Archive | October, 2011

Occupy Wall Street Hits K Street | The Nation

19 Oct

Lessig on the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street:

Now my belief is if this movement can take that message and carry it from Occupy Wall Street here, to Occupy K Street, and to look down K Street to all the other places where exactly the same kind of corruption is practiced, and talk about this problem as a problem of corruption, then this movement has the opportunity to unite people of very different views.

I spent time at a Tea Party convention in Arizona talking to people who were deeply concerned about this country. They didn’t talk about gay rights. They didn’t talk about abortion. They talked about getting our government back in control. Those grassroots populist members of the Tea Party—forget their leaders–would agree with this point about the corruption of the system. And if this movement can begin to speak about these issues in a way they can hear, where the focus is not against policies they agree with, for example against the free market, but instead against a corrupted market.

via Occupy Wall Street Hits K Street | The Nation.

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Federal Reserve Riddled with Conflicts of Interest

19 Oct

The GAO detailed instance after instance of top executives of corporations and financial institutions using their influence as Federal Reserve directors to financially benefit their firms, and, in at least one instance, themselves. “Clearly it is unacceptable for so few people to wield so much unchecked power,” Sanders said. “Not only do they run the banks, they run the institutions that regulate the banks.”

Sanders said he will work with leading economists to develop legislation to restructure the Fed and bar the banking industry from picking Fed directors. “This is exactly the kind of outrageous behavior by the big banks and Wall Street that is infuriating so many Americans,” Sanders said.

The corporate affiliations of Fed directors from such banking and industry giants as General Electric, JP Morgan Chase, and Lehman Brothers pose “reputational risks” to the Federal Reserve System, the report said. Giving the banking industry the power to both elect and serve as Fed directors creates “an appearance of a conflict of interest,” the report added.

via GAO Finds Serious Conflicts at the Fed – Newsroom: Bernie Sanders – U.S. Senator for Vermont.

Lawrence Lessig: Occupy Movement Should Join Forces With Tea Party

19 Oct

WASHINGTON — Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig urged OccupyDC protesters to join forces with the Tea Party Tuesday evening during a teach-in with disaffected Obama supporters in McPherson Square.

Lessig, author of the newly-published book “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It,” argued in front of a crowd of more than 100 people that the two groups should work together to push for campaign finance system reform — moving to a small-dollar funded system — so that politicians aren’t beholden to their biggest donors.

via Lawrence Lessig: Occupy Movement Should Join Forces With Tea Party.

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How cities should work – Imprint – Salon.com

19 Oct

An interview with Gary Hustwit, director of , “Urbanized,” a design documentary.

Everybody wants to change their city and make it better, but a lot of people don’t really know how to go about doing that.

Is there a message you want people to take away from the film?

A lot of it is about how cities should work. The projects take so long that it’s a detriment because political winds change and citizens who should be involved in the project don’t even know it’s happening until the bulldozers start rolling in. It’s never the case where government is going to ask “What projects do we need?” and really use the public as a compass. The main time the public interfaces with the city is when they are against something that is already underway. They are not leading a positive initiative to get something done. That’s the takeaway of this film: Be more involved and critical about how you want your city to be.

via How cities should work – Imprint – Salon.com.

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Major News Corp Shareholders Vote to Replace Directors | The Nation

18 Oct

It’s showdown at the OK corral:

Earlier this month the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which owns more than 6 million shares in News Corporation, voted to replace the entire board of directors. At the same time California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the country’s largest pension fund, said it would be pushing for Murdoch to step aside in favor of an independent chairman. Glass Lewis, an advisor to major institutional investors in the United States, recently advised its clients to vote against both Rupert Murdoch and his son James, while Pirc, a British advisor, told its clients to vote against the Murdochs, as has the British group who manage local government pension funds.

Of, course, the  News Corporation is huge and it owns the Fox network, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and local newspapers from here to Dunady, not to mention all the British media they own. And, as we all know, they’ve got dirt on everyone. So bringing the company to shareholder justice

Yet Friday’s meeting is more than just corporate theatre. News Corporation also faces a tsunami of legal troubles: hundreds of potential phone-hacking victims in Britain lining up for cash settlements generate the most headlines, but there are also shareholder lawsuits attacking the way the Murdochs run the company “like a wholly owned family candy store,” and ongoing criminal investigations in Britain and the United States.

via Major News Corp Shareholders Vote to Replace Directors | The Nation.

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MARK CUBAN: ‘Tax The Hell Out Of Wall Street And Give It To Main Street’

18 Oct

n a world of High Frequency Trading and black box trading that does nothing but create a platform for “financial hackers” to turn the market into their own proprietary financial playground, we need to figure out a way to revert the Stock and Bond Markets, and the derivative instruments created from these equities, back to their original purpose, a place to raise capital for growing business. Instead, today its a platform for financial engineers and hackers looking to exploit every and any opportunity. When 60pct or more of trades are from High Frequency/Algorithmic traders and the correlation for every market index rushes past .7, the market is no longer a market, its a platform.

The simplest way to change this is to place a very simple per share tax on every transaction. 10 cents a trade. Every share. Every option. Every Bond. Every currency transaction. Every trade.

The obvious response is that trading volume will plummet. So what? Let it. The next response is that traders will merely move their trades to foreign exchanges. Yes they will. Will transaction costs go up? Duh.. that is the point. The market thrived when spreads and transaction costs were much higher just a few short years ago. It will survive now.

via MARK CUBAN: ‘Tax The Hell Out Of Wall Street And Give It To Main Street’.

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Occupation and realignment – Salon.com

18 Oct

The Occupy Wall Street movement has the potential to help the center-left, even if some of its activists despise the center-left the way that the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s dismissed progressive-liberals like the Kennedys and Johnson as sinister “corporate liberals” promoting the “warfare-welfare state.” The reemergence of a radical economic left can create a fourth point on the political spectrum, changing the relative position of all other points. The Tea Party right, now the mainstream right, would become the far right. Today’s center, shared by Clinton and Obama with Reagan and the Bushes, would become the new center-right. And the new center-left would be something like New Deal liberalism — to the left of Clinton and Obama, but to the right of an anti-capitalist left. Better yet, if the public tired of Tea Party conservatism, the far right could implode and the new “far right” would be moderate economic conservatism of the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Obama variety. What until recently has been the left — old-fashioned social democratic reformism in the New Deal tradition — might once again be the center.

via Occupation and realignment – Salon.com.

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Jesse Jackson embraces Washington occupation – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

18 Oct

“Our message is that this is a movement that is leader-less and leader-full,” said West, who was arrested Sunday for displaying a sign on the grounds of the Supreme Court. “We take very seriously the idea of lifting every voice and we listened very closely to the people who we met inside the racist criminal justice system.”

The emotional meeting in front of the Carl Moultrie Courthouse symbolized how divergent traditions in American protest have converged in the occupation movement.

via Jesse Jackson embraces Washington occupation – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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The progressive debate we need – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

18 Oct

Frankly, cutting the military budge is a no-brainer.

America’s long-term debt needs to be addressed, but not the way the President is doing it. He wants to lop $4 trillion off the budget over the next ten years. This almost certainly means sacrificing education, job training, food stamps, and everything else now listed in the so-called “non-defense discretionary” budget, as well as cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

What about halving the military budget instead? It doubled after 9/11, and military contractors are intent on keeping it in the stratosphere. So is Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Result: Defense cuts this size won’t be on the table unless progressives vociferously demand it.

via The progressive debate we need – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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Fukushima Desolation Worst Since Nagasaki as Residents Flee – BusinessWeek

18 Oct

What’s emerging in Japan six months since the nuclear meltdown at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant is a radioactive zone bigger than that left by the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While nature reclaims the 20 kilometer (12 mile) no-go zone, Fukushima’s $3.2 billion-a-year farm industry is being devastated and tourists that hiked the prefecture’s mountains and surfed off its beaches have all but vanished.

The March earthquake and tsunami that caused the nuclear crisis and left almost 20,000 people dead or missing may cost 17 trillion yen ($223 billion), hindering recovery of the world’s third-largest economy from two decades of stagnation.

via Fukushima Desolation Worst Since Nagasaki as Residents Flee – BusinessWeek.

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