{"id":497,"date":"2011-10-10T17:39:26","date_gmt":"2011-10-11T00:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.constructonomics.com\/blog\/?p=497"},"modified":"2011-11-18T08:09:22","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T15:09:22","slug":"a-glimpse-of-wall-street-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/10\/a-glimpse-of-wall-street-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"A Glimpse of Wall Street – 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

\"goldman2\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"FU\"<\/p>\n

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\u00a0peak at what everybody has been talking about.<\/p>\n

\"occupy\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"vendor\"<\/p>\n

It was a spectacle (the protest, not the falafel), but really nothing more than that. <\/em>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.<\/p>\n

\"kneepads\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"class<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"landogreed\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"99\"<\/p>\n

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\u00a0to be done by the end of 2013.<\/p>\n

\"WTC1\"<\/p>\n

However, the protesters in Ziccotti Park have no scheduled completion date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This time however, there was no sign of Michael Douglass charging along the sidewalk in an Italian suit with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/constructonomics.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}