So you know the bolded for a fact but you can't spell affected?

If the assets are overvalued, why is this a problem? They will be snapped up by more efficient users of capital (the ones smart enough to keep their money), which in the long run will gain exponential economic advantages. Productive capital should flow to people who are better at creating real wealth. Instead, productive capital is taxed (printing money is a form of tax), causing wealth to flow in the opposite direction. Bailout money, by definition is given to those who are:
1. Economically inefficient (companies that are deeply in debt, or can't compete, or highly inefficient and ultimately useless alternative energies like ethanol/solar power/wind, and so on)
2. Criminal, or
3. Bad at choosing successful long term and wealth producing investments (failed banks and brokers)

In other words, we are giving vast sums of money to people so ******ed that they invest it in things that fail to generate wealth.

This is a ****ing terrible idea. I dare you to defend it.

You really going to nit up effected vs affected as if you can assert away his point because he made one of the more common grammatical errors? Really?

Nope. I'm pointing out the fallibility of human judgment and overconfidence. His argument relies on that assumption that he can predict with near certainty the highly unpredictable effects of not doing a bailout, yet he has not read widely enough/is not aware enough to have internalized the correct usage of effect/affect in 20+ years.

I find that hilarious, hence my post. The second part of my post is where the meat is.

A trillion dollars was stolen from the American people and given to greedy losers to do with largely as they please. I don't know what land you're from, but that is ****ing nuts. That is why people are protesting and why so many support them.

If you really really felt you had to shore up the financial system by injecting capital you should have spent in on infrastructure projects, and given it to banks and companies that had the competence not to be insolvent. How else do you clear out the morons? They're still in place making the same decisions that started this mess. Which is why people are mad.

wow, nick the quick itt, bit of a curveball there

Yup.

From Every 22 year old liberals fav news outlet Al Jazeera -

So whats next strikes or violence?

Are there still hundreds of derelict kids at Occupy, and are we still talking about it on 2+2?

Greatings from occupied San Diego-Tijuana!

It was another great day! AFAIK, our parade today was even more fun that yesterdays. The reason I missed it is I was helping Foods with logistics moving our camp to it's permanent location at the San Diego Civic Center (2nd & C, Civic Center trolley stop on blue & orange lines). GA remains at 7pm. There are more people than yesterday, but I heard the parade size was about the same size because so many people were dealing with logistics or cleaning up Children's Park. Our goal was to leave the park cleaner than when we showed up. America's Finest, the SDPD once again facilitated our exercising our rights to assemble and speak, and there is minimal police presence at our camp. The mood on the street remains joyous.

It's consensus, and was decided in GA before I heard about our GA, but I would have preferred to stay at Children's Park. The Civic Center is golden symbolically. It is a malled street right under City Hall, surrounded or very close to all the major bank buildings. As built in the 1960s it was perfect, as City Hall and some bank were matching towers, defining the space. However, the city took over both towers a few years ago.

But sustainability wise and defensibility wise, I don't like this space. It is effectively a concrete jungle, and effectively a dead end street. Does anyone wanna chat about the symbolism, sustainability, and defensibility of your camp?

Here is the San Diego Civic Center (south & east of fountain) and Tijuana's Plaza Santa Cecilia.

In solidarity, x357317

A strike is only useful if you work.

You don't get it.

Banks by law go into receivership if they are under a certain amount of asset / debt ratio.

Banks go by the accounting method of mark to market. That means if the market is buying their block mortgages (or MBS, mortgage backed securities, whatever u want to call them) at 20cents on the dollar, all the other banks have to write down their own block mortgage assets by that amount. Doesn't matter if the bank isn't selling them, that's the writedowns they are forced into by law. And that was exactly what was happening. Bad banks that needed to liquidate the block mortgages were fireselling them at pennies on the dollar. That was what the fed was trying to avoid, bankrupting big banks that have to suddenly write down their mortgage values down to 10%. So the fed under the TARP program bought them at 100% of value.

And banks own many assets that are similar to every single other bank. This is a domino effect that would bankrupt the entire banking industry.

Not only do you put a few hundred thousand bankers into unemployment, you send every single American company big and small that rely on bank capital for daily business funding into bankruptcy. General Electric included. They use revolving commercial paper to pay things like payroll. With the credit crunch, they were dangerously close to being bankrupt.

You want a loan for a car? No more money for that.

You want a loan for a mortgage? No more money for that.

When there aren't anymore loans available for cars, what do you think happens to American auto industry? Complete collapse.

When the mortgage industry (banks) stop lending because their asset to debt ratios are at dangerous levels, the entire asset class of American homes will go through the ground. Who can pay 100% of a property in cash? Where will you find the buyers?

With property values plummetting even further, main street gets affected.

This goes on and on and on. Not only is the American economy sent back 70 years, the entire world economy will collapse upon itself as well.


This bailout helped the 99%.

I don't know if it's more funny or sad that people think if you're a protester you don't have a job. I'm leaning towards the latter

The AJ article was talking about a General Strike, like the people of Tunis used this year to topple the dictatorship...

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants. It is also characterized by participation of workers in a multitude of workplaces, and tends to involve entire communities.

And, us Wobs have organized the unemployed in the past. To bring the 8 hour work day the PNW timber harvesting industry, all the lumberjacks organized. After eight hours they'd ring their own quit bell, and end the work day. And every time the bosses would fire the whole crew, the unemployed men he hired would do the same thing. Direct Action Gets the Goods. More about the jobless organizing from The American Prospect...

At last count, 13.2 million Americans were unemployed. While laid-off French workers bossnap (kidnap their bosses) and the Chinese Commerce Minister warns of unemployment-related unrest, Americans have exhibited few signs of protest.

It hasn’t always been this way. During the Great Depression, the unemployed—often led by political radicals—engaged in militant action. They restored gas heating to those who could no longer afford it, reinstated broke families in their homes, and pressed government for more aid.

The founders of grass-roots groups such as the Unemployed and Anxiously Employed Workers Initiative (UAEWI) and Food AND Medicine (FAM) see their organizations as proto-unions of the unemployed, channeling workers’ anger and disenchantment into a productive force. [B]oth organizations face significant challenges, principally from the very demographic they are trying to organize. The unemployed tend to be isolated and ashamed, often blaming themselves for their condition. Isolation is multiplied by the fact that looking for a job, retraining, taking night courses, and sorting through piles of bills and forms can take up more time—and be far more stressful—than working a regular job.

“It’s easier to get people who are employed to be active than it is to get the unemployed involved,” McKay says. “The unemployed are too busy. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and the system makes damn sure their hands are not idle.”...

It's the latter. Thank you once again MSM. Only some of us are camping out every night, some are picking what nights they can, and most are day camping. Try to imagine the coolest block party ever... this is way better. Come on down and join us!

brought my chess board, played for hours. about a dozen people took my picture. it was nice not to take in a day without getting into so many convos about economics.

I don't report posts and don't care to see any poster get demerit points. However...

I would like to remind the trolls that this is a thread about solidarity among and for us 2+2ers who are also occupiers. We are the people that you are calling names. And I'm pretty sure that calling The 13th 4postle a "derelict kid" is a flat out T&C violation.

Nice trip reports MissileDog.

ZOMG that's hilarious!

Confronting the DNC at LA-2000 there was a group doing "Billionaire's for Bush or Gore -- because inequality is not growing fast enough". Half would dress up in fancy suits and gowns and play the Billionaires, and half would dress up as servants and slaves. Street theater can be very creative.

*Sigh* These types of posts make the politics forum horrible. The ideas were clearly stated in the OP. This is not the thread for these type of comments.

Don't YOU have something better to do than troll this thread? Aces to crack, a job, work on that reading comprehension you so clearly failed?

The people who are pissed about unemployment are way more likely to be unemployed. DUCY?

Of course the NYCGA has thought of that, see the Comfort Committee.

The most valuable thing to donate is you. Come on down, see what committees need help, and join in la lucha. There is a ton of help needed, no camping out required.

For supplies needed, see nycga.cc/category/requests
To order a solidarity pizza call Liberatos Pizza at (212) 344-3464, or see www.liberatospizza.com
Or if you prefer to donate tax deductible $$$ see nycga.cc/donate

(If anyone is interested in donating to OccupySD, see occupysd.org/donations. We are not requesting or accepting $$$ at this time.)

Yea but the above could have been heavily ameliorated by guberment spending bail out money straight into the economy, or using it in a different fashion that did not involve just pumping trillions into banking system and then asking for almost nothing in return.

Also everything you describe is actually a powerful argument for why structural change is an absolute necessity, any system that functions as you describe is obviously and clearly pathological, no way should the system be configured such that if a bunch of nepotistically selected idiots all chase the crowd down into the financial abyss the rest of the social system has to bale them out or face Armageddon.

The whole point is that even though the banking system had to be saved by wider society, all it has done since then is flick wider society the bird.

when a home owner is late on the payments they aren't too big to fail, yet the banks are.

The financial took loans from the Feds and paid the money back (except AIG) with interest. AIG is expected to pay back the loans. What more do you expect from Wall Street at this point?

The assistance to the financial system goes well beyond the bailouts.

I will agree that simply getting a bailout and being saved from the fed forces the banks to do more than just repay the bailout debt. Most of which is repaid. I feel the banks do owe a little more than the TARP money they got.

What do you suggest the feds do in that situation? Where should they be putting the money? They had a few days tops to figure out what to do. Bailing out the banks was absolutely necessary. They weren't illiquid, good banks with good businesses were threatened to be put into bankruptcy because of 1 law.

This is why I chuckle and laugh at the ignorance of posters here that are angry about the bailouts. They have zero clue whatsoever that their own main street jobs were the ones being saved.