Occupying Wall Street

When the rain comes ... - Picture courtesy of Lionsgate

by blogSpotter
I’m sitting in Starbucks on my 54th birthday...yes, I’m 54 years young. There has been so much weirdness in my life lately, I’ve fallen behind on my blog entries again. Will try to do a system reboot here at Starbucks ….

Quick Update on Android

After 6 months, I lost my LG Optimus V phone. Think it fell off my belt in a 7-11 parking lot on Harry Hines Blvd. To be honest, I wasn’t loving that phone … it had some issues. The 3G was slow and often unavailable. The pop-up keyboard had tiny little keys. The screen had lots of glare and the contrast was poor. Worst of all, the Android operating system has a rigidness to it that I never mastered – I kept exiting an app when I wanted to look at its menu options. Esthetically, Android OS reminds me of the spare Linux Ubuntu compared to the lush and beautiful Mac OS X. It was a prepaid, pay-as-you-go phone so the separation shouldn't be too traumatic. OK, enough about phones, let’s talk about Wall Street Occupation…

Margin Call

I just watched Margin Call with Kevin Spacey and Demi Moore. The movie is loosely based on actual events that transpired on Wall Street in 2008, just prior to the epic meltdown of September 14, 2008. My initial prejudice was that the movie might be wonkie and dull, appealing mainly to bean counters and political science majors. It wasn’t like that at all – it was a gripping, financial thrill ride that moved at a good pace. Nobody in the whole cast of characters is blameless but the shades of moral slippage go from light indiscretion (junior analysts following orders) to pure, vile nastiness (Jeremy Irons as CEO using people as collateral blame objects). A warning – there are aspects of this movie that may remind you of things still on-going. You may walk away feeling like you need to occupy Wall Street yourself. This leads me to me next topic…

Occupying Wall Street

Ann Coulter who is my favorite mean-mouthed conservative wench wrote a hilarious piece recently about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Though I’m from the opposite side of the political aisle from her, I have to agree with Ann. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is without a leader and is without a manifesto. Its members are all over the map in their opinions – sometimes at odds with each other. Some are staunch pro-Obama liberals and some are libertarians angry about Obamacare. When I saw their profiles in Newsweek, I saw jobs like performance artist, life coach and unemployed actor. These don’t sound like people who would ever be working at anything resembling an office job in the concrete jungle.

I like the idea of OWS in general, but am an overly practical, middle-aged guy. I think OWS should have structure, goals and leadership. I know that rains on the parade of 20-something potheads who are mad at …the men who did … that thing… that was really bad. I totally support their right for civil disobedience – carry on. But do it with some semblance of knowledge and direction. I have my own thoughts about Wall Street and why it’s so discouraging…

Nobody went to jail – The only people who have done time are over-the-top con artists like Bernie Madoff. Where is anyone being held accountable for the largest loss of national net worth in history?

The insiders were recycled back into the Bush/Obama Administrations – What of people like Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Henry Paulson. These men weren’t necessarily directly involved in the 2008 debacle but their fingerprints are all around it. Why do we keep having the foxes watch the hen house? What was clear from the 2008 events (and made clear in Margin Call) is that many people in business and government saw the disaster coming. The insiders’ last 2-3 months were spent with damage control, blame mitigation, and how to break it to the public.

There were already laws on the books – My first impulse in 2008 was to say, “There ought to be a law!”. There were and are a host of laws – there should’ve been 3 layers of protection. But when SEC, Federal Reserve, Attorneys General and so many others turn a collusive blind eye, it doesn’t matter what laws were on the books. Why weren’t the laws enforced?

This is late 2011, and basically nothing has been done to rescue or mend the situation of 2008. The only reason it hasn’t happened again is that the American public has a newly cynical attitude – American’s are actually in a mode of frugality right now, much like Japan in its "lost decade".

I’ll close by saying to Occupy Wall Street – Keep it up! Wall Street needs to be occupied. But academia, the White House and Congress might also need occupy themselves – with a greater sense of what “doing the right thing” means in the aftermath of 2008.

© 2011 blogSpotter