I watched the first two segments. This is a very good independent and informative documentary about the financial collapse. Definitely the best I've seen. I'll probably watch the last couple hours tonight.

For page 30:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/

[Edited on May 3, 2012 at 2:57 PM. Reason : ]

5/3/2012 2:56:33 PM

I watched the third hour last night. It focused on a lot of things that I hadn't previously known about the internal conflict between Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner.

5/3/2012 5:38:14 PM

You don't have to wait for summer. It is going to become quite fun next week in Charlotte:

http://occupywallst.org/article/converge-justice-occupy-wall-street-south-bank-ame/

5/3/2012 11:22:03 PM

this guy got desperate for money and let fox news interview him. he was reading a script of course

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/index.html

5/4/2012 9:25:47 PM

Occupy Raleigh Gives Up, Goes Home

http://www.wral.com/news/news_briefs/story/11068287/

5/6/2012 8:11:08 PM

They left enough trash there.

5/7/2012 10:24:40 AM

^Did you miss the part of the article where it said they still plan to remain active? Nobody is giving up. It is simply a change in course. The encampments were never supposed to last forever. They were never the point of occupy. They were simply a tactic for providing shock value at the start.

5/7/2012 10:29:03 AM

And they left trash...

5/7/2012 2:35:28 PM

^No the trash will be hauled away. Arrangements are ongoing for that to happen.

5/7/2012 3:42:32 PM

glad you finally got home from your tent and back to using your parent's internet, eyewall!

5/7/2012 9:55:41 PM

^Mister Green at least be original in your trolling efforts. That was a pretty poor attempt.

Anyway actually I do have a job and an apartment in the triangle. My parents moved to Vermont just in case you were curious. Believe it or not the unemployment rate among Occupy Raleigh is comparable to that of the nation. As for me being at the camp, I was periodically early on, but that isn't even the point. The camp was not and is not all of Occupy Raleigh (not even close). If people want to talk about classless behavior they should look no further than some of their fellow citizens.as they passed by the site.

5/8/2012 11:18:01 AM

I don't know how long the link below will direct you, but it's a 2005 Citigroup brochure for investors entitled, "Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances."

Apparently, Citigroup has sued multiple websites that hosted the document for copyright infringement, forcing them to take it down. Although, judging from the URL, it appears that this link has been up since 2009.

http://www.lust-for-life.org/Lust-For-Life/CitigroupImbalances_October2009/CitigroupImbalances_October2009.pdf

[Edited on May 10, 2012 at 6:15 PM. Reason : ]

5/10/2012 6:14:58 PM

^

Quote :

"The earth is being held up by the muscular arms of its entrepreneur-plutocrats, like it, or not."

I wonder if the clients this targets realize how cynically these citibank guys are buttering them up and stroking their egos. I loved this bit though:

Quote :

"The thesis: Dopamine, a pleasure-inducing brain chemical, is linked with curiosity, adventure, entrepreneurship, and helps drive results in uncertain environments. Populations generally have about 2% of their members with high enough dopamine levels with the curiosity to emigrate. Ergo, immigrant nations like the U.S. and Canada, and increasingly the UK, have high dopamine-intensity populations. If encouraged to keep the rewards of their high dopamine-induced risk-seeking entrepreneurialism, these countries will be more prone to wealth waves, unequally distributed. Presto, a plutonomy driven by dopamine!"

Ahaha - well that comes from studies showing that drug addicts and stock traders share increased instances of similar dopamine-receptor related genotypes which may relate to risk taking and addiction.

http://community.middlebury.edu/~jcarpent/papers/JRU%20%28Printed%20Version%29.pdf

But hey, I guess citigroup's take on it is one way to spin "our investment analysts and brokers are one poor decision away from offering to blow construction workers for crack!"

[Edited on May 10, 2012 at 8:00 PM. Reason : h]

5/10/2012 7:59:37 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKIWl66j1Zw - BOA shareholders protest


Anyway the guy on Hannity made me facepalm as an occupy supporter. How the hell was he chosen to go on there? Surely they could have done better. Say this guy even?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJgWdfZqDj0

Hannity's questions were easy to answer and his highlighting isolated incidents of a few black bloc idiots on May Day were easy to debunk as somehow being the heart of all that happened that day (I realize he is a hack but that is the point you can blow him out if you respond well).

The root of Occupy's grievance is a system where corporation and state have merged and have resulted in corruption and fraud at the expense of the "99%". The confusion over "Occupy's demands" comes from the fact that so many issues have been brought up but they all stem from that very notion. It is more Crony Capitalism than the idea of Capitalism itself that the movement is up against.

5/11/2012 12:31:37 PM

You do realize that Fox News is neither fair nor balanced. That guy probably had no right to go on that show and represent Occupy.

5/12/2012 10:13:27 AM

^ I do indeed and wonder his circumstances of going on there. Anyway members of Occupy Raleigh completed camp cleanup with beautification of the site today. The porta johns will be picked up by the company they were rented from on Monday. The entire site was rototilled with grass seed spread. Various plants including a Cedar Tree, Roses, and Sunflowers were planted, and stepping stones along with a stone garden bench installed.

5/12/2012 9:50:28 PM

^ Saw that today. Great job on their part.

5/12/2012 10:22:33 PM

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1163

White House & Dems Back Banks over Protests: Newly Discovered Homeland Security Files Show Feds Central to Occupy Crackdown

A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.

The new documents, which PCJF National Director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard insists “are likely only a subset of responsive materials,” in the possession of federal law enforcement agencies, only “scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with 'anti-terrorism' funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.”

5/15/2012 11:01:14 PM

Quote :

"The root of Occupy's grievance is a system where corporation and state have merged and have resulted in corruption and fraud at the expense of the "99%"."

I want this to be true, and perhaps it is. I have a problem with the concept of "economic equality" or "income equality". If those phrases refer to equality of opportunity, then I'm okay with it. If those phrases are meant to suggest equality of outcome, then some entity (let's face it - the state) is expected to step in start handing out "favorable outcomes".

It's really quite uncontroversial to say that corporate interests and state interests are one. That's not up for debate. The debate is how do we deal with it, and that's the only debate that matters. Unfortunately, there are no pleasant answers for how to move forward.

Some say that austerity is the answer. Some say that we've already implemented austerity. Both are wrong, in my view. We are certainly not in a period of austerity in the United States. Cutting projected spending is not austerity. Pensions getting cut is austerity.

At the same time, higher taxes and lower spending places the burden on the people, rather than where it should belong - the banking industry and the government.

Both banks and the government are large and inefficient, yet with private industry, we see that it's running leaner than ever. What's the explanation? It's actually pretty simple. Banks and the government have virtually unlimited revenue streams. The government can tax and can issue debt. Banks can borrow money for free and issue debt.

Greece, EU member states, the U.S., and every other country that has ceded sovereignty to bankers will ultimately have the same set of choices. Iceland made roughly the correct decision by saying fuck you to bank execs and taking over banks to prevent collapse. In the U.S., I don't believe the powers that be will allow that to happen. They would rather every American starve, and Americans are pathetic and stupid enough to watch it happen and even vote for it.

It's been a long time coming. The creation of the Fed was the intentional cartelization of the banking industry. Anyone that still believes that the actual intended purpose of the Federal Reserve system was to "prevent panics" is a fool. You think corporatism started in the 2000s? Give me a fucking break. Corporatism has been alive and well since the 1800s.

5/16/2012 9:58:36 PM

pics:

http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-120520-nato-summit-protests-sunday-pictures/#17

http://galleries.apps.chicagotribune.com/chi-120520-nato-sequence-police-punches-pictures/#9

[Edited on May 21, 2012 at 4:57 PM. Reason : ]

5/21/2012 4:57:08 PM

Might as well add this Frontline segment, which addresses former NJ Governor Corzine and his role at MF Global:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/mf-global-six-billion-dollar-bet/

5/23/2012 12:48:33 AM

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620

Discusses the case of United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, all of who worked at GE Capital (though GE Capital is not the only bank involved; pretty much all of them are):

Quote :

"The "simple fraud" Waszmer described centered around public borrowing. Say your town wants to build a new elementary school. So it goes to Wall Street, which issues a bond in your town's name to raise $100 million, attracting cash from investors all over the globe. Once Wall Street raises all that money, it dumps it in a tax-exempt account, which your town then uses to pay builders, plumbers, the chalkboard company and whoever else winds up working on the project. But here's the catch: Most towns, when they raise all that money, don't spend it all at once. Often it takes years to complete a construction project, and the last contractor isn't paid until long after the original bond is issued. While that unspent money is sitting in the town's account, local officials go looking for a financial company on Wall Street to invest it for them. To do that, officials hire a middleman firm known as a broker to set up a public auction and invite banks to compete for the town's business. For the $100 million you borrowed on your elementary school bond, Bank A might offer you 5 percent interest. Bank B goes further and offers 5.25 percent. But Bank C, the winner of the auction, offers 5.5 percent. In most cases, towns and cities, called issuers, are legally required to submit their bonds to a competitive auction of at least three banks, called providers. The scam Wall Street cooked up to beat this fair-market system was to devise phony auctions. Instead of submitting competitive bids and letting the highest rate win, providers like Chase, Bank of America and GE secretly divvied up the business of all the different cities and towns that came to Wall Street to borrow money. One company would be allowed to "win" the bid on an elementary school, the second would be handed a hospital, the third a hockey rink, and so on. How did they rig the auctions? Simple: By bribing the auctioneers, those middlemen brokers hired to ensure the town got the best possible interest rate the market could offer. Instead of holding honest auctions in which none of the parties knew the size of one another's bids, the broker would tell the pre­arranged "winner" what the other two bids were, allowing the bank to lower its offer and come in with an interest rate just high enough to "beat" its supposed competitors. This simple but effective cheat – telling the winner what its rivals had bid – was called giving them a "last look." The winning bank would then reward the broker by providing it with kickbacks disguised as "fees" for swap deals that the brokers weren't even involved in. The end result of this (at least) decade-long conspiracy was that towns and cities systematically lost, while banks and brokers won big. By shaving tiny fractions of a percent off their winning bids, the banks pocketed fantastic sums over the life of these multimillion-dollar bond deals. Lowering a bid by just one-100th of a percent, called a basis point, could cheat a town out of tens of thousands of dollars it would otherwise have earned on its bond deposits. That doesn't sound like much. But when added to the other fractions of a percent stolen from basically every other town in America on every other bond issued by Wall Street in the past 10 to 15 years, it starts to turn into an enormous sum of money. In short, this was like the scam in Office Space, multiplied by a factor of about 10 gazillion: Banks stole pennies at a time from towns all over America, only they did it a few hundred bazillion times. Given the complexities of bond investments, it's impossible to know exactly how much the total take was. But consider this: Four banks that took part in the scam (UBS, Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo) paid $673 million in restitution after agreeing to cooperate in the government's case. (Bank of America even entered the SEC's leniency program, which is tantamount to admitting that it committed felonies.) Since that settlement involves only four of the firms implicated in the scam (a list that includes Goldman, Transamerica and AIG, as well as banks in Scotland, France, Germany and the Netherlands), and since settlements in Wall Street cases tend to represent only a tiny fraction of the actual damages (Chase paid just $75 million for its role in the bribe-and-payola scandal that saddled Jefferson County, Alabama, with more than $3 billion in sewer debt), it's safe to assume that Wall Street skimmed untold billions in the bid-rigging scam. The UBS settlement alone, for instance, involved 100 different bond deals, worth a total of $16 billion, over four years."

6/23/2012 7:49:09 PM

I'm surprised LIBOR hasn't been mentioned yet.

7/15/2012 4:30:08 AM

^ I agree it is just one more example of banksters hard at work to screw you.

7/15/2012 2:07:09 PM

Quote :

"The root of Occupy's grievance is a system where corporation and state have merged and have resulted in corruption and fraud at the expense of the "99%". The confusion over "Occupy's demands" comes from the fact that so many issues have been brought up but they all stem from that very notion. It is more Crony Capitalism than the idea of Capitalism itself that the movement is up against."

If that's all there was to it, I don't think there would have been so much backlash and so many rolly-eyes. You guys should have confined your message to exactly that, rather than associating it with the far-left sampler platter.

7/15/2012 3:39:40 PM

^I agree but at the same time a good portion of the backlash was mainstream media driven with distortion and outright lies.

7/15/2012 3:49:32 PM

Quote :

"You guys should have confined your message to exactly that, rather than associating it with the far-left sampler platter."

My main activity in my local Occupy seemed to be debating and discussing with far-right members of OWS, mainly anti-Fed folks

They were pretty vocal and influential even on some leftists in the group (mainly the emotion-driven ones)

[Edited on July 15, 2012 at 5:07 PM. Reason : .]

7/15/2012 5:06:32 PM

There are far too many people involved in Occupy to pin them all to a single ideology. Lots of them are left-wing people, but the movement also speaks to a lot of right-wing people, as well. I agree that if they had narrowed their message and focused on detaching corporatism from government, their argument would resonate much better.

7/15/2012 6:59:07 PM

Sure, the "core" message (I am perfectly willing to call it that) of anti-corporatism appeals to a wide audience, and rightfully so. Not surprisingly, OWS had members from the right as well (particularly the libertarian right).

Let's be real, though: OWS was, in practical terms, far-left dominated, and a mouthpiece for a left-wing wish-list of ideas. It didn't have to be that way, and whatever chance OWS ever had of gaining meaningful traction (a la Tea Party, for example) was squashed by the lack of staying on-message...the important message that resonated across most ideological lines. Plenty of people like me don't dig crony capitalism, but had an attitude towards OWS of somewhere between "get fucked, commie" and "get a job, hippie".

7/15/2012 10:57:00 PM

Quote :

" ^ I agree it is just one more example of banksters hard at work to screw you."

How did LIBOR manipulation screw you? The documented LIBOR rigging was done mostly to project false confidence by the banks. They artificially lowered LIBOR, which lowered borrowing rates. It cost some institutional investors money, but benefited ARM borrowers who felt the biggest pinch during that time period.


[Edited on July 16, 2012 at 1:43 AM. Reason : 2]

7/16/2012 1:38:27 AM

Quote :

"Plenty of people like me don't dig crony capitalism, but had an attitude towards OWS of somewhere between "get fucked, commie" and "get a job, hippie"."

And literally no amount of evidence can prove a negative and change your mind

7/16/2012 7:48:45 AM

^^ It screws investors (especially those in for a shorter term) as it generates a crisis of confidence. That in and of itself could potentially have ripple effects within the economy farther down the line.

7/16/2012 9:05:55 AM

30k each for UC Davis Pepper Spray Protestors, Officer involved was let go in July

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/26/uc-davis-pepper-spraying-settlement_n_1916803.html

9/26/2012 8:12:45 PM

hey, this thread is almost a year old. i had heard of a little occupy activity around charlotte, raleigh, and ncsu recently (mostly via facebook notifications), i guess it was anniversary stuff

9/26/2012 9:04:46 PM

Because I love posting Fault Lines:

For sale: The American dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3rzN42HE00&feature=plcp

[Edited on September 27, 2012 at 2:07 AM. Reason : ]

9/27/2012 2:06:43 AM

Fault Lines is insanely good. Their "Top 1%" and episodes on Mexican Drug Cartels, US-Honduras policy, and the tea party are some of the best pieces of journalism I've seen from a news organization.

9/27/2012 2:47:54 AM

In short looking back (as someone who was with the local Occupy movement) I think we lost steam for a number of reasons.

1) We had huge momentum on October 15th, 2011 when 30,000 people shut down Times Square in Manhattan and thousands showed up in cities around the world. That was the moment we needed to have focus and say here is what we want. This means hitting the core issues such as actual accountability for the bankers and Wall St. execs who committed fraud and tanked the economy, an end to money in politics, and end to the merger of corporation and state. So many of the side issues that took Occupy all over the place come from that.

2) Successful marginalization by media and Police. It is well known the crackdown on Occupy was nationally coordinated (In other words the Obama administration and Homeland Security organized the shut down). Also in some cities police were known to have dropped off criminals, drunks, and addicts at the camps to stir up trouble and cause disruption (as well as contribute to image problems). This added fuel to the media's general campaign against Occupy (they are own by massive corporate interests after all).

3) The encampments persisted for too long. It was never intended for the camps in many places to last as long as they did. Occupation was only supposed to be an opening tactic. It just dragged on for too long and consumed resources and energy. Activists burned out as these places slowly shifted from centers or protest to centers of housing for people with no place else to go. This turned off surrounding communities and those who otherwise would have supported the cause (this was the case in my own opinion in Raleigh as well, and yes at the beginning I did spend plenty of nights out there).

4) The issue of leadership. Occupy was branded as a leaderless, non-hierarchical movement. This stemmed from Anarchist roots as did the General Assembly process that served as the decision making body for the group. Often these GA's become brutally frustrating as they demanded the consensus of everyone (or close to everyone) in order to pass proposals etc. Occupy consisted of many people from many backgrounds in inevitable this led to conflict that in many cases caused people to walk away.

Looking at now I think many activists (who may have been first time activists with Occupy) are adding energy to the issues they care most about. In Raleigh for example NCSU Students have joined the NC Student Power Union, which is a group consisting of many from occupy (including the Occupy NCSU group). They are protesting Art Pope's seat on the UNC planning board this morning. Others have gone similar routes or formed new groups for issues that are most important to them.

In the end the issues that gave rise to Occupy haven't gone away and in fact are probably worse. Someone will benefit from the election in November and most likely it won't be you.

9/27/2012 9:37:38 AM

Fault Lines is fantastic by the way!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfy2sHNZUXQ - Conventions 2012 The Price of The Party

[Edited on September 27, 2012 at 9:43 AM. Reason : link add]

9/27/2012 9:40:41 AM

^^
You forgot:
5)Complete lack of focus.
6)Near complete lack of politicizing the movement a la The Tea Party.

9/27/2012 11:30:00 AM

7) having to vote on every decision with jazz hands

9/27/2012 11:42:56 AM

disco lack of focus was implied by not keying on specific demands and getting distracted by so many side issues. As for the Tea Party they were co-opted by powerful interests like the Koch Brothers. I am not sure I would consider that a success. Occupy didn't want to join the same broken system they were railing against (ie one of the two parties at the hands of billionaires).

[Edited on September 27, 2012 at 12:58 PM. Reason : .]

9/27/2012 12:56:42 PM

I stopped supporting them because of the human microphone

9/27/2012 1:12:32 PM

eyewall41:

Quote :

"They are protesting Art Pope's seat on the UNC planning board this morning."

I saw about that happening:
http://www.facebook.com/events/120788084736355/

Did you go? How did it go? I've been home and probably will be the rest of the week.

9/27/2012 1:13:43 PM

Supplanter I didn't get to go. Waiting to see pics/vid. Apparently they took him on in person in a debate.

9/27/2012 1:36:48 PM

live stream of an occupy something in LA.... haven't quite figured it out

http://www.ustream.tv/occupyfreedomla#utm_campaign=www.facebook.com&utm_source=9753135&utm_medium=social

9/28/2012 5:55:05 PM

Quote :

""Plenty of people like me don't dig crony capitalism, but had an attitude towards OWS of somewhere between "get fucked, commie" and "get a job, hippie".""

Yes we heard plenty of shouts of this sort of thing from spineless and classless assholes in Raleigh. It takes so much courage and distinction to yell from a passing car. There were no shortage of douche bags in town that is for sure (many coming from the Glenwood South area).

9/28/2012 10:20:59 PM

Live Streams:
Global Revolution: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution
All Livestreams Here: http://ht.ly/2sqdVH
Spain LiveStream: http://bit.ly/OqbUks
Spain LiveStream: http://www.rtve.es/noticias/directo2
Greece Live Stream: LiveStream: http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr

On Twitter, you can follow the #29S hashtag: http://bit.ly/QmE5Mp and the #S29 hashtag: http://bit.ly/P1nNNM
Also hashtags: #29sSíSePuede http://bit.ly/R1CfSe and #ows http://bit.ly/QBrzfn

Occupy Wall Street: @OccupyWallSt https://twitter.com/OccupyWallSt

#29S Main call:
http://25sbcn.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/we-come-back-on-26s-and-on-saturday-were-surrounding-the-congress-again/

Portugal:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A300IsFCQAAeVTf.jpg
http://acampadabcninternacional.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/portugals-occupy15setembro-movement-unites-to-fight-cuts-on-s29-29s/
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f ... levant_count = 1

Italy:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A3003ZyCIAAjhvo.jpg
https://www.facebook.com/CATENAUMANA.PARLAMENTO.ITALIANO

The Netherlands:
http://dutchrevolution.blogspot.fr/2012/09/29s-demonstration-1900-dam-square.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/431544976902857/

Belgium:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A3zY_jKCQAA5whc.jpg

London:
https://www.facebook.com/events/331009573661835/
Protest Locations throughout Spain - here are their websites, or Facebook pages: http://bit.ly/QylOzf

In Boston, they will have a solidarity protest at noon: http://bit.ly/UWc848

Anonymous released this video in Spanish: http://youtu.be/zbRFsmd2lgU
Spain, Portugal brace for new wave of austerity protests: http://fxn.ws/PM86XJ
Portugal’s protest movement unites to fight cuts: http://bit.ly/Ssl2zL

On Facebook, the following pages should be covering it, aside from ours, of course:
Occupy Wall Street:
International Communication - 15M Occupy Indignados: http://on.fb.me/QMjJws
europeans against the political system: http://on.fb.me/QmEYEL
Artigo 21.º: http://on.fb.me/SkNBzH
Occupy Spain: http://on.fb.me/OuQL8H
Occupy Barcelona: http://on.fb.me/PyyF1i
Rescue Democracy: http://on.fb.me/V8VwVh
Catena Umana Attorno Al Parlamento Italiano: http://on.fb.me/Ssjp5f

9/29/2012 2:21:01 PM

hundreds of thousands protesting in Lisbon and Madrid at least right now and not a blip from mainstream press.

9/29/2012 3:43:20 PM

Quote :

"Fault Lines is fantastic by the way! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfy2sHNZUXQ - Conventions 2012 The Price of The Party"

It sounded legit until they said that Charlotte was a capital of NC :facepalm

9/29/2012 7:53:44 PM

Quote :

" "

Walking to parliament! (London)

About 15 minutes ago.

11/5/2012 3:53:41 PM