Dangerous trends in Occupy Wall Street (OWS)

[Bob111]

I had my Mac stolen—that was like $5,500.

time for him to swith to a regular PC or netbook(which cost about 100-500$)

 

[MKTrader]

Quote from 5yrtrader:

I think a lot of the tea party folk think this is what the Boston tea-party was about... but thats totally wrong.

They were protesting taxation without representation, and were far from anti-government, they wanted to form their own government. They were anti-colonists and anti-monarchy, but very pro representative democracy, and were pro-taxation to support that government.

5yr

They'd be considered extreme small gov't radicals by today's standards. Look at the Articles of Confederation--it was a very decentralized gov't. Congress didn't even have the right to levy taxes on individuals.

 

[MKTrader]

Quote from nutmeg:

Speaking of dangerous trends, not only is the OWS crowd being robbed by wall street, looks like they're being robbed by each other.

Bummer, huh,,,,


"Stealing is our biggest problem at the moment. I had my Mac stolen—that was like $5,500. Every night, something else is gone. Last night, our entire [kitchen] budget for the day was stolen, so the first thing I had to do was … get the message out to our supporters that we needed food!"


"I’m not getting paid, but I’m not gonna stand for it. Why people got to come here and do stupid stuff? All it does is make people not wanna come here anymore."

Awwwww,,,,,,,, why don't you call a cop? Just asking..... maybe they could look for finger prints.....




My dear watson - looks like a case of wealth distribution.

Wealth redistribution. Yes, these reports of theft among the OWS crowd are pretty funny. As long as it's not being done by a "big greedy corporation," they have no ethical grounds to say stealing is wrong.

 

[adadadog]

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[wilburbear]

Quote from wilburbear:

1)Stop paying all student loans (or credit card debt, etc.), all together, beginning on a common date. Then, use the web to report those who ARE paying their debt, so that the rest of the community can encourage them not to pay their debt, as this would better serve the whole.

Legal commentators have suggested very low thresholds of non-payment to swamp the courts. Before the internet, there was no tool for those in debt to "gather" in this way - and then actively discourage members of their group from "collaborating" with financial lenders.

2)Disruption of the police from within. Protesters have actually been following police, calmly asking them to "switch sides", or worse yet, providing methods to leak police documents.

3)Calls for a new Constitutional Convention (currently planned for Philadelphia on July 4, 2012), or other calls for an alternate seat of government, which, of course, will exist "for just a little while."

4)Anonymous, and other hacker groups, have now joined the fray on the side of OWS. Anonymous claims internal docs for the Koch brothers and News Corp., among others.



4.5)Leaked documents held for release until worst moment possible for a vulnerable company.

5)Taking deposits out of targeted banks. Using method given in "1" above, whereby those who DO continue to use the bank are targeted on the internet.

6)Protestors using option to clog the legal system assisted by the National Lawyers Guild. While the "clog" method is used now for civil disobedience cases, it could migrate to the financial sphere.

7)The protesters own this conversation on the internet. The U.S. government hasn't countered on the internet, where the real plotting is taking place.

It's starting. OWS'ers are starting to wake up to the fact that they have a lever. It won't be funny if they really start to use it (see 5 above).......

.


OCCUPY WALL STREET Salon / By Andrew Leonard 33 COMMENTS Why Bank Transfer Day (Today) Is Only the Beginning of Something Huge

The movement to make sure our money serves our own values rather than the bottom line of huge banks will only gain energy as small victories accumulate.
November 4, 2011

&#65533; On Oct. 9, Kristen Christian, a 27-year-old art gallery owner in Los Angeles, created a Facebook page urging her friends to move their money out of the big banks on Nov. 5. The suggestion hit a nerve. By Nov. 4, 77,015 “friends” had declared their intention to “attend” Bank Transfer Day.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that 77,015 people will be pulling all their money out of the likes of Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America all at once. Saturday is hardly an ideal day to get banking business done, and the process of switching over one’s account to a new bank or credit union is not something that can be accomplished — yet — with a flip of a switch. (Detailed advice on how to change your banking account can be found here.) And of course, clicking your intent to do something on Facebook is a far cry from actually, well, doing it.

It’s also not clear that the big banks will take a big hit from Bank Transfer Day. The usually sensible economics commentator Felix Salmon goes so far as to assert that “the big banks are blithely unconcerned about people withdrawing their funds on Saturday … I’m not kidding myself that doing so is going to harm the big banks at all.”

In purely numerical terms, Salmon might be right, but there’s a larger sense in which he is almost surely wrong. The simple fact that one ordinary citizen using social media tools can start a grass fire of protest that captures massive media attention and connects hundreds of thousands of people to useful information is an encouraging sign of where our society is headed. Every single person who actually goes ahead with a switch of banks is casting a potent vote in the long-range democratization of finance. Even if the banks shrug it off, people who go ahead and change their bank will probably feel better about themselves. Just because it’s a psychotherapeutic cliché doesn’t mean it’s wrong: Taking action is empowering.

And something is clearly happening here. According to a press release from the Credit Union National Association, “at least 650,000 consumers across the nation have joined credit unions in the past four weeks.”

CUNA estimates that credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new savings accounts. More than four in every five credit unions experiencing growth since Sept. 29 attributed the growth to consumer reaction to new fees imposed by banks, or a combination of consumer reactions to the new bank fees plus the social media-inspired Bank Transfer Day.

$4.5 billion here, $4.5 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money, even for JPMorgan-Chase. In all of 2010, credit unions added only 600,000 new customers. But even more telling has been the decision by the big banks to abandon their plans to institute fees for debit-card use. Whatever the reasons for their capitulation, it’s hard to describe that about-face as representing a “blithe disregard” for how their customers are feeling.

Tracing out the cause-and-effect connections here are tricky. Bank overreach, Occupy Wall Street and Bank Transfer Day are all feeding into and reinforcing each other. If Bank of America hadn’t announced plans to charge a $5-a-month fee for debit card use and Occupy Wall Street hadn’t pointed an accusing finger at the financial sector with such a powerful media-amplified voice, Kristen Christian’s Bank Transfer Day might never have advanced beyond her own family and friends.

But now the genie is out of the bottle. Because it doesn’t stop on Nov. 5. The movement to go local, go independent, and make sure that our money serves our own values rather than the bottom line of huge banks will only gain energy as word spreads, and small victories accumulate.

Oh, and in the time it took to write this post, another 200 people decided to attend Bank Transfer Day. Inch by inch …

 

[ScorpXdt]

Quote from wilburbear:

It's starting. OWS'ers are starting to wake up to the fact that they have a lever. It won't be funny if they really start to use it (see 5 above).......

.


OCCUPY WALL STREET Salon / By Andrew Leonard 33 COMMENTS Why Bank Transfer Day (Today) Is Only the Beginning of Something Huge

The movement to make sure our money serves our own values rather than the bottom line of huge banks will only gain energy as small victories accumulate.
November 4, 2011

&#65533; On Oct. 9, Kristen Christian, a 27-year-old art gallery owner in Los Angeles, created a Facebook page urging her friends to move their money out of the big banks on Nov. 5. The suggestion hit a nerve. By Nov. 4, 77,015 “friends” had declared their intention to “attend” Bank Transfer Day.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that 77,015 people will be pulling all their money out of the likes of Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America all at once. Saturday is hardly an ideal day to get banking business done, and the process of switching over one’s account to a new bank or credit union is not something that can be accomplished — yet — with a flip of a switch. (Detailed advice on how to change your banking account can be found here.) And of course, clicking your intent to do something on Facebook is a far cry from actually, well, doing it.

It’s also not clear that the big banks will take a big hit from Bank Transfer Day. The usually sensible economics commentator Felix Salmon goes so far as to assert that “the big banks are blithely unconcerned about people withdrawing their funds on Saturday … I’m not kidding myself that doing so is going to harm the big banks at all.”

In purely numerical terms, Salmon might be right, but there’s a larger sense in which he is almost surely wrong. The simple fact that one ordinary citizen using social media tools can start a grass fire of protest that captures massive media attention and connects hundreds of thousands of people to useful information is an encouraging sign of where our society is headed. Every single person who actually goes ahead with a switch of banks is casting a potent vote in the long-range democratization of finance. Even if the banks shrug it off, people who go ahead and change their bank will probably feel better about themselves. Just because it’s a psychotherapeutic cliché doesn’t mean it’s wrong: Taking action is empowering.

And something is clearly happening here. According to a press release from the Credit Union National Association, “at least 650,000 consumers across the nation have joined credit unions in the past four weeks.”

CUNA estimates that credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new savings accounts. More than four in every five credit unions experiencing growth since Sept. 29 attributed the growth to consumer reaction to new fees imposed by banks, or a combination of consumer reactions to the new bank fees plus the social media-inspired Bank Transfer Day.

$4.5 billion here, $4.5 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money, even for JPMorgan-Chase. In all of 2010, credit unions added only 600,000 new customers. But even more telling has been the decision by the big banks to abandon their plans to institute fees for debit-card use. Whatever the reasons for their capitulation, it’s hard to describe that about-face as representing a “blithe disregard” for how their customers are feeling.

Tracing out the cause-and-effect connections here are tricky. Bank overreach, Occupy Wall Street and Bank Transfer Day are all feeding into and reinforcing each other. If Bank of America hadn’t announced plans to charge a $5-a-month fee for debit card use and Occupy Wall Street hadn’t pointed an accusing finger at the financial sector with such a powerful media-amplified voice, Kristen Christian’s Bank Transfer Day might never have advanced beyond her own family and friends.

But now the genie is out of the bottle. Because it doesn’t stop on Nov. 5. The movement to go local, go independent, and make sure that our money serves our own values rather than the bottom line of huge banks will only gain energy as word spreads, and small victories accumulate.

Oh, and in the time it took to write this post, another 200 people decided to attend Bank Transfer Day. Inch by inch …

Blah, blah, blah............ You think the banks give a crap. They will always be around, and will always be profitable, even if a bunch of hippies decide to close their accounts, and have their welfare checks direct deposited into their new credit union accts.

 

[FightTheFuture]

Bank Transfer Day

On a Saturday? Every bank where I live is closed on Saturday. I guess I'll miss out.

 

[riskaddict]

What is the process of applying for a student loan? Are parents sort of like co-signers or do they have no skin in the game? Who cares if they stop paying, they take a hit and the bank or salle mae takes a hit big whoop. Maybe it should be more difficult to get a student loan like some how proving you will be employable.