Can someone explain to me what's going on in Greece?

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:13 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:I have to say that I am disappointed in the latest raving conspiracy theory of Tzor. OWS the product of a financial bet by George Soros? I mean sure, it has George Soros in it, and it's implausible, so that's two points in its favor, but that's really the best he can come up with?

While technically speaking the Canadian organization that started the idea did receive funding from one of Soros' many affliiates, I would not say that it was his idea. One doesn't have to create an idea to use it, however, and his many affiliates are clearly fueling the fire. For what purpose? George doesn't play god unless he can make a billion in the process (because making money and playing god is twice as fun).

It's no conspiracy either ... just follow the money.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:41 pm

Wait, so we're following the money now? You must get your news from Crazy People. But we actually already knew that.

George Soros gave $100,000 to the Alliance for Global Justice through the Open Society Institute over the last seven years. The Alliance for Global Justice separately organized a fundraiser that generated $144,000 for OWS. I know those numbers may look similar, but they actually are two different money piles.

Even if they were the same money pile, OWS doesn't operate with money particularly, because they are a leaderless organization. I mean, to put this in perspective: the overtime alone for the enhanced police presence in New York City has now run to over five million dollars. That's over thirty times what the Alliance for Global Justice raised for OWS. So if you really want to follow the money, how about going to Mayor Bloomberg?

-Username17

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 6:33 pm

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:25 pm

There are basically three weapons of the progressive inquisution.

The first weapon is the power of the vute dismissial. ("Ha ha, isn't he so funny, claiming that the sun rises in the east. Clearly he is a crazy person.")

The second is the race / class card.

And finally, you bribe a bimbo to make the claim that she once considered in passing making a sexual harrasment charge decades ago.

Frank, often does the first, as in the case above.

So let the crazies commence ...
http://kleinonline.wnd.com/2011/11/01/m ... solutions/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... sters.html

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/po ... all-street

And of course who can forget (I'm really trying) ACORN (and that damned invasive tree that grew in NY called WFP)

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/26/ex ... -movement/

http://issuesoncall.blogspot.com/2011/1 ... treet.html

You know we are talking about a LOT OF MONEY

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... l?mod=e2tw

http://news.yahoo.com/occupy-wall-stree ... 28634.html

$500K+ to be precise.

Oh and just in case, I'm not racist and I categorically deny having sex with that woman.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:45 pm

Is this one of those "hundreds of thousands are bigger than millions" thing?

You know that the sum total of all donations to the Occupy Wall Street movement are still less than half of one shady donation to the Tea Party, right? As in, the Tea Party receives literally millions of dollars from Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers, and you are struggling to find tenuous connections to liberals who funded organizations that did fundraising efforts that generated tens of thousands of dollars. That's pathetic. The strength of the OWS is not in their war chest, it is in the number of actual people they can get to show up and the length of time they can get those people to show up for. They staged a protest for 19 days before they got major media attention.

The entire warchest of the entire movement would not buy the commercial airtime on even one of the free programs that Fox News donated to the Tea Bagger movement. I know that conservatives like to think that liberals are just themselves in some sort of mirror, but it really honestly does not work like that.

If you want to see the forces behind the OWS, look at people like Paul Krugman and Naomi Klein. The people who actually articulate the things that the OWS crowd demands. Because it is from those arguments, not from imaginary stacks of secret liberal gold, that the OWS movement comes.

-Username17

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:52 pm

If there were Stacks of Liberal Gold.. they'd be Republicans.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:54 pm

Darn I forgot the fourth argument ...

BUT THE KOCH BROTHERS ...

or the variation

BUT BUSH ...

(No really, we only smuggled weapons across the border to Mexico because Thomas Jefferson once ...)

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:15 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:OWS shut down the port of Oakland. It's already a big fucking deal.

There's a difference between big and effective. Occupy Wall Street has no platform. It's just got a vague feeling of being screwed over by the rich and some inane slogans to go with that.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 1:07 am

hyzmarca wrote:It's just got a vague feeling of being screwed over by the rich and some inane slogans to go with that.

Yes, and that's exactly why I thought it was a mistake. Eventually it'll just reach a point where the Black Bloc gets a little out of control and the entire movement is discredited because the MSM is dying to make the thing go away and the American public are morons.

However if the Euro crashes and brings a recession with it, that's a whole different story. 'having my future screwed over by the banks' is kind of a hazy and ill-defined statement, but since it'll be essentially true if/when the Euro crashes it's going to resonate a lot more strongly. And once it gets to that point it doesn't matter how coherent the demands or message is.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 3:27 am

Anarchists are pretty much always how socialist movements are discredited. And OWS has platforms. If you don't know that, you aren't listening.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 3:30 am

CG wrote:And OWS has platforms. If you don't know that, you aren't listening.

The inaction biased/disaffected/willfully ignorant American public do not grasp platforms or subtlety. They grasp themes that can be boiled down to slogans and can only understand strategy that's been oversimplified to one action, preferably one that doesn't require much work on their part.

OWS does not have this which is why it's going nowhere. I mean the 99%/1% dichotomy is very good, but it doesn't go far enough. If OWS had a 'preserve the middle class--tax the megarich!' slogan that'd definitely be something but OWS is far too nuanced for that. The average American can barely understand what a bank does beyond its pedestrian functions of savings/loans.

IOW I do agree that OWS overall has a message, a goal, and ways to achieve that goal. The problem is that the idiot American public just plain can't understand anything that's not in soundbites within a reasonable amount of time and the broad problems/solutions of the OWS movement wants to attend to can't give an action that can be simplified to one without missing other problems. Hence the skepticism among people who should be supporting it.

However if shit gets bad enough that becomes more or less unnecessary. If your values are in the minority you need to convince people to go along, but pretty much everyone understands 'you lost your job because some rich dudes would rather have low inflation than ensure grandma's savings'... but only if it happens to them, obvious. The idiot American public is also selfish and myopic.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 4:34 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:It's just got a vague feeling of being screwed over by the rich and some inane slogans to go with that.
Yes, and that's exactly why I thought it was a mistake. Eventually it'll just reach a point where the Black Bloc gets a little out of control and the entire movement is discredited because the MSM is dying to make the thing go away and the American public are morons.

However if the Euro crashes and brings a recession with it, that's a whole different story. 'having my future screwed over by the banks' is kind of a hazy and ill-defined statement, but since it'll be essentially true if/when the Euro crashes it's going to resonate a lot more strongly. And once it gets to that point it doesn't matter how coherent the demands or message is.

But in that case, they'd be screwed over by European banks, which America can't do anything about without invading Normandy again.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 4:40 am

Depends on if the takeaway message is 'did the Europeans' cause this or 'did the BANKS' screw us--as in, this should be the second in a long line of patterns of the overclass fucking over the 99%.

Considering how insanely hypocritical the first clause is in a fair and just world (did AMERICANS cause the original 2008 banking crisis or did BANKS cause it) the second one would be the one that sticks. But the idiot American public has never met a double standard it didn't like, so, maybe.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 5:20 am

Preserving the middle class simply does not have the resonance today that it did in the 1970s, because the middle class has been shrinking for a long time and now a majority of people are not in it. The middle class today is part of the 4th quintile and most of the fifth. Actually, the "middle class" people stayed pretty constant during the Bush years, it was just the rich who got richer and the poor who got poorer. The "99%" slogan is a lot more effective, even though the actual reality is that the top one tenth of one percent got hugely richer at the expense of the bottom 80% and the 80-99.9%ers mostly stayed even. "Screw the top one tenth of one percent" is more accurate, but much harder to say.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 12:50 pm

I prefer the term 'overclass', personally, since it also neatly encompasses organizations like the CIA and the MIC/private security forces.

MfA · Post by **MfA** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 2:10 pm

Creditor class is also apt (this includes pensioners, but then it should).

Datawolf · Post by **Datawolf** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 4:51 pm

Well, if the European Union's economy goes up in flames because of ECB shenanigans then the Occupiers can use that to their advantage by saying "That could be us! We've got to stop that from happening to North America/The U.K.!"

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 5:33 pm

You know, it sort of feels like the current wave of republican types lack the neccessary insensitivity to large numbers required for government. 500K might be a lot of money to individuals but on the scale of major corporations or political campaigns it is bullshit tiny. 500 million might be a lot to those guys but the Department of Defense literally misplaces more money than that on an annual basis and it seriously is not worth the cost of tracking it all down.

So, yeah, Occupy Wall Street might have 500,000$. But given its size that just plain isn't very much money. They probably couldn't pay all the people who show up minimum wage for a single day with that little money.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:06 am

Jesus Christ, why are people so flipping out about inflation? Yes, it sucks and disproportionately hurts the .1%, but considering every other alternative it's the best of bad options.

Datawolf · Post by **Datawolf** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:27 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Jesus Christ, why are people so flipping out about inflation? Yes, it sucks and disproportionately hurts the .1%, but considering every other alternative it's the best of bad options.

Maybe the 0.1% use their influence to paint inflation as being worse than it is.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:38 am

Because nobody likes to go to the supermarket and find out that everything is more expensive?

I mean, one thing that people *do* get is when their money is buying them less stuff.

EDIT: And while people are stupid, in this case, the real history is the same as usual: thye are caught on....I would say the old left vs. right, but repubs vs. dems is a mockery of said struggle.

"Only repubs or dems win elections, so let's vote for the less bad". With that attitude, no wonder that both political parties became the same corporate servants, they can't lose anyways.

"Less bad" politics is nice and dandy when the economy is doing well. Is not on a recession, when people demand competent leaders who actually LEAD a country out of the mess.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:40 am

The fact that people who have mortgages larger than their bank accounts scream about "inflation" tells me that the investor class has bought themselves some effective propaganda.

-Username17

Datawolf · Post by **Datawolf** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:40 am

Gx1080 wrote:Because nobody likes to go to the supermarket and find out that everything is more expensive?

I mean, one thing that people *do* get is when their money is buying them less stuff.

So increase wages. If the money is worth less it doesn't matter if you pay people more so that they can afford to live the same lifestyle as they did before inflation increased. Since the money is worth less does it even cost you anything?

No, seriously, I'm actually wondering about that.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 5:53 am

That was naive. What actually happens is that the inflation just keeps up until you end with barrels of money that can't even buy basic needs.

I mean, you can defend inflation all that you want, but is only a patchup measure. It doesn't fix anything.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:18 am

Gx1080 wrote:That was naive. What actually happens is that the inflation just keeps up until you end with barrels of money that can't even buy basic needs.

I mean, you can defend inflation all that you want, but is only a patchup measure. It doesn't fix anything.

Inflation has happened the world over for thousands of years. The number of times that we have actually been in Zimbabwe or 1923 Germany is very low. Prices and wages are stickier going down than they are coming up, so overall inflation is almost always positive. And has almost always been positive, even when currency was actual gold.

Society has only collapsed on the back of hyper inflation a few times, while society has lived with negligible to moderate inflation almost all the time since the Sumerian Temples monetarized the exchange of goods and services.

The primary effect of inflation is to make the exchange of goods and services require physically heavier intermediaries - except of course in the age of digital currency it does not even do that. What it really does is to make debts denominated in the inflating currency to be less onerous and to make people with no income poorer. So inflation would worsen the plight of the unemployed (bad) in exchange for making a portion of the debt constraints the economy operates under go away (good). Oh, it would also discourage companies from holding cash as a store of value, meaning that if you believe in monetarism and supply side effects it would be equivalent to a reduction in the prime rate as a stimulus to the economy.

-Username17