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Occupy Wall Street Enters Its Fourth Day, Tensions Rise

whysoserious said:
...here is a list of all the banks that were acquired due to this crisis:

1
I counted 14 from this country alone. Now, being from Charlotte, I can speak of this, what do you think happens to a city like Charlotte when Wachovia closes?

Think real hard.
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If a bank is acquired, it does not necessarily mean it closes.
 
1Perry said:
The bubble started after the 90's tech bubble busted and Wall Street had to find a way to create another bubble to keep the money rolling.
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And bush* did nothing to stop it. Instead, he just pumped up the bubble until it burst
 
DarkWizard12 said:
If a bank is acquired, it does not necessarily mean it closes.
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Talk to my city about that. Wachovia was acquired and Charlotte has been reeling ever since. Yes, the lower level jobs remained open (for the most part), but most of those who worked at the corporate level were canned. Keep in mind, Wachovia was bought for next to nothing.
 
Here, let me help you:

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The travails of the financial crisis, punctuated in Charlotte by Wachovia’s near collapse and takeover by Wells Fargo, thumped Charlotte’s finance and insurance sector, which between 2008 and 2010 lost 9 percent of its jobs, a drop to 77,000. Bank of America, the other top-five bank in Charlotte, has moved some of its operations to New York.
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Yeah, we got smashed. We had just built a skyscraper for Wachovia (guess that was good luck for Duke Energy?). Anyway, we will make it through this and Charlotte is a beautiful, amazing city for anyone who is looking to relocate. We are trying to stay in the financial sector while expanding into energy as well (clean energy). It is a great place to live.
 
This is what i find disturbing. These peaceful protesters came to protest a crime, yes a crime that was committed by the banks and wall-street, and they the protesters are portrayed as the criminals are ****ing kidding me?
 
whysoserious said:
...here is a list of all the banks that were acquired due to this crisis:

1
I counted 14 from this country alone. Now, being from Charlotte, I can speak of this, what do you think happens to a city like Charlotte when Wachovia closes?

Think real hard.
Click to expand...

These banks made money hand-over-fist until the bubble burst. Then they failed, absorbed by other banks. All the Wachovia's around me are now Well's Fargo. BFD. The weaker businesses, aka the stupider ones, failed. That's business. Those that showed more wisdom did not. On top of which, the banks are Wall Street. Who am I supposed to cry for ?
 
sangha said:
And bush* did nothing to stop it. Instead, he just pumped up the bubble until it burst
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LOL. "Bush" didn't pump the bubble. What he did was not stop it. Meanwhile a whole horde of Dem politicians resisted his calls to reform Fannie and Freddie.
 
Eighty Deuce said:
These banks made money hand-over-fist until the bubble burst. Then they failed, absorbed by other banks. All the Wachovia's around me are now Well's Fargo. BFD. The weaker businesses, aka the stupider ones, failed. That's business. Those that showed more wisdom did not. On top of which, the banks are Wall Street. Who am I supposed to cry for ?
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I thought you were concerned about the economy, but you are not concerned about lost jobs? You did not read anything I posted, did you? When a business closes, jobs are lost. When a company is absorbed, jobs are lost. You can call the people in that company stupid if you want, but they were buying Triple-A rated securities. You do not even know what that means though, so I do not know why I am bothering arguing with you.
 
whysoserious said:
I thought you were concerned about the economy, but you are not concerned about lost jobs? You did not read anything I posted, did you? When a business closes, jobs are lost. When a company is absorbed, jobs are lost. You can call the people in that company stupid if you want, but they were buying Triple-A rated securities. You do not even know what that means though, so I do not know why I am bothering arguing with you.
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Who actually started the process of rating loans as triple A when they weren't? You know?
 
whysoserious said:
I thought you were concerned about the economy, but you are not concerned about lost jobs? You did not read anything I posted, did you? When a business closes, jobs are lost. When a company is absorbed, jobs are lost. You can call the people in that company stupid if you want, but they were buying Triple-A rated securities. You do not even know what that means though, so I do not know why I am bothering arguing with you.
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Welcome to capitalist economics 101 !! Those businesses that made teh biggest mistakes failed the first !! Wooo Hoooo !! My local bank employees still get paychecks, just from a different company. Somewhere Wells Fargo added employees to a few of their home offices, while Wachovia, the dumbasses, lost thiers. That is how it works. You want to make some excusee that "they bought Triple-A rated ... blah blah". So what ? They put too many eggs in one basket. Others did not !! Merrill Lynch was equally stupid.

Look at Blockbuster. They have had to downsize tremendously because they made bad decisions and let Netflix grab market share. Are we supposed to blame someone other than Blockbuster ? Welcome to capitalism. ;)
 
Henrin said:
Who actually started the process of rating loans as triple A when they weren't? You know?
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It was a process. You can go read this stuff, if you want? It goes back to Moodys and Goldman Sachs. Basically, well, here is a source that explains some of it:

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For instance, he knew that the big Wall Street investment banks took huge piles of loans that in and of themselves might be rated BBB, threw them into a trust [i.e. a CDO], carved the trust into tranches, and wound up with 60 percent of the new total being rated AAA.

But he couldn't figure out exactly how the rating agencies justified turning BBB loans into AAA-rated bonds. "I didn't understand how they were turning all this garbage into gold," he says. He brought some of the bond people from Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, and UBS over for a visit. "We always asked the same question," says Eisman. "Where are the rating agencies in all of this? And I'd always get the same reaction. It was a smirk."
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Michael Lewis said:
[T]here were large sums of money to be made, if you could somehow get [triple-B mortgage bonds] re-rated as triple-A, thereby lowering their perceived risk, however dishonestly and artificially. This is what Goldman Sachs had cleverly done.

...

Goldman was in the position of selling bonds to its customers created by its own traders, so they might bet against them...

According to a former Goldman derivatives trader, Goldman would buy the triple-A tranche of some CDO, pair it off with the credit default swaps AIG sold Goldman that insured the tranche (at a cost well below the yield of the tranche), declare the entire package risk-free, and hold it off its balance sheet. Of course, the whole thing wasn't risk free: If AIG went bust, the insurance was worthless, and Goldman would lose everything. Today, Goldman Sachs is, to put it mildly, unhelpful when asked to explain exactly what it did, and this lack of transparency extends to its own shareholders. "If a team of forensic accountants went over Goldman's books, they'd be shocked at just how good Goldman is at hiding things," says one former AIG FP employee, who helped to unravel the mess, and who was intimate with his Goldman counterparts.
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Do you get what happened? Goldman would get its securities rated AAA. The ones it could not get rated AAA, it would skim off and find things they could package with it to get them rated AAA. And then, the ones from that pile that they could not get rated AAA, they would skim off again and start the process over. They were selling garbage but making it look like gold, and these rating agencies were making the case for them. Meanwhile, since Goldman Sachs knew these packages were going to fail, they bet against them knowing that they would stand to make huge masses of money. This put lots of people out of business. That's thousands of jobs down the toilet. So if you really care about the economy, that should piss you the **** off.

Call them stupid if you want, that's easy, but the real deal is they got defrauded. And Goldman Sachs went before Congress and lied about the whole thing.

*Edit to add:

I am being trolled so hard right now.
 
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Henrin said:
Who actually started the process of rating loans as triple A when they weren't? You know?
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Many were predicting that the bubble would collapse. What many believed was that they could get in, and then get out, before it did. As I said earlier, derivatives did not create the recession. Every derivative loser had a derivative winner. There are solid reasons for the recession, but they ain't it.
 
Eighty Deuce said:
This is nonsense. To claim that bank fails are why there are no loans is rubbish. There is plenty of money there to loan. Go check. Do some reading. FYI, as TARP was the bank bailouts, how much of that has NOT been paid back ? I believe that 95% of it is now paid back.

Banks are not making loans because the economy sucks. The money is there though. Lots of it.
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Yes and no. You are right about loans. If you have the credit and even a basic ability to get a loan you can.

I know that the arguement is that we have been paid back from TARP but there is no way logically what we have been told can be true.
Supposedly the banks were in a major hole. Unable to survive without a bail-out. If that was the case there is no way they can go from that
to paying it all back and record profits in such a short period of time especially in this economy.
 
Eighty Deuce said:
Welcome to capitalist economics 101 !! Those businesses that made teh biggest mistakes failed the first !!
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Actually, Goldman-Sachs made some of the biggest mistakes, and not only did they not fail first, they didn't fail at all.

Instead they got bailouts. WELCOME TO CRONY CAPITALISM 101 !!!
 
whysoserious said:
It was a process. You can go read this stuff, if you want? It goes back to Moodys and Goldman Sachs. Basically, well, here is a source that explains some of it:

1
Do you get what happened? Goldman would get its securities rated AAA. The ones it could not get rated AAA, it would skim off and find things they could package with it to get them rated AAA. And then, the ones from that pile that they could not get rated AAA, they would skim off again and start the process over. They were selling garbage but making it look like gold, and these rating agencies were making the case for them. Meanwhile, since Goldman Sachs new these packages were going to fail, they bet against them knowing that they would stand to make huge masses of money. This put lots of people out of business. That's thousands of jobs down the toilet. So if you really care about the economy, that should piss you the **** off.

Call them stupid if you want, that's easy, but the real deal is they got defrauded. And Goldman Sachs went before Congress and lied about the whole thing.

*Edit to add:

I am being trolled so hard right now.
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So let them sue Goldman Sachs if laws were broken. The buyers also did not practice due diligence, perhaps because they were in too much of a hurry as well. But again, for every loser in that game, there was a winner.
 
Eighty Deuce said:
It may be that one bubble got steam when the other was fading, but the housing bubble started its upward climb, that being where it began to eclipse the base inflation rate for other markets, in 1997. Government was the instigator, not Wall Street.
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I agree that government was the instigator. It fit their notions and it kept the money rolling in. Wall Street was certainly a willing accomplice that not only went along, but made it even worse.
 
lpast said:
Wall street always creates bubbles the rich guys get fabulously richer during bubbles then when it bursts the middleclass and poor get screwed AGAIN.
The housing bubble made tons of money for lots of people...the banks lost but got lots of Free bailout cash and the CEOS still got their bonus
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It also kept the money rolling into the government while also letting D.C. try their political ideas out on us.
 
Calling these protestors "morons" is an understatement. I read their list of demands and couldn't decide if I wanted to LMFAO or cry. Either these idiots are a super minority or this Nation is royally screwed. I pray it's the former.
 
Eighty Deuce said:
LOL. "Bush" didn't pump the bubble. What he did was not stop it. Meanwhile a whole horde of Dem politicians resisted his calls to reform Fannie and Freddie.
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I don't recall Bush making this call. I do believe McCain (and others did) though. Bush had to play along to continue the money for his wars.
 
whysoserious said:
It was a process. You can go read this stuff, if you want? It goes back to Moodys and Goldman Sachs. Basically, well, here is a source that explains some of it:

1
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Seen that crap from huffingtonpost before. It didn't start with them. Try again.


I am being trolled so hard right now.
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What is this south park? Got a clue so hard right now. Oh god, now I have a raging clue!
 
1Perry said:
Yes and no. You are right about loans. If you have the credit and even a basic ability to get a loan you can.

I know that the arguement is that we have been paid back from TARP but there is no way logically what we have been told can be true.
Supposedly the banks were in a major hole. Unable to survive without a bail-out. If that was the case there is no way they can go from that
to paying it all back and record profits in such a short period of time especially in this economy.
Click to expand...

Do you understand the difference between a liquidity problem and a solvency problem. Banks that survived had the former.
 
Eighty Deuce said:
So let them sue Goldman Sachs if laws were broken. The buyers also did not practice due diligence, perhaps because they were in too much of a hurry as well. But again, for every loser in that game, there was a winner.
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States are trying to do just that. For some reason the Obama administration is trying to stop it. Go figure. :shrug:
 
sangha said:
Actually, Goldman-Sachs made some of the biggest mistakes, and not only did they not fail first, they didn't fail at all.

Instead they got bailouts. WELCOME TO CRONY CAPITALISM 101 !!!
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Maybe so, but now we are at a different place in the debate. Whether or not the banks should have been bailed out. Almost all of which has been paid back, btw.

What we have with the protest is more astro-turf liberal nonsense. That it is Wall Street's fault. And the fault of "the rich". Nope. Government created the bubble, then the desire for self-improvement (greed) did what it will always do. Many average Americans got into the housing market thinking they could buy and flip just everyone else. Or bought more than they could afford long term. Are they supposed to blame Wall Street too ?
 
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