes clear one significant factor accounting for this change:

Leading Democratic figures, including party fund-raisers and a top ally of President Obama, are embracing the spread of the anti-Wall Street protests in a clear sign that members of the Democratic establishment see the movement as a way to align disenchanted Americans with their party.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s powerful House fund-raising arm, is circulating a petition seeking 100,000 party supporters to declare that “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”

The Center for American Progress, a liberal organization run by John D. Podesta, who helped lead Mr. Obama’s 2008 transition, credits the protests with tapping into pent-up anger over a political system that it says rewards the rich over the working class – a populist theme now being emphasized by the White House and the party. The center has encouraged and sought to help coordinate protests in different cities.

[]

Can that scheme work? Can the Occupy Wall Street protests be transformed into a get-out-the-vote organ of Obama 2012 and the Democratic Party? To determine if this is likely, let’s review a few relevant facts.

The last and best part of Glenn’s article is the up date:

UPDATE: Here are the top recipients of campaign donations from the “securities and investment” industry from 1989 through 2010 (h/t muddy thinking):

Click on image to enlarge

Would it not be a bit odd for a protest movement to “Occupy Wall Street” while simultaneously devoting itself to keeping Wall Street’s most lavishly funded politician in power?

Former Sen. Russ Feingold, founder of Progressives United, tells Keith he both supports and is excited about the Occupy protests. Feingold is calling on Democrats to not play “cautious politics” and to join the movement, saying conservatives are attempting to mock the protests because “they’re very nervous that this might work.” Feingold adds, “My sense is that there is great fear that this sweet deal that a lot of these people have in both Washington and New York … is finally being threatened and challenged.”

For most Americans the recession never ended as was shown in a study (pdf) done by two former Census Bureau officials, Gordon W. Green Jr. and John F. Coder and explained in the New York Times article by Robert Pear. The household income has continued to drop over the last two years even though the Village has declared that the recession ended in June, 2009.

Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909, according to a study by two former Census Bureau officials. During the recession – from December 2007 to June 2009 – household income fell 3.2 percent.

[]

The full 9.8 percent drop in income from the start of the recession to this June – the most recent month in the study – appears to be the largest in several decades, according to other Census Bureau data. Gordon W. Green Jr., who wrote the report with John F. Coder, called the decline “a significant reduction in the American standard of living.”

[]

In their new study, Mr. Green and Mr. Coder found that income dropped more, in percentage terms, for some groups already making less, a factor that they say may have contributed to rising income inequality.

From June 2007 to June of this year, they said, median annual household income declined by 7.8 percent for non-Hispanic whites, to $56,320, and by 6.8 percent for Hispanics, to $39,901. For blacks, household income declined 9.2 percent, to $31,784.

The study also looks at unemployment, types of jobs, wages, age and education factors in the decline.

The red line, here, is median real household income, as gleaned from the CPS, indexed to January 2000=100. It’s now at 89.4, which means that real incomes are more than 10% lower today than they were over a decade ago.

More striking still is the huge erosion in incomes over the course of the supposed “recovery” – the most recent two years, since the Great Recession ended. From January 2000 through the end of the recession, household incomes fluctuated, but basically stayed in a band within 2 percentage points either side of the 98 level. Once it had fallen to 96 when the recession ended, it would have been reasonable to assume some mean reversion at that point – that with the recovery it would fight its way back up towards 98 or even 100.

Instead, it fell off a cliff, and is now below 90.

In dollar terms, median household income is now $49,909, down $3,609 – or 6.7% – in the two years since the recession ended. It was as high as $55,309 in December 2007, when the recession began.

Anyone still wondering what is motivating Occupy Wall Street at this point need only to look at this study by Green and Croder.

How magnanimous of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg to “allow the Wall Street protesters to stay indefinitely. Making the statement at the Columbus Day parade, Bloomberg also proclaimed that:

“This is the place where you can protest,” Bloomberg said last week, calling New York the “most tolerant, open city in the world.”

Is that so. Mike? How about your out of control police white shirts that indiscriminately pepper spray lawful protesters and lead them on to the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge only to set them up for arrest? Are you going to pay back the tax payers of NYC for the cost of defending the lawsuits that will generate? Not to mention the pay out when the city is found libel for police brutality and entrapment.

As for “letting the protesters stay”, reality is that the mayor has no power to make them leave. The Zucotti park is what is known as a privately owned public space and there are over five hundred such spaces in NYC, including Tompkins Square Park, that are part of a program to encourage private developers to provide indoor and outdoor public spaces. Under the agreement these spaces are open to the public 24/7 and neither the police or the owners have the right or remove anyone so long as they abide by the law and the reasonable rules established by the private owners.

Tough, ain’t it, Mike, you aren’t a dictator.

The ice cream brand has issued a statement supporting the Wall Street protests. So what flavour should that solidarity come in?

The board of directors of well-known ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s has issued a statement, “We stand with you”, in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

   “As a board and as a company we have actively been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we pay a livable wage to our employees, we directly support family farms and we are working to source fairly traded ingredients for all our products. But we realize that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic change. We support this call to action and are honored to join you in this call to take back our nation and democracy.”

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Occupy Wall Street is on the move … uptown.

Why uptown? Because that’s where the rich folks live!

Organizers are planning a march on Tuesday that will visit the homes of JP Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) CEO Jamie Dimon, billionaire David Koch, hedge fund honcho John Paulson, Howard Milstein, and News Corp (NWSA, Fortune 500) CEO Rupert Murdoch.

The millionaires and billionaires are being targeted for what event organizers called a “willingness to hoard wealth at the expense of the 99%.”

And it isn’t the first time.

The Franco-Belgian bank Dexia has become the first casualty of the 2011 banking crisis, with its Belgian arm being bought by the government and Belgium, France and Luxembourg providing a €90bn (£78bn) guarantee for its financing.

The bank, which specialises in local government financing and provides backing for more than 40 private finance initiative projects in the UK, ran into difficulties after its €3.4bn of exposure to Greece sparked concerns about its ability to absorb losses on the positions.

Other banks no longer wanted to lend it enough money to keep operating and it is expected to be the first of many to need bailing out during the renewed crisis in the sector. Alastair Ryan, analyst at UBS, reckoned eurozone governments could end up owning 40% of the sector if €200bn is needed to prop up banks – as estimated by the International Monetary Fund. Austrian bank Erste yesterday warned it would make a loss because of the eurozone crisis.

The embattled board of Dexia, which in 2008 received €6bn of assistance from France and Belgium, met on Sunday before it was announced on Monday that Belgium would pay €4bn for the operations in its country. Dexia shares resumed trading after last week’s suspension and fell almost 5%.

What Atrios said:

The CEO only earned a couple of million euros in each of the past couple of years. Worth every penny!

Repeating the same failed policies over and over expecting different results = Insanity

Fellow blogger and one of the long term under-/unemployed, Jesse LaGrega, participated in ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour”. He not only held his own with the Village pundits, he left George Will speechless and shreds out of touch elitist Peggy Noonan.

Jesse was also recognized by Truthdig as their Truthdigger of the Week for his priceless take down of Fox News and educating them about Occupy Wall Street. Congratulations to Jesse. Now somebody give this man a job in the media.

From Scarecrow at FDL:

As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message – and the solutions – should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity.

[]

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

Former Congressman and now congressional candidate from his old Florida district, Alan Grayson was a guest on Bill Maher’s Real Time on HBO along with former humorist PJ O’Rourke. When the subject turned to Occupy Wall Street Grayson gave O’Rourke a priceless lesson in basic economics.

Thanks to Crooks & Liars for both the video and the transcript.

O’Rourke: Get your shoes off, get a bongo drum, forget where to go to the bathroom and it’s yours.

Grayson: If I am the spokesman for all the people who think we should not have twenty four million people in this country who can’t find a full time job. That we should not have fifty million people who can’t see a doctor when they’re sick. That we shouldn’t have forty seven million people of this country who need government help to feed themselves. And we shouldn’t have fifteen million families who owe more on their mortgage than the value of home, OK, I’ll be that spokesman..

Up Date:

What Yves Smith said

One of the intriguing things about the commentary by the media and political operatives on OccupyWallStreet is how often they try to denigrate it, usually via ridicule and attacks on the appearance or presumed demographics of the participants. The underlying message is that the protestors are slovenly unproductive losers and hence have nothing in common with respectable middle class people. That flies in the face of the evidence on the ground, where the crowd in Zuccotti Park has gotten to be both older and more mixed ethnically than it was at its inception, and many of the Occupy demonstrations in other cities have solid representation of the middle aged and retirees.

Alan Grayson spoke with Rachel Maddow about the litany of economic grievances that are behind the Occupy Wall Street movement sweeping across America.

Washington Post columnist, Ezra Klein wonders “Could this time have been different?”

Christina Romer had traveled to Chicago to perform an unpleasant task: she needed to scare her new boss. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s top political adviser, had been very clear about that. He thought the president-elect needed to know exactly what he would be walking into when he took the oath of office in January. But it fell to Romer to deliver the bad news.

So Romer, a preternaturally cheerful economist whose expertise on the Great Depression made her an obvious choice to head the Council of Economic Advisers, gathered her tables and her charts and, on a snowy day in mid-December, sat down to explain to the next President of the United States of America exactly what sort of mess he was inheriting.

[]

By that point, the shape of the crisis was clear: The housing bubble had burst, and it was taking the banks that held the loans, and the households that did the borrowing, down with it. Romer estimated that the damage would be about $2 trillion over the next two years and recommended a $1.2 trillion stimulus plan. The political team balked at that price tag, but with the support of Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary who would soon lead the National Economic Council, she persuaded the administration to support an $800 billion plan.

The next challenge was to persuade Congress. There had never been a stimulus that big, and there hadn’t been many financial crises this severe.

[]

Romer and Bernstein gathered data from the Federal Reserve, from Mark Zandi at Moody’s, from anywhere they could think of. The incoming administration loved their report and wanted to release it publicly. Romer took it home over Christmas to double-check, rewrite and pick over. At 6 a.m. Jan. 10, just days before Obama would be sworn in as president, his transition team lifted the embargo on “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” It was a smash hit.

“It will be a joy to argue policy with an administration that provides comprehensible, honest reports,” enthused columnist Paul Krugman in the New York Times.

There was only one problem: It was wrong.

In his assessment of Klein’s review of why we are still in an economic quagmire, Paul Krugman generally agrees except:

Ezra Klein has a generally reasonable analysis of the Obama administration’s failure to respond with sufficient force to the economic crisis. Broadly speaking, he’s saying that the eurovenn applied: an economically adequate response lay beyond the bounds of the politically feasible.

In general, I’m trying not to do too much looking back; the question is what to do now. Still, I guess this needs addressing.

There’s certainly a lot to Ezra’s thesis. Yet I think he lets Obama and company off the hook too much.

[]

Now, Ezra may be right that none of this would have made much difference. But the White House was weak and confused in the face of a political and economic debacle, when it should have gone all out.

And you know what? It should still go all out. The chances of success are lower than they would have been if it had taken a strong position two years ago, but it ain’t over until it’s over.

h/t Meteor Blades

Yesterday afternoon Occupy Wall Street expanded from the over crowded Liberty Park with an orderly gathering at Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village

Hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators streamed across the threshold of Washington Square Park on Saturday afternoon after a spirited but conflict-free march from the financial district.

As a throng of protesters filled the historic public space, at the heart of Greenwich Village, a chant rose up – from voices young, old and in-between – casting their movement as an intractable majority fed up with the nation’s financial inequities.

“We are the 99 percent,” they yelled, referring to the movement’s slogan. Some banged drums. Others poked placards with various slogans toward blue skies on an unseasonably warm October weekend. Septuagenarians were in the crowd; one man walked a toddler on his feet.

Gothamist has some great updates and pictures

H/T to Yves Smith at her blog, naked capitalism, for this video:

On the Real News Network, Michael Hudson discusses some possible ideas for reforming finance to deal with the concerns raised by the OccupyWallStreet movement. I’ve noticed both here and on some news stories I heard in passing on MSNBC on Friday that the OccupyWallStreet movement has already succeeded in expanding the space of what is now being discussed as remedies.

What’s the matter with Mike Bloomberg?

Old Man Bloomberg Tired Of Occupy Wall Street’s Attempts To “Destroy Jobs”

In his weekly radio address, billionaire autocrat Michael Bloomberg took the opportunity to criticize the groups of students, labor unions, and other demonstrators who haven taken to Lower Manhattan to protest the state of our economy. “They’re trying to take away the tax base we have, because none of this is good for tourism,” Bloomberg said, apparently unaware that the tourists are eating it up and that some of the protesters are tourists themselves. He also claimed that those in Zuccotti Park were “trying to destroy the jobs of working people in this city.”

[]

Bloomberg began talking about the protests after a caller who claimed to live above Zuccotti Park said the park was “unusable” and complained of the group’s “incivility.” The mayor said “he couldn’t agree more.” According to the Times he also compared the protests to those in Vietnam for a second time in a week, noting that today’s anti-war protesters are respectful of veterans. “The Vietnam War, which was my generation, we treated our vets who came back terribly, just terribly,” he said. So, these protests are analogous to Vietnam in that they’re both pointless, job-killing nuisances?

He needs to allay the fears of his billionaire bankster buddies who are afraid that they might have to join Bernie Madoff in a federal prison.

NEW YORK — It’s rare that Mae Singerman, a self-described secular Jew who grew up in a Reform family, observes Yom Kippur by praying, fasting or attending synagogue.

But at sundown on Friday, the 27-year-old from Brooklyn planned to join hundreds of other Jews at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration for Kol Nidre, the opening service of Yom Kippur that starts the holiest time on the Jewish calendar.

“For me, it’s about bringing my Jewish identity and my politics together,” said Singerman, who has participated in several anti-capitalism protests in recent years and visited the demonstration at Zuccotti Park for the first time last week. “Having a Jewish service or ceremony brings more Jews who wouldn’t necessarily come. I know people coming tonight who are pretty skeptical about Occupy Wall Street but are willing to give it a try because of the Yom Kippur service.”

Organized mostly via Facebook over the last week, the Kol Nidre service starts at 7 p.m. across from the downtown park where demonstrations have occurred since mid-September. Almost 500 people have RSVP’d on Facebook, although at least a few dozen of them are out-of-towners who are just showing their support.

The service, led by rabbis and students from several Jewish traditions, has been endorsed by Jewish organizations such as Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and the Shalom Center. The Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism has donated 100 prayer books for the service, and organizers say that the Battery Park Synagogue and Chabad of Wall Street have welcomed holy-day observers who spend the night at the protest camp to come pray at Saturday services. Similar Kol Nidre services have also been planned in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

For all the criticism about being leaderless and not having a cohesive, coherent message, Occupy Wall Street is ending its third week and it does show signs of going away. They have garnered support from activists, union, some politicians, and groups like MoveOn.org but the spokespeople for this nebulous group are adamant that this is not political. It is about the stolen American Dream from not just Americans but the world. It’s about health care, education, jobs, shelter and food. It about some people who will be in debt for the rest of their lives while the 1% who have destroyed this country stare down from their balconies and sip champagne. It is not the Democratic party’s Tea Party. It is not the left or the right, it is the bottom versus those at the top. It should be a wake up call to Wall St, corporations, banks, Republicans and Democrats alike. We aren’t going to take this anymore. Occupy Wall Street is the new Declaration of Independence for the 99% regardless of race, religion, sex, sexual preference or politics.

What should the Occupy Wall Street organizers do? They should continue on the path they were on prior to all the labor and Democratic Party support. They should put the movement first and not bow to any Democratic Party or liberal organization operatives who seek to channel the movement into electoral politics or compel the movement to lower its sights. It should work to maintain a level of discipline and make sure it establishes what it is not. It should continue to aim for the impossible and remember that they have earned their power because they have occupied the park and stood their ground in the face of a media blackout, police brutality and contemptuous criticisms.

The occupiers did not come together to be the Tea Party of the left. They came together to take on corporate power and address problems that impact Americans who are conservative and liberal, left wing and right wing. And, to continue to grow as a movement that challenges the influence of corporations, special interests and the top 1% in government, they need to make clear this is not about building a better Democratic Party. This is about the war on poor, working class and middle class Americans, the constant attacks on unions and how Americans are begin to have influence over their government so the assaults on poor and working Americans come to an end.

This is a really long article by Spocko at MyFDL so I’m just going to post the link. it has some very salient points and information well worth reading even if you aren’t going to the protests

“Remember, the guy who suggests getting the dynamite is usually the Fed.” ~ Old hippie saying