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Editorial: What's Behind The Bank Protests?
IBD Editorials ^ | October 6, 2011 | Editor

Posted on 10/06/2011 4:15:28 PM PDT by Kaslin

Socialism: The mob assaults against our banking system by unemployed leftists and their political allies are part of a larger strategy to control the commanding heights of our economy. And we'll all be much poorer for it.

The White House has thrown in with the anticapitalism crowd, and banks had better watch out. You only had to hear President Obama's cynical, politicized expressions of sympathy for the unwashed legions "occupying" Wall Street this week to be worried.

"Not only did the financial sector, with the Republican Party in Congress, fight us every step of the way," Obama said at his news conference Thursday. "But now you've got these same folks arguing we should roll back all those reforms and go back to the way it was."

But no criticism of the demonstrators.

In fact, added Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, "We are going to push back harder," making what sounds like a fairly explicit threat against the banks.

Welcome to class warfare, 2011-style. Obama's ratings have never been lower, and administration policies leading to a dead-in-the-water economy with 9%-plus unemployment are incredibly unpopular.

So he must think his only hope for re-election is to somehow tie the GOP to fat-cat bankers on Wall Street and then convince voters that the banks are to blame for all their ills.

Sound cynical? It is. But this is what Obama and the Democrats are doing. They've even put out a video: "Republicans: On the Side of Wall Street, not Consumers."

(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial
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To: tatown

“The market, if left unimpeded, will take care of ‘fair’ wages. We do not need government to determine that.”

I don’t want the government to determine “fair” wages; I just don’t want my children leaving school at 10 years old to work in a factory so they can eat. I’m not opposed to private-sector unions, though they are inefficient and kill industries (if you don’t want a UAW-made car, buy a Japanese car made in the southern US); I’m very much opposed to public-sector unions that I’m forced to support involuntarily through taxes at the point of a gun.

We can’t ignore the conditions of many Americans before the (elected) government got involved; even then, the government only got involved because it saw Europe in flames from communism, and felt there was no other way to head it off here.


101 posted on 10/06/2011 6:30:46 PM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: kearnyirish2

NOPE. The government has absolutely no “business” whatsoever in REGULATING wages, in a FREE NON-regulated Republic. Want better? Improve one’s self by moving to another free state of our States. The way it was suppose to be.

Decisions are to be made by a JURY OF TWELVE, not the government. Decades of conditioning and brainwashing.


102 posted on 10/06/2011 6:34:20 PM PDT by Varsity Flight
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To: kearnyirish2
KFI LA...Paraphrasing Gerald Celente:

Fed reserve has pumped into the systems, 20 trillion in loans to banks and hedge funds all over the world...It has not worked...

European Union is doing the same thing...Buying up debt and putting it on their books.

All these banks are losing money here, the banks will start collapsing, panic will follows.

My greatest fear...when the runs start on banks, first will happen overseas, and then panic in our banks...I'm 99 percent sure, they'll blame the gold speculators and will seize the gold.

103 posted on 10/06/2011 6:34:49 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: listenhillary

I see a lot of anti-government sentiment in these protests, not just anti-Wall Street. Some of the signs I could see a self-respecting FReeper carrying at a TEA party rally (some of them are identical, in terms of mortgaging our children’s futures). In fact, I don’t think most of the protesters separate the government & Wall Street; after the bailouts, why should they?

I’m not sure why the Dems try to appear as embracing the protests; they certainly don’t bode well for them.


104 posted on 10/06/2011 6:35:22 PM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: Kaslin
this is exactly what the engines of world prosperity need to hear during worst financial crisis in history.

yeah. how much more proof do we need to know that obama and his administration are the enemies of civilization?

105 posted on 10/06/2011 6:36:47 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand (...then they came for the guitars, and we kicked their sorry faggot asses into the dust)
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To: Varsity Flight

“NOPE. The government has absolutely no “business” whatsoever in REGULATING wages, in a FREE NON-regulated Republic.”

We’ve been here before; we worked six and a half days a week, and were paid with scrip from the company store (the only store available). Our life expectancy was about 40, and half our children died before reaching 10 years of age. Ah, for the good old days of no government.../s


106 posted on 10/06/2011 6:38:39 PM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: dragnet2

“I’m 99 percent sure, they’ll blame the gold speculators and will seize the gold.”

They’ve done it before, though I’m not sure what it will accomplish. I don’t know how it will work out, but it certainly has been worse: we’ve had similar economic problems, compounded by food shortages.


107 posted on 10/06/2011 6:40:31 PM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: kearnyirish2

“I see a lot of anti-government sentiment in these protests, not just anti-Wall Street.”

There’s a difference in the real Wall Street, and bailout business forced and YOKED upon the American citizen. The protesters need to seperate the two.


108 posted on 10/06/2011 6:46:50 PM PDT by Varsity Flight
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To: kearnyirish2
I’m not sure why the Dems try to appear as embracing the protests; they certainly don’t bode well for them.

Dems want an excuse to suspend elections and the Constitution.... Elite dems are behind these demonstrations - it's not 'grassroots'....

109 posted on 10/06/2011 6:50:05 PM PDT by GOPJ ("There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.)
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To: kearnyirish2

Start your own company.


110 posted on 10/06/2011 6:50:21 PM PDT by Varsity Flight
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To: kearnyirish2
"I see a lot of anti-government sentiment in these protests, not just anti-Wall Street." I see a lot of "Government come rescue us" pansy ass demands.

By the way, your Charles Dickens hyperbole leaves out a lot of factors when the move from the agriculture to the Industrial workshops occurred. One factor is that the government forced child labor, hell, they even paid for their workhouses.

In the end, all this is the result of intrusive central planners. Get the government out of the heavy regulation/tax structure that corporations rent out (Politicians) and you will begin to have a functioning society. These Wall Street drones should be marching on the White House, Dodd's house, Frank's house, Pelosi's house, Clinton's house etc... if they were serious about solving the problem.
111 posted on 10/06/2011 6:56:18 PM PDT by rollo tomasi (Working hard to pay for deadbeats and corrupt politicians)
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To: kearnyirish2
Let me guess. Ron Paul supporter aren't you? Or maybe so far off the Libertarian scale that its hard to distinguish you from a Laroucher.
112 posted on 10/06/2011 7:00:38 PM PDT by NavyCanDo
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To: rollo tomasi

100% correct, but there are some Marxist (Obama) apologists in here that will argue otherwise until they are blue in the face. Government is 100% the problem.


113 posted on 10/06/2011 7:03:11 PM PDT by tatown (The only job Obama's ever created was the one he gave Larry Sinclair.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator; Kaslin
I wouldn't say I'm particularly knowledgeable, but I agree that there is definitely a crank "palaeoconservative" tradition of hatred and suspicion of bankers.

I agree the infection probably comes from the quasi-socialist Populism of the late 1800s and the more or less open socialism of the Progressives of the 1920s. These movements coalesced with racialism, Sangerism, and American sympathizers of fascism to create a cult of "authenticity", of the "natural" and "native" and of the "producers."

World War II sorted a fluid stew of various popular movements, movements that had much more in common with one another than they had distinguishing characteristics, into two very arbitrary camps. People forget that Hitler and Stalin started off as allies, that Mussolini was a founding figure of Italian Communism, and that Gerald L.K. Smith and Huey P. Long were associates right here in America.

114 posted on 10/06/2011 7:18:31 PM PDT by wideawake
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To: NavyCanDo

Buchananite.

I think the libertarians here are the ones saying government shouldn’t stop employers from working people for 100 hours per week for a bowl of noodles a day.


115 posted on 10/06/2011 7:25:00 PM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: rollo tomasi

I made it clear the government only acted to head off a communist revolution as occurred in Russia, Germany, Spain, etc.; they weren’t angels, but provided part of the solution.

Unregulated business has made it clear what we could look forward to in such an environment; Europe shows us the opposite extreme. I don’t know what the middle ground would ideally look like.

I suspect more than a few of these Wall Street drones had a hand in electing Chris Christie in NJ and the Repub in Weiner’s seat; they’re desperate people, and not too happy with Obama. They’re simply gathering where mass transit is set up to accomodate them; I’m sure many used to work there.


116 posted on 10/06/2011 7:30:26 PM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: kearnyirish2

“I think the libertarians here are the ones saying government shouldn’t stop employers from working people for 100 hours per week for a bowl of noodles a day.”

You see that happening in the USA by rolling back government to it’s constitutionally described limits?


117 posted on 10/06/2011 7:30:34 PM PDT by listenhillary (Look your representatives in the eye and ask if they intend to pay off the debt. They will look away)
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To: listenhillary

“constitutionally described limits”

That means a lot of things to different people; when it was written it was legal to work people as long as you wanted without paying them at all.

I don’t know why people are so dead set against acknowledging what the labor movement achieved a long time ago when it was necessary; the unions outlived their usefulness when the reforms they demanded became law, but that doesn’t mitigate their earlier accomplishments. I have never belonged to a union, and hope I never do, but I enjoy weekends and a workweek usually of fifty hours. What a sense of entitlement.../s


118 posted on 10/06/2011 7:35:54 PM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: kearnyirish2

Henry Ford predated unions and he decided that he should pay his workers $5.00 a day so they could afford to buy what he was building.

Sounds like the unions were late to the gig.


119 posted on 10/06/2011 7:39:47 PM PDT by listenhillary (Look your representatives in the eye and ask if they intend to pay off the debt. They will look away)
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To: Kaslin

Who is paying for these squatters?


120 posted on 10/06/2011 7:52:33 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (Psalm 109:8)
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