Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
What is your view on the Occupy Wall Street Protests
Since the "Occupy [fill in the blank] Movement" has "moved" into Ottawa and Montreal apparently, as a Canadian I feel obligated to have an opinion but by the same token it's hard to form one, mired as we are in politeness and apathy.
By the way, I tend to accept the adage that if we're not left-leaning in our youth we have no heart, not right-leaning when we're older we have no head. Since most people have both hearts & heads & become older, whatever the facts may be therefore demographics alone are going to polarize opinion, and given my age my perspective might be described as stereotypically right wing.
That said, I have no idea how much of the global economic downturn is due to crooks, how much to lawful but what some call unethical behaviour by capitalists, workers and their collectives and by politicians and how much is due to boom & bust cycles associated with execution of the particular economic model adopted by various countries and the (fiat) monetary system. Ignorance has never excused anyone from a battle of opinion, however.
Also confusing me are news reports, from which it appears anyone with an agenda and no pressing need to be elsewhere creating wealth (paid rabble rousers by that definition no exception) is marching in the streets, and it's hard to distinguish the professional activists and anarchists, college students following their hearts (or chasing skirts) and the unemployable from those with a legitimate gripe. Those with a legitimate gripe may include the unemployed although unfortunately I never understood the mindset. When there were no jobs that I was prepared to do (and I washed dishes a lot of dishes and cut a lot of grass in my time) I would start a company that employed----sorry! exploited---a respectable number of workers itself. 2 or 3 companies so far, although I now employ no one but myself and am hence ineligible for handouts even if I vowed a long time ago never to accept charity from other taxpayers, IMO doing business with government an especially insidious form of abusing other taxpayers.
In my opinion if government wants central planning, goes out of its way to achieve central planning and takes credit when the economy coincidentally prospers, then it had better be prepared to take the blame when things go south. If it has not already done so job 1 for government is therefore to prosecute the crooks and criminalize what might be generally perceived as counterproductive activities, including its own, and then take a long hard look at its economic model. It perplexes me therefore why the White House is not also being mobbed, although I hear the US President was shrewd enough to suggest he's sympathetic to The Cause and thereby channel any incipient political unrest into more fuel for class warfare, which in N. America at least is apparently the lesser evil as far as politicians are concerned, in any case easily dissipated by increasing the dole.
If government weren't necessary for the existence of university political science departments it would serve little purpose, and therefore welcomes crises to further its political goals, which for both sides of a broadly 2-party system may be intertwined with the economy each according to a particular dogma but are first and foremost associated with staying in power. The latest economic crisis is no exception, if a little embarrassing because it illuminates its impotence--forced to maintain a political stalemate until capitalism, despite the death grip of government policy, can create the jobs government desperately needs to attribute to policy--hence the posturing ahead of the next election in the meantime.
In Canada such events simply incite kids to play hooky and cause the left to become somewhat more indignant than usual, to the extent we can get worked up about anything. As far as I know the most vocal protester has been one of the union leaders representing Federal government workers, claiming the Conservative government doesn't care about workers. It seems to me if the government union spokesman wanted to opine on behalf of workers he might get a real job first, but in any event markets are open and its time to get back to wealth generation. Somebody's got to pay taxes, which include his salary.
Finally on a lighter note, had to smile at the news a group of activists, students and income-deprived either staged or threatened a run on a Wall Street bank. Guessing it would have seriously depleted the banks' reserves of pennies and nickels.
I find it ironic the people who support the wall street movement are even here in this forum. if they really believed in what you are saying shouldn’t you be closing down your trading account and disperse the money to the protestors who have no jobs or money? After all, I do believe this forum supports Wall Street. Am I wrong? By trading and posting you are supporting the banks, brokers and wall street as a whole. <--- Are these not the businesses you are protesting? Help understand how you can support and protest them at the same time... My guess is you have a bank account too… lol again, the irony…
I find even more ironic you are using computers / phones / tablets from fortune 500 companies to post on this forum and to trade the markets. Why do you even own these? As Zondor pointed out in a previous post “fortune 500 companies are job killers!” If true, why are you supporting the very people you are condemning by owning and buying these items? I wonder if you even have any guilt or compassion for the lives you have destroyed…
Why are you trading? Perhaps you are just as greedy as the people you are protesting. Or is it because you have to follow the mantra: “Do as I say not as I do” . Or is it because you believe in capitalism and want to be make a living by doing what you are good at. Whatever the reason, simply by trading invalidates the arguments against capitalism and the rich because you are supporting them just by being here.
It is time to Get Real Wall Street protestors by backing up what you are saying with actions which support your point of view. If you don’t then you are just a Hypocrite who is Occupying futures.io (formerly BMT).
I don't watch any kind of news, so I don't know much about the details of the movement. What I do know is they've said some stupid things and are poorly organized.
But like I said before, what it means to me is simple --- corporate greed (aka "wall street") is at its highest levels, record profits... while unemployment and foreclosure are also at record levels (aka "main street"). The corporations have made conscious decisions to not support Americans, but to send jobs overseas. They've made conscious decisions to to not hire Americans. They've made conscious decisions to not help people in foreclosure.
Now, this is America - we are all in this together, right? No, apparently not. The American people bailed out the banks when they FUBAR'd the entire system. But the banks won't modify a home loan unless they can profit from it. They won't hire an American when someone overseas costs them less.
Like I've said, this is not all the banks fault. Americans are equally (more really) to blame for allowing the current system to even exist. Americans love credit. They all live beyond their means. They are all more interested in watching some reality TV show than tuning in to the real world of what is happening before their eyes, and then voting to make real change.
Like I've said earlier, until Americans are willing to pay more money to Buy American, then the "Made in the USA" movement will never come back.
I really don't at all understand your relation between protesting corporate greed and someone having a trading account or being a member of this forum.
But every time you place a trade through your broker, aren't you paying a financial institution a fee for finding someone to trade that derivative with?
I'm not saying you are BM. I'm making the point that SD made, that by trading you are in a way supporting some of the people that the protesters are against.
And then you said you didn't see a correlation there between corporate greed and trading. I'm simply making the point that by trading, we are ALL supporting financial institutions.
And SD's point seems to be that none of us really HAVE TO support any type of greed if we choose not to. But we all willingly seem to do so, while complaining about it at the same time.
Lets say it correctly; the government bailed out the bank using Americans money based on the premise was they were too big to fail. Had the capitalist system been allowed to work as it should have the banks, which are now being protested, would have failed. New banks that could have built a better mousetrap, so to speak, would have replaced them. In which case there would have been no need for all the protesting because the bad banks would have been gone. All these protests were generated because the government intervention.
See forrestang answer. He nailed it.
Question for you: How can you go against Corporate greed when you directly benefit from it? Most traders in this room are here for one reason: to make money and become rich, plain and simple. They use products or trade contracts controlled by the big corporations to make their money from which the corporations take their cut. By having this forum open you are enabling the corporate entities to become richer by sucking the money from traders in the form of commissions, fees, and products they sell, all of which is well advertised here. If your principle is not to support corporate greed then futures.io (formerly BMT) should be shut down on principle alone. At the very least the advertisements for software packages should be removed. My guess is you wont shut it down or remove anything, why? because of the need to make a living. Lets face it Mike, for you, these advertisements for software packages, brokerage firms and the greed of traders, just like the banks, serve their purpose.
personally i think you need to look directly at the politicians and big govt, and their relationship with large corporations.. all the banks did was exactly what they knew they wouldnt get in trouble for, criminally.. financially im sure they knew that it didnt matter if they failed for they had that nice little relationship in their back pocket...
i would have liked to seem them totally fail.. yes craziness for awhile, but from ashes comes green.. some private entity would have come along and bought up the banks to run them better.. all we have done by bailing them out is reinforced bad behavior and now they are even 'to bigger' to fail.. really, really stupid...
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see