Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating

hvactec

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Jan 17, 2010
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By Matt Taibbi

I was at an event on the Upper East Side last Friday night when I got to talking with a salesman in the media business. The subject turned to Zucotti Park and Occupy Wall Street, and he was chuckling about something he'd heard on the news.

"I hear [Occupy Wall Street] has a CFO," he said. "I think that's funny."

"Okay, I'll bite," I said. "Why is that funny?"

"Well, I heard they're trying to decide what bank to put their money in," he said, munching on hors d'oeuvres. "It's just kind of ironic."

Oh, Christ, I thought. He’s saying the protesters are hypocrites because they’re using banks. I sighed.

"Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"

"Well," he said, "it's just, they're protests are all about... You know..."

"Dude," I said. "These people aren't protesting money. They're not protesting banking. They're protesting corruption on Wall Street."

"Whatever," he said, shrugging.

These nutty criticisms of the protests are spreading like cancer. Earlier that same day, I'd taped a TV segment on CNN with Will Cain from the National Review, and we got into an argument on the air. Cain and I agreed about a lot of the problems on Wall Street, but when it came to the protesters, we disagreed on one big thing.

Cain said he believed that the protesters are driven by envy of the rich.

"I find the one thing [the protesters] have in common revolves around the human emotions of envy and entitlement," he said. "What you have is more than what I have, and I'm not happy with my situation."

Cain seems like a nice enough guy, but I nearly blew my stack when I heard this. When you take into consideration all the theft and fraud and market manipulation and other evil shit Wall Street bankers have been guilty of in the last ten-fifteen years, you have to have balls like church bells to trot out a propaganda line that says the protesters are just jealous of their hard-earned money.

Think about it: there have always been rich and poor people in America, so if this is about jealousy, why the protests now? The idea that masses of people suddenly discovered a deep-seated animus/envy toward the rich – after keeping it strategically hidden for decades – is crazy.

Read More Wall Street Isn't Winning It's Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
 
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Matt Taibbi? Isn't he the jerk who wrote "52 funny things about the death of the Pope" a few years ago? Why is his opinion significant?
 
Those "guilty" on Wall Street were proesecuted. It's a rare occurence, not the norm.

I agree with Cain. It's about envy and entitlement.

occupy-1.jpg
 
Those "guilty" on Wall Street were proesecuted. It's a rare occurence, not the norm.

I agree with Cain. It's about envy and entitlement.

occupy-1.jpg

I do not usally disagree with you Mr. H but I do in this one. Most people could give a darn what Wall Streeters make or what bankers make as long as they have a fair shot at living a decent life. Fact is many people do not have that fair shot now. I have made several million in my lifetime and spent it too. Corporations in this country have way too much power over the people, what they wear, what they eat and how they will live and work. Corporations are not people. A corporation may be a group of people or a mass of people invested into the corporation for one reason, profits. Many a large corporation has no soul, no ethics, no morals and it only lives to make a profit. When certain large investors or large banking conglomerates gained control of large amounts of wealth they played with it, money is and was all that mattered to them. They could buy into one comany and break another and they did and have. The money lost on the corporation that they broke was merely investors money. Some investor without a face that put money into a retirement account that someone else invested for them. That investor was some poor slob that worked for ten to twenty years or more dreaming of the day his/her funky little house would be paid for so he/she could sit back and enjoy the later years and maybe help their own kids.

I have watched and I have not seen them prosecuted as of yet.
 
The federal government makes and enforces the laws that Wall Street lives by. Who is at fault when Wall Street allegedly gets away with breaking the law?
 
Those "guilty" on Wall Street were proesecuted. It's a rare occurence, not the norm.

I agree with Cain. It's about envy and entitlement.

occupy-1.jpg

I do not usally disagree with you Mr. H but I do in this one. Most people could give a darn what Wall Streeters make or what bankers make as long as they have a fair shot at living a decent life. Fact is many people do not have that fair shot now. I have made several million in my lifetime and spent it too. Corporations in this country have way too much power over the people, what they wear, what they eat and how they will live and work. Corporations are not people. A corporation may be a group of people or a mass of people invested into the corporation for one reason, profits. Many a large corporation has no soul, no ethics, no morals and it only lives to make a profit. When certain large investors or large banking conglomerates gained control of large amounts of wealth they played with it, money is and was all that mattered to them. They could buy into one comany and break another and they did and have. The money lost on the corporation that they broke was merely investors money. Some investor without a face that put money into a retirement account that someone else invested for them. That investor was some poor slob that worked for ten to twenty years or more dreaming of the day his/her funky little house would be paid for so he/she could sit back and enjoy the later years and maybe help their own kids.

I have watched and I have not seen them prosecuted as of yet.

People have more free will than you give them credit for, and because of corporations they have many more choices as to what they eat, wear, and how they live. Labor laws have far more influence on how they work than do corporations. In the U.S. anyway.

I think your characterization of corporations is more the exception, and not the rule so to speak.
 
Those "guilty" on Wall Street were proesecuted. It's a rare occurence, not the norm.

I agree with Cain. It's about envy and entitlement.

occupy-1.jpg

I do not usally disagree with you Mr. H but I do in this one. Most people could give a darn what Wall Streeters make or what bankers make as long as they have a fair shot at living a decent life. Fact is many people do not have that fair shot now. I have made several million in my lifetime and spent it too. Corporations in this country have way too much power over the people, what they wear, what they eat and how they will live and work. Corporations are not people. A corporation may be a group of people or a mass of people invested into the corporation for one reason, profits. Many a large corporation has no soul, no ethics, no morals and it only lives to make a profit. When certain large investors or large banking conglomerates gained control of large amounts of wealth they played with it, money is and was all that mattered to them. They could buy into one comany and break another and they did and have. The money lost on the corporation that they broke was merely investors money. Some investor without a face that put money into a retirement account that someone else invested for them. That investor was some poor slob that worked for ten to twenty years or more dreaming of the day his/her funky little house would be paid for so he/she could sit back and enjoy the later years and maybe help their own kids.

I have watched and I have not seen them prosecuted as of yet.

People have more free will than you give them credit for, and because of corporations they have many more choices as to what they eat, wear, and how they live. Labor laws have far more influence on how they work than do corporations. In the U.S. anyway.

I think your characterization of corporations is more the exception, and not the rule so to speak.

Labor laws mean nothing when a corporation does not believe the law applies to them. I say that from personal experience with several large corporations. I have owned several small corporations. The moment you bring government agencies into the mix you become very expendable and/or worse. You have a very unethical group of corporates out there willing to strip out whatever they can for a profit. It makes no difference to them whether it is the people or the enviroment they are killing off. They simply want control and the only way to have full control is to control all of the money resources and the people. Anything or anyone that gets in their way will be bulldozed.

Sorry too many corrupt corporates out there that have stripped away basic decencies in the business world. I could care less how many different types of cookies, pants, bowls, or coats may be available. I would much rather eat food that was not poisoned or previously grown out of a petri dish. I'd be happy wearing one type of clothing that was made from someones private family owned cotton field or someones wool that their own sheep grew (not that the United States has many privately owned farms left). I'd even buy synthetic materials if I knew that the person making those has full knowledge of what they are doing to themselves healthwise while they work making those synthetic materials. Key being privately owned, full knowledge/awareness of the dangers they are exposed to or a small business where people had decent ethics not destroying anothers health or livelyhood to make a buck.

Many of your corporations do not have any ethical standard I would prescribe too. They may advertise a good line but there is little truth in them. People are not commodities to be bought and sold at the will of a few unethical leaders. I applaud anyone willing to take a stand against the corporate corruption that has been consuming this nation for years.
 

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