A Liberal Version of the Tea Party?

It would appear as though the two-week long Occupy Wall Street protest is gathering momentum after some 700 people were arrested yesterday after they blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge as detailed in this report at Fox Business News.

Based on the video above – now with their own food kitchen and media center in New York City – it looks as though they’re planning to hang around for a while, some now thinking that the group could have an impact on the 2012 elections.

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I have no idea who this guy is, but he ties together a few timely news items – the budget debate, class warfare, and the effort to occupy Wall Street that he dubs the “American Spring” – before inviting President Obama to participate.

In related news, it’s not clear if this will help or hurt (my guess is the latter), but Roseanne Barr just made a surprise appearance at the protest, apparently not having anything good to say about either Ayn Rand or Rush Limbaugh – here’s a link.

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The U.K.’s Guardian newspaper files this report on the effort to occupy Wall Street over the weekend, a move that extended into the workweek earlier today.

On Saturday 17 September, many of us watched in awe as 5,000 Americans descended on to the financial district of lower Manhattan, waved signs, unfurled banners, beat drums, chanted slogans and proceeded to walk towards the “financial Gomorrah” of the nation. They vowed to “occupy Wall Street” and to “bring justice to the bankers”, but the New York police thwarted their efforts temporarily, locking down the symbolic street with barricades and checkpoints.

Undeterred, protesters walked laps around the area before holding a people’s assembly and setting up a semi-permanent protest encampment in a park on Liberty Street, a stone’s throw from Wall Street and a block from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Three hundred spent the night, several hundred reinforcements arrived the next day and as we write this article, the encampment is rolling out sleeping bags once again. When they tweeted to the world that they were hungry, a nearby pizzeria received $2,800 in orders for delivery in a single hour. Emboldened by an outpouring of international solidarity, these American indignados said they’d be there to greet the bankers when the stock market opened on Monday. It looks like, for now, the police don’t think they can stop them. ABC News reports that “even though the demonstrators don’t have a permit for the protest, [the New York police department says that] they have no plans to remove those protesters who seem determined to stay on the streets.” Organisers on the ground say, “we’re digging in for a long-term occupation”.

There is much more in this piece and via a related Google News search. While I’m not holding my breath, we can at least hope that this might lead to an awakening of some sort in the U.S., akin to the Arab Spring. Then again, there’s probably little chance of that happening – at least not until the economy gets much, much worse.

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Two Very Different Ways to Move Forward

[This will conclude the most recent dive back into the archives (Boy, I sure takes a lot of time off lately...) as we look at two very different recommendations about how the nation might move forward from its late-September meltdown, one that didn't really finish melting until about six months later around the time that Fed Chief Ben Bernanke launched the first round of quantitative easing. Bank bailouts and an economic stimulus program amounting to over $1.5 trillion weren't enough, it finally took money printing on a grand scale to reverse course. Originally published on September 26th 2008, former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan and Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) talk about the road ahead.]

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Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan and Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) were both in the news today describing two very different ways to move forward from the current financial market predicament. In this report at the WSJ Economics blog, Dr. Greenspan favors the “more is better” approach to fixing what’s wrong.

We do not take a stand on the choice of institutions eligible for emergency assistance. Rather, we urgently advocate immediate, extensive action that would maintain the functions of credit markets and prevent a serious economic contraction.

We are deeply concerned about instituting reforms for the longer run that will prevent similar crises in the future.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, sees such heavy handed intervention as part of the same pattern that has brought us to the current juncture.

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Fail!

[Clearly, Lehman's Dick Fuld is the prototypical 2008 financial crisis photo image for any look back at that time, but this picture of the dynamic duo in Washington - Treasury Department Chairman Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke - originally appearing at the old blog on September 23rd, 2008, has some value as well.]

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While it’s not clear exactly what question this audience member was attempting to answer, there is little uncertainty about the sentiment with which it is expressed. IMAGEThis comes from a report in the Denver Post (hat tip AD) following the Senate Banking Committee hearing earlier today with the rather lengthy moniker, “US Credit Markets: Recent Actions Regarding Government Sponsored Entities, Investment Banks and Other Financial Institutions“.

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Chris Dodd on the Root Cause of the Crisis

[Wow. I thought it was going to be kind of interesting (and maybe a little funny) to look back at some September 2008 items while I'm away but, after reading about how misguided policymakers were then and seeing how little has changed, it's just kind of sad. Originally published on September 23rd, 2008, Chris Dodd gets at the root cause of the problem.]

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They are all up on Capitol Hill at the moment – Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox – talking about the financial crisis and the $700 billion proposed bailout.

It’s going to be like one big group therapy session. Hopefully, someone will feel better after it’s all done, but it probably won’t be the U.S. taxpayer.

You can watch it live on CSPAN 3 if you’re looking for something to do to pass the time.

Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, spoke first and, right off the bat, you know that we are all just sooooo screwed in this whole affair.

In yet another example of how the entire country is in denial regarding the unsustainable nature of the current system of seemingly endless money and credit expansion (well, actually, credit expansion seems to be stopping rather abruptly lately), Senator Dodd said just a few moments ago:

As I and many members of this committee have argued in the past 17 months, since I became chairman of this committee, the root cause of our economic crisis is in the collapse of the housing market triggered by what Secretary Paulson himself has called bad lending practices.

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