The chairman of the US Federal Reserve has urged congress against implementing spending cuts that could cause more financial turmoil, saying the country's economic recovery is "close to faltering".[...]
[Chairman Ben] Bernanke added that the economy was growing more slowly than the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, had expected, with poor job growth marking the biggest factor depressing consumer confidence.
“I would say very generally I think people are quite unhappy with the state of the economy and what’s happening,” Bernanke said. “They blame, with some justification, the problems in the financial sector for getting us into this mess, and they’re dissatisfied with the policy response here in Washington.“And at some level, I can’t blame them,” he added. “Certainly 9 percent unemployment and very slow growth is not a very good situation.”
Mitt Romney weighed in on the growing Occupy Wall Street movement at a town hall meeting in Florida today. And in the eyes of that particular millionaire businessman, the protests aren’t good.“I think it’s dangerous, this class warfare,” Romney said, according to National Journal.
US activists protesting corporate greed prepared for a downtown Manhattan march Wednesday that will include support from unionized teachers and transportation workers.[...]
The march is supported members of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents most of the city’s public school teachers; the Workers United and Transport Workers, which represents many of the city’s bus drivers; and Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (PSC-CUNY), which represents more than 20,000 professors and staff at the City University of New York.
[...]
The new protest comes four days after more than 700 protesters were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge when they defied police and stalled traffic. The Saturday demo was their biggest demonstration yet against government-backed banking bailouts and corporate influence in US politics.
“The 700,000 members of the Communications Workers of America strongly support the Occupy Wall Street Movement,” the CWA Executive Board said Tuesday in a statement. “It is an appropriate expression of anger for all Americans, but especially for those who have been left behind by Wall Street. We support the activists’ non-violent efforts to seek a more equitable and democratic society based on citizenship, not corporate greed.”[...]
The United Steelworkers, North America’s largest industrial union, and a number of local New York unions announced last week that they supported the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” protest.
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz showed up at “Occupy Wall Street” this week to show his support for the protest and clearly outline what he sees as the worst crimes of the American financial sector.In a brief speech amplified by an “echo chamber” of protesters (who shouted Stiglitz’s own words as a group because they’re banned from using megaphones), the Colombia University professor said that Wall Street had become wealthy by “socializing losses and privatizing gain.”
[The] prevailing media (and progressive) narrative about the protests has rapidly shifted from these-are-childish-vapid-losers to there-is-something-significant-happening-here. In part that’s because the protests have endured and grown; in part it’s because the participants are far less homogeneous and suscepitble to caricature than originally assumed; in part it’s because they are motivated by genuine and widespread financial suffering that huge numbers of Americans know intimately even though it receives so little attention from insulated media stars; in part it’s because NYPD abuse became its own galvanizing force and served to highlight the validity of the grievances; and in part because their refusal to adhere to the demands from the political and media class for Power Point professionalization and organizational hierarchies has enabled the protests to remain real, organic, independent, and passionate.[...]
[The] reason this is a street protest movement (rather than, say, a voter-registration crusade or an OFA project) is precisely because the protesters concluded that dedicating themselves to the President’s re-election and/or the Democratic Party is hardly a means for combating Wall Street’s influence, rising wealth inequality or corporatist control of the political process. Still, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the reason these protests are now receiving more respect in establishment venues is because those venues now see some potential use to be made of them.
[...]
What will determine how long-lasting and significant is the impact of these protests is whether they allow themselves to be exploited into nothing more than vote-producing organs of the Democratic Party — the way the GOP so successfully converted the Tea Party into nothing more than a Party re-branding project. There is no question that such efforts are underway.
[...]
The dynamics [the protests] are contesting are overwhelmingly systemic, not partisan.
Occupy Wall Street’s list of demands:
1. INVESTIGATE, ARREST AND TRY THE WALL STREET CRIMINALS
2. CONGRESS ENACT LEGISLATION TO PROTECT OUR DEMOCRACY BY REVERSING THE EFFECTS OF THE CITIZENS UNITED SUPREME COURT DECISION
3. ACTION ON GLASS-STEAGALL
4. CONGRESS PASS THE BUFFETT RULE ON FAIR TAXATION SO THE RICH AND CORPORATIONS PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE & CLOSE CORPORATE TAX LOOP HOLES INCLUDING PROHIBITION ON HIDING FUNDS OFF SHORE.
5. CONGRESS COMPLETELY REVAMP THE SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION AND STAFF IT AT HIGHEST AND LOWEST LEVELS WITH PROFESSIONALS WHO GET THE JOB DONE PROTECTING THE INTEGRITY OF THE MARKET THEREBY PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND INVESTORS.
6. RE-ESTABLISH THE PUBLIC AIRWAVES IN THE U.S. SO THAT POLITICAL CANDIDATES ARE GIVEN EQUAL TIME FOR FREE AT REASONABLE INTERVALS IN DAILY PROGRAMMING DURING CAMPAIGN SEASON.
7. CONGRESS ENACT SPECIFIC LAWS THAT EFFECTIVELY BUILD A WALL BETWEEN THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY AND THE U.S. MILITARY.
Amen. And they say these kids aren’t organized.
Click the logo to view the expanded list. And click this link (http://nycga.cc/donate/) to find out how you can help the movement.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!