Batman: Occupy Gotham
Don’t you love it when pop culture reflects real life? From the Wall Street Journal:
In addition to the morally ambiguous Catwoman and the enhanced strongman Bane, it appears the new Batman movie will tackle income inequality, according to the below trailer.
In the clip, a whispering Anne Hathaway (Catwoman) can be seen telling Bruce Wayne, Batman’s billionaire alter-ego: “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne… when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”…
Bull Moose or Bull Sh*t: Is Obama Changing His Stance Towards Wall Street?
Is Obama changing?
Many in the Occupy Wall Street Movement are patting their efforts on the back, and even claiming credit for what looks like a shift by President Obama towards a more engaged campaign discussing economic fairness.
The President’s speech in Kansas was modeled on remarks made by the Republican Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt in 1910. There’s nothing like quoting a Republican for credible centrist positioning. (Note: he quotes TR, not FDR.)
Will he embrace GOP Pres Eisenhower’s warning about the Military Industrial Complex next?
Unlikely.
Richard Eskow was quick to salute the new Obama:
“Barack Obama channeled one of American history’s truly transformative figures by visiting the tiny Kansas town where Teddy Roosevelt gave his ‘New Nationalism’ speech over a century ago. It was refreshing to see the President invoke his predecessor, who was a powerful and fearless agent of change both inside and outside the White House.
“For the first time the President directly…
Why No Wall Street Prosecutions? It’s ‘Just Too Hard’
Are the architects of the financial crisis immune to prosecution simply because it would be too complex? So says an ex-official from the Justice Department. ProPublica writes:
Years after the financial crisis, there have still been no prosecutions of top executives at the major players in the financial crisis. Why’s that? Well, according to a now-departed Justice Department official who used to be in charge of investigating such matters, the Justice Department has decided that holding top Wall Street executives criminally accountable is too difficult a task.
David Cardona, who recently left the FBI for a job at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the Wall Street Journal that bringing financial wrongdoing to account is “better left to regulators,” who can bring civil cases:
While at the FBI, Mr. Cardona oversaw dozens of criminal probes of large financial firms. The FBI’s probes haven’t led to any successful prosecutions of high-profile executives in relation to…
Prosecuting Wall Street
With a story about prosecuting Wall Street featured on the most mainstream of TV news shows, CBS’s Sixty Minutes, might there finally be enough momentum for some banking executives go to jail?
In this segment, two high-ranking financial whistleblowers say they tried to warn their superiors about defective and even fraudulent mortgages. Reporter Steve Kroft questions why the companies and their executives haven’t been prosecuted.
Lobbying Firm’s Memo Lays Out Plan To Undermine Occupy Wall Street
Wall Streeters may publicly scoff at the Occupy movement via jokes about bathing and drum circles — however, behind the scenes it is apparently being taken quite seriously. Wondering how the empire plans to strike back? It’s already been laid out, MSNBC reveals:
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by MSNBC.
e proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific…
Bank Bailouts Explained
Confused about what has unfolded since 2008? The sublime absurdity of bank bailouts and what we have(n’t) gotten in return, laid out in adorable animated form:
President Obama Has Raised More Money From Wall Street Than Any Politician in American History
This opinion piece from Joe Scarborough in the Politico is worth a read:
One of the most famous scenes in movie history comes from “Casablanca,” when a corrupt official shuts down Humphrey Bogart’s cafe. Bogart asks the French captain — who also happens to be a gambling aficionado — why he’s closing the joint down. His response is a classic.
“I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here.”
Political commentators have referred to Capt. Renault’s uproarious line for years when calling out hypocritical politicians. But few political narratives ever fit that scene as tightly as President Barack Obama’s bipolar approach to Wall Street. To fully understand the extent of Obama’s double-speak, it helps to let the “Casablanca” scene play out a bit, because after the corrupt captain makes his self-righteous declaration, a croupier hands him cash and says, “Your winnings, sir.”
Capt. Renault quietly thanks the croupier and then quickly returns…
Occupy Wall Street: Outing The Ringers
Radio host Jay Smooth shares some interesting thoughts on the meaning of Occupy Wall Street — that observing the way different media and political figures have reacted is educational in itself:
Occupy Wall Street is every bit as specific as it needs to be, and every bit as non-specific as it needs to be. It’s just specific enough to capture that basic sentiment that so many people share, and just vague enough to let many different people come to it. And as it keeps growing and coalescing, if certain people keep professing not to get it, those are probably the people who weren’t supposed to get it.
I love this whole spectacle of everyone scrambling and scraping for ways to pretend that something serious isn’t happening. It’s not only fun to watch, it provides a valuable service, because it reveals to us all who the ringers are at Wall Street’s three-card monte table.
Wall Street Corporations Rent Their Own NYPD Unit From The City Of New York
Did you know that for a measly fee of $37 an hour per officer, you can rent uniformed, on-duty NYC cops as easily as ordering a sandwich? Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani created the “Paid Detail Unit” in 1998 and Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange among others have been frequent customers recently. Counterpunch reveals:
The Paid Detail Unit allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye. The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations…
Five Demands To Rein In Wall Street
If we want a country in which the most powerful financial institutions may longer hold our political process hostage, where do we start? Via Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi puts forth his list of five demands for anti-Wall Street protesters to push for:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called “Too Big to Fail” financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term “Systemically Dangerous Institutions” – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on…
The 1979 Wall Street Occupation
The 1979 march on Wall Street offered a smaller, more whimsical glimpse of what would come 30 years later. It’s fitting as a premonitory event, especially if one believes that the economic crises of the 1970s were never truly solved, but merely lay dormant before returning with a vengeance in 2008:
This is a short clip from the film “Early Warnings” that details the sit-in that happened on Wall Street on the 50th Anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash. The protesters were demanding an end to financial support for the nuclear industry and the action was part of the larger occupations at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. The costumed figures on stilts are from the Bread and Puppet Theatre.
The Eviction of OccupyWallStreet from Zuccotti Park
Will Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD manage to evict the #OWS protesters tomorrow? Drew Grant’s report for the New York Observer suggests maybe not:
After being told that they would have to “temporarily” vacate Zuccotti Park for sanitation reasons by Mayor Bloomberg, Occupy Wall Street responded to what one member is calling “an eviction notice.”
According to one of OWS’ Media team, a young man named Luke, there is “no way” that the protesters can comply with all the outlines set in Brookfield’s letter to the city, since OWS has been expressly forbidden from emptying the parks trash receptacles themselves; that the “cleaning” would include the removal of all tarps and sleeping bags, which the residents have been using to spend the night in the parks.
Wall Street and the Psychology of Power
James Curcio writes on Modern Mythology:
The Occupy Wall Street movement has taken aim at “the 1%,” but so far there has not been a great deal of consideration given to the culture or psychology of power.
Countering the charged, idealistic cry of the protesters comes the more cynical stance that “there will always be a 1%.” That, perhaps, it is human nature to claw our way to the “top of the pile,” to slay the sitting King and take the throne. Certainly, that is a model we see mirrored in the heroic myths of antiquity.
As a result of our nature, are we forever cursed to live out a narrative of master / slave, of fascist dictator, of oppressor and oppressed? Should we resign ourselves to the “grim meathook future” that seems the inevitable outcome of the myth of the Leviathan, supposing no agents of chaos destabilize the true obsession of fascism?…
JP Morgan Chase Donates $4.6 Million To NYPD On Eve Of Protests
Wondering how much it costs to buy off the police department? JP Morgan Chase just gave the New York City Police Foundation the largest donation in its history. How the police show their gratitude will presumably determine whether they receive similar donations from companies in the future. Via Naked Capitalism:
No matter how you look at this development, it does not smell right. From JP Morgan’s website, hat tip Lisa Epstein:
JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude”…
Behead The Banksters!
Behead the banksters?
“I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty. I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million. And if they are unable to live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the reeducation camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded,” — Roseanne Barr
New York Times Scorns The Occupy Wall Street Protests
Photo: David Shankbone (CC)
Peeved by the mainstream media “blackout” of the Occupy Wall Street protest? Worse than those who have ignored it is the New York Times, which ran a steaming turd of an article (titled “Gunning for Wall Street, With Faulty Aim”). The takeaway is more or less that the protesters have no legitimate grievances, and the piece concludes with a wise middle-aged Wall Street trader lampooning the activists for owning Apple laptops. (The protesters favor higher taxation of the super-rich, yet they also own computers! What hypocrites!) Their coverage:
By late morning on Wednesday, Occupy Wall Street, a noble but fractured and airy movement of rightly frustrated young people, had a default ambassador in a half-naked woman who called herself Zuni Tikka. A blonde with a marked likeness to Joni Mitchell and a seemingly even stronger wish to burrow through the space-time continuum and hunker down in 1968, Ms.…
Peaceful Protesters Penned And Maced
The Occupy Wall St. site has footage of the disturbing pattern of police abuse from the protests near New York City’s Wall Street and Union Square, including this example of police entrapping female protesters in net barriers and macing them:
Occupying Wall Street On A Saturday Afternoon
A Report from A Front That May Soon Be Shut Down
Before you read on, watch this: a video from the base camp of the #OccupyWall Street protest that is now in its seventh day. It’s called “No One Can Predict the Moment of Revolution.” (The video was produced by Martyna Starosta and her friend Iva)
These are the faces of a wannabe revolution, more than a protest but not yet quite a major movement. The spirit is infectious perhaps because of the sincerity of the participants and their obvious commitment to their ideals.
Occupy Wall Street is more than a protest; it is as much an exercise in building a leaderless, bottom-up resistance community with a more democratic approach to challenging the system where everyone is encouraged to have a say.
But saying that also leads to a conflict between my emotional identification with the kids that have rallied in this small park/public space on Liberty Street to exercise some liberty, with a despairing analysis that wishes this enterprise well but harbors deep doubts about its staying power and impact…
The Men Who Crashed The World
In a fantastic new series called Meltdown, Al Jazeera looks at the people and machinations around the globe that were behind the financial collapse of 2008, beginning with the assertion that for a brief period, Henry Paulson “was the de facto president of the United States.”
