A Glimpse of Wall Street – 2011
On Friday I happened to be in a little place called New York City. While there, I happened to stroll through a particular street you may have heard of once or twice before – Wall Street.
This time however, there was no sign of Michael Douglass charging along the sidewalk in an Italian suit with a $1500 briefcase. Instead there were thousdand of people in pretty clear protest of the shenanigans that have taken place on Wall Street. It was quite a sight.
From what I’ve heard and read for the past three weeks, I was expecting more of a raucous crowd, but protesters seemed to be laughing, smiling, and warmly welcoming the gawkers that came to get a peak at what everybody has been talking about.
Ironically, during this protest of what capitalism has become, lunch trucks, and souvenir vendors lined the outskirts of Zuccotti Park. I helped myself to a $4 falafel wrap and strolled through the park.
It was a spectacle (the protest, not the falafel), but really nothing more than that. I was expecting the anger and anxiety level to be ticked up a few notches, just because of all the hype from the media. But as advertised, it was truly a peaceful protest.
On Thursday, on my way to New York, I was listening to some conservative talk radio. They were pulling the, “nobody knows why these people are there, and they don’t even know.” But trust me, these people know why they are there and so does everybody else.
You can say that what they are doing won’t do any good, or they should come up with solutions rather than point out a problem that is clearly in place, but what you certainly cannot say is that you don’t know why they are there. You don’t need a powerpoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet to realize that rich people get more rich.
But this time, they got more rich at the expense of people who were barely getting by in the first place. And they did it by using tricks and schemes that walked along the ethical line. As a result, the ecomomy collapsed, millions lost their jobs, and the people who were responsible not only got off scott free, but profitted from the whole thing. It’s a travesty.
On a side note, the Freedom Tower, excuse me, One World Trade Center appears to be moving along nicely. Did you know that the pricetag on this is $3.1 million (I mean billion)? Where are they getting all the money to build this much office space? It’s supposed to be done by the end of 2013.
However, the protesters in Ziccotti Park have no scheduled completion date.
Although general unrest usually begets “protest” of some kind, the “Occupy” protests are providing our nation with a new definition of what an actual protest comprises.
We have a group of people with no common demographic other than their general dissatisfaction with the individuals’ ability to find gainful and meaningful employment. They see this condition as a direct result of the actions of “wall street” or whichever “street” they may be “occupying” across the USA.
Americans are losing sight of the real causal relationship that exists because the timeline is longer than they wish to consider. Additionally, the possible remedies to the situation are mostly beyond both the comprehension of the masses and outside of the acceptable terms they wish to call their “standard of living.” In all senses of the expression, we are in a “catch 22.”
Taxing people who know how to create value is a disincentive to act as a market driver, which reduces the likelihood that there will be improvement in conditions, which increases the likelihood that the protests will eventually fail in what appears to be their mission.
Thanks for the comment REMMACS. However, I don’t think the protesters are necessarily saying that the top 1% should be taxed to distribute the wealth. Rather, high paying positions, especially banks should not be allowed to get in positions where they can take risk with no repercussion of failure. They pretty much stole money – and they’re already rich. That just ain’t right. And now everybody else is left without jobs and to pick up the pieces.
Thanks for replying and also for posting my comment.
Your discussion on banks and being held responsible leaves out one crucial fact; the ethical dilemma that banks were put in to provide sub-prime loans. Legislators, namely Barney Frank, had continued to provide pressure on banks to continue to provide loans for people who did not qualify. Legislators set up a guarantee bank(s) to provide the real banks with the backstop they wanted in order to make these bad loans. Credit is not fiction; there are real parameters to meet for any given amount of leverage you may pursue in life.
Without legislators and politics, less people would have houses, or would have had houses, and a lot of the “bubble”-type situations would not have existed. Protesting and arranging sit-ins as a result will have little or no consequence. Although their intentions are noble, a few days of reading the history of how the situation developed would provide them with some focus on who created the problems we now can see clearly.
I couldn’t agree more REMMACS. I don’t understand how the politicians come out of this without anyone even asking questions of them. It’s the banks fault for sure. They got greedy, sure. But the politicians put them in the situation, and encouraged it to happen. Uggh. Then, they have the gall to say that they understand the occupy movement and even encourage it. It drives me nuts!