Occupy
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Show up today at noon at Cesar Chavez Plaza, 201 W. Washington St., for what could be the first day of a prolonged assembly, following the path of ongoing Occupy demonstrations in New York and other cities.
“The only thing that the protesters agree with Wall Street is on the word “enough.” They have had enough of this double-talk and they want their fair share of the pie that Wall Street created with the peoples’ savings, their pension plans, their homes and everything else of value that is now a basis for charging interest and making a profit in exchanging paper. A real GDP comprised not of “financial services” (trading paper back and forth between the same parties) but rather in performing real work, which is what the 99% do every day, is the only path to recovery. The people know it and they are going to demand it. Whether they get it or not, depends upon whether you show up at the events near you.” Neil Garfield livinglies.me
Protests Against Banks Rise in Number and Intensity in Major Cities Around the Globe
EDITOR’S REPORT: From Rome, Berlin, London, Frankfurt to Sydney, Australia and dozens of other countries in Asia, Europe, and across North America protesters are taking to the streets – a feat of improbable dimensions considering the ease of sitting back and using email, twitter and other social media. The message is the same — we want our lives back, now. The past bailouts of the banks started a fire of angst amongst people of all ages, employment, wealth and political stripes. The current focus on saving the banks instead of the people has thrown fuel on a fire that was raging in the hearts of all people whose lives have been dismantled by the workings of the Banks.
The Banks are fighting back but their guns are empty when it comes to the moral and practical choices in front of us. People are angry and fearful and they are right. As pointed out by Joe Nocera in his opinion piece this morning in the New York Times, the parallels with the 1930′s are too close for comfort. And the idea that government or Bankers can convince us to have “confidence” is proof that confidence has left the room. We have lost confidence in our economic system, and in our political system which is hostage to the financial giants that control far too much in ways that raise barriers to competition for people to assemble, bargain or negotiate collectively from strength or even demand fairness.
The only thing left is for people to take to the streets, something that has been predicted here for years along with many other writers on blogs, newspapers and magazines. As the movement grows, the weak responses from Wall Street and those who seem bent on voting against their own interests, are finally being answered — power is in the people. Government retains power only so long as people let it.
It is comforting to know that the relatively unknown organizers who started this protest on Wall Street could make such a difference. They know the power that comes from people assembling to petition for grievances. And they understand the need for discipline,patience and persistence. They understand that the message must be allowed to mature and grow before it becomes a list of demands, and that the size of the response to demands for reform will be directly correlated with the size of the protest. To grow the numbers and present a credible threat to those who would continue to exercise power at the expense of ordinarily people, they are using their formidable powers and talents using the experience of community organizing and promoting causes that we all can agree are right.
Of course the banks will claim anarchy, drugs, sex and other criminal behavior to prevent others from joining this movement. But the flash quality of this uprising obviously drowns out those narratives that only a few weeks ago were the theme of reporting and opinions. These are people who are working, who want to work and who want to work in jobs for a fair wage that will support their families. For the last thirty years, the mantra of a thriving economy has hidden the fact that practically nobody was seeing the benefit without going into an impossible amount of debt.
Wall Street used the pension money of the people to flood the market with cheap money which in turn fueled a spending spree by consumers who were not learned in the exotic consequences of fool-hardy commerce. We allowed the credit industry to rise accounting for nearly half of all of U.S. Gross Domestic Product — tripling from 16% to 48% in the span of only 30 years. Most people don’t understand GDP much less what goes into computing it — which is governed by mostly political decisions (a fact pointed out 50 years ago by Ludwig von Mises, in his Theory of Money and Credit).
The rise of “financial services” is merely a reflection of the fact that we have allowed Banks to insert themselves into everything we do and every financial decision we make. That the beneficiaries of this policy were the principals, traders and managers on Wall Street is easily apparent now — because median wages for everyone else stagnated in real dollar terms and went down when you include the new costs, taxes, and expenses of just living. The main new costs were credit and medical care — fueled by Banks funding those costs with the savings and pensions of the same people who are demanding the benefit from their forced “investment.” Instead of controlling costs by putting Banks and their emissaries as intermediaries between services and the consumption of those services, it merely added many layers of corporate bureaucracy and many layers of profit for those intermediaries — essentially creating a private tax with no apparent benefit to the country or to the people.
The way the Banks did it is with the issuance of “private currency” nominal derivatives carrying a notional value of more than $ 600 trillion, which is more than 12 times all the real money in the world. People are taking to the streets because they understand that there is not enough money in the world, literally, to pay for the Banks excesses, that there is no way to recover without taking power away from the Banks and those who serve the Banks in the corridors of power, — and mostly because they refuse to be passive partners in a system that takes their own money and uses it against them.
The foreclosure crisis is a symptom of the larger problem of excess Bank power and excess wealth siphoned away from the people of the planet. With unstoppable greed, they have jettisoned the self restraint that they said was sufficient to avoid this type of crisis, thus convincing the public and the regulatory agencies and the government law-makers that outside regulation was not needed. It was enough they said to have the threat of outside regulation and enough to rely on self-imposed restraint to avoid collapse.
The only thing that the protesters agree with Wall Street is on the word “enough.” They have had enough of this double-talk and they want their fair share of the pie they created with their savings, their pension plans, their homes and everything else of value that is now a basis for charging interest and making a profit in exchanging paper. A real GDP comprised not of “financial services” (trading paper back and forth between the same parties) but rather in performing real work, which is what the 99% do every day, is the only path to recovery. The people know it and they are going to demand it. Whether they get it or not, depends upon whether you show up at the events near you.
Protesters Take to Streets; Clashes in Rome
ROME — In dozens of cities around the world on Saturday, people took to the streets, clutching placards and chanting slogans as part of a planned day of protests against the financial system.
In Rome, a protest thick with tension spread over several miles. Protesters set fire to at least one building and clashed violently with the police, who responded with water cannons and tear gas.
In other European cities, including Berlin and London, the demonstrations were largely peaceful, with thousands of people marching past ancient monuments and many gathering in front of capitalist symbols like the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Elsewhere, the turnout was more modest, but rallies of a few hundred people were held in several cities, including Sydney, Australia, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Protests were also held in New York and several other cities in the United States and Canada.
But just as the rallies in New York have represented a variety of messages — signs have been held in opposition to President Obama yards away from signs in support — so Saturday’s protests contained a grab bag of messages, opposing nuclear power, political corruption and the privatization of water.
Despite the difference in language, landscape and scale, the protests were united in frustration with the widening gap between the rich and the poor.
“I have no problem with capitalism. I have no problem with a market economy. But I find the way the financial system is functioning deeply unethical,” Herbert Haberl, 51, said in Berlin. “We shouldn’t bail out the banks. We should bail out the people.”
Another protester in Berlin, Katja Simke, 31, said that it was clear “that something has to be done.”
“This isn’t a single movement but a network of different groups,” said Ms. Simke, who was opposed to income inequality but also cared about climate change and atomic energy. “I’m really positively surprised by how well this came together.”
Saturday’s protests sprang from demonstrations in Spain in May and the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that began last month in New York. This weekend, the global show of force came as finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrialized nations meet in Paris to discuss global economic issues, including ways to tackle Europe’s sovereign debt crisis
In London, where crowds assembled in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the ubiquitous emblems of the movement were in evidence. “Bankers Are the Real Looters” and “We Are the 99 Percent,” read several placards and flags. One demonstrator, dressed as Jesus Christ, held a sign that said “I Threw the Money Lenders Out for a Reason,” a reference to an episode from the Bible.
Brief clashes were reported in London, where police were out in force with dozens of riot vans, canine units and hundreds of officers. But the gathering was largely peaceful, with a picnic atmosphere and people streaming in and out of a nearby Starbucks.
The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made an appearance at the cathedral and was met by hundreds of cheering fans, and was virtually borne aloft to the church steps, where he called the movement “the culmination of a dream.”
In Rome, Saturday’s protests were as much about the growing dissatisfaction with the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — who narrowly survived a vote of confidence on Friday — as they were was about global financial inequities.
“We’re upset because we don’t have prospects for the future,” Alessia Tridici, 18, said in Rome. “We’ll never see a pension. We’ll have to work until we die.”
In contrast, protests in Berlin remained peaceful and upbeat, with music and even a little dancing on a warm, sunny day.
“I like the carnival atmosphere,” said Juhani Seppovaara, 64, a photographer and writer originally from Finland now living in Berlin. “But for me there’s a little too much populism, very complicated matters reduced to one or two sentences.”
In Sydney, several hundred protesters carried signs with slogans including “We Are the 99%” and “Capitalism Is Killing our Economy.” The atmosphere was lively, with a brass band providing music in packed Art Deco-style public thoroughfares outside the headquarters of the Reserve Bank of Australia in the city’s financial district.
In central Tokyo, where periodic rallies against nuclear power have been held since the March accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, about 300 protesters marched with signs through busy streets and heavy traffic, chanting “We’re With Occupy Wall Street!” “Down With the Rich!” and “No More Nukes!”
Two young men held a banner that expressed a somewhat apologetic solidarity: “Radioactivity Has No Borders. To the World From Japan: Sorry!” Another held a sign that read simply, “Let’s Complain More.”
“Even timid Japanese are finally starting to push for change,” said Miku Ohkura, 24, a college student in Tokyo, who said she had already been to about a half dozen protests for various causes in the last few months. She said that apart from being opposed to nuclear power, younger people were angry at being made to bear the brunt of Japan’s economic woes, with many unemployed or too poor to start families. “We all have different messages, but we’re all alike in that we want society to become more equal,” she said.
In Hong Kong, about 200 people rallied at Exchange Square, an open area near the International Finance Center, in the heart of the city’s banking and commerce district. Various groups staged sit-ins, protesting issues including growing income disparity and a political system that some demonstrators said was undemocratic.
Thousands of people protested in Hong Kong in March, criticizing the government then for not doing enough to help the poor. A far larger crowd marched through downtown Hong Kong on July 1, the anniversary of the territory’s return to China, over the widening income gap.
A 2009 report by the United Nations Development Report found Hong Kong had the greatest income disparity of the 38 developed economies it studied.
“It’s just embarrassing,” said Nury Vittachi, a Hong Kong resident who attended Saturday’s rally. The Hong Kong government likes to stress stability and prosperity, Mr. Vittachi said, but a widening wealth gap threatens those ideals.
“We’ve had decades of increasing inequality, culminating in the financial crisis,” said Jack Copley, 20, a student at the University of Birmingham who was protesting in London. “The best we can hope for,” he said, gesturing to the gathered crowd, “is that we can change the political climate to make it harder for politicians to rule in the interests of the few.”
Rachel Donadio reported from Rome, and Elizabeth A. Harris from New York. Reporting was contributed by Kevin Drew from Hong Kong, Nicholas Kulish from Berlin, Matt Siegel from Sydney, Australia, Ravi Somaiya from London, and Hiroko Tabuchi from Tokyo.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud Tagged: bankruptcy, borrower, countrywide, disclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, foreclosures, fraud, LOAN MODIFICATION, modification, Occupy wall Street, protests, quiet title, rescission, RESPA, securitization, TILA audit, trustee, WEISBAND 
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Posted at October 8, 2011 //
Back,
BANKERS,
BEING,
COMMENTS,
ENGAGES,
HEARD,
Home,
Occupy,
OWLS,
PEPPER,
PITHY,
PUSH,
SPRAY,
Street,
Wall
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EDITOR’S NOTE: OWLS (Occupy Wall Streeters) are expanding across the nation, money is pouring in and they are getting support from all sorts of unlikely sources. It is clear that Obama and his team are looking for ways to tap this energy as the unions see a vehicle for growth, Tea Party members see their cherished goal of banging the banks for TARP and the rest of the $ 16 trillion bailout, and young people are flocking to a cause that runs right into their empty pockets — jobs withheld from the American economy because big banks and big business are literally holding $ 3.5 TRILLION in money that normally would be flowing into the economy growing businesses that would hire and train American workers.
It doesn’t take a political strategist to see that this movement is what will define American politics and the 2012 elections. Anyone running for office needs to run against big business and big banks or they will lose, pure and simple. Pepper spray from hired thugs in new Jersey and peppery comments and whining from bankers “trying to make ends meet” are not going to stop this movement. This one is here to stay and it might just be the beginning of a new era of governance with the emergence of a centrist political party that eschews the ties and tactics of the republican party, a subsidiary of the banks, and the Democrats who have abandoned basic progressive principles that are practical. There is no party right now that can attract the enthusiasm of the young and old American voters like the OWLS.
Unless one party or the other adopts the energy, momentum and anger of the OWLS, this will result in a third party that will have candidates running in all major contested districts. It will draw heavily from disaffected Democrats and Republicans. It is a wild card that cannot be tamed. POLITICIANS: Proceed at your own risk!
The message is clear: Hold the Big Banks and Big Business accountable for what they have done to our government, our society and our economy. Bring the jobs back and grow those industries that will produce good paying jobs that pay enough for people to live and raise a family. It is not acceptable for the American society to give up hope, a future vision and our own ability to innovate because those who siphoned off the money won’t give it back. We want to see accountability, indictments, and restitution. We want capital put back in the economy from which it was stolen. The purse snatcher has been caught. It is time to pay the piper.
‘Occupy Wall Street’, 99 percent movements get challenge from the other 1 percent
Published: October 7
The “Occupy’”movement has spread from its New York birthplace to several other major cities, including Boston, Washington D.C. and L.A.. What protesters might not have expected was that the one percent of Americans that the protests are targeting would hit back. As Elizabeth Flock reported:
In a news conference yesterday, President Obama told the protesters of Occupy Wall Street he understood their concerns about the nation’s financial system, but also defended those who worked in the financial sector, saying their work was necessary for the economy to grow
It was the first time the focus had been shifted from the “We are the 99 percent” of people who have been protesting over corporate greed on Wall Street, among other issues, to the “one percent” of people they’re protesting.
As the “Occupy” movement continues to spread across the nation, the bankers who work on and around Wall Street have begun to speak up. Some have responded by telling protesters they aren’t so different from them, or started their own counter-protests. Others have said they just don’t care.
Exception Magazine reports that last night, self-identified Wall Street workers were seen wandering through Zuccotti Park during the General Assembly meeting to challenge attendees on why they had come to protest.
The two workers called out protesters for rallying against corporations while consuming products like designer clothes and iPads. They pointed out that most of the protesters clearly could afford to eat. And they echoed Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s argument that some bankers are struggling to make ends meet, too.
New York Federal Reserve’s board of directors Kathryn Wylde agreed with the two wayward bankers, Public Radio International reports, saying recently that if the protesters actually “talked to the people working inside the banks and on Wall Street … they would find they have far more in common with them than what divides them.”
A counter-protest has also started on Wall Street, “Occupy Occupy Wall Street,” by two investment bankers who are fed up with the demonstrations.
In Washington, Occupy DC protesters took to the Metro to demonstrate on Friday, handing out fliers while posing as members of America’s one percent. As Katie Rogers explained:
Nearly a week into “Occupy DC” demonstrations and a day after protestors took to D.C.’s Freedom Plaza, the movement that Wall Street built is still attracting supporters.
Now, Metro riders may find members of America’s 99 percent clogging their daily commute.
A video posted on Occupy DC’s Web site shows a cluster of dressed-to-the-nines demonstrators posing as America’s 1 percent, brandishing an iPad, toasting champagne glasses and handing fliers to riders who mostly just look tired.
As political leaders begin to react to the growing protest movement, some analysts wonder if President Obama can tap into the movement’s energy. As Dana Milbank opined:
As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators moved to Washington on Thursday and swarmed outside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, President Obama was at the other end of Lafayette Square trying to align himself with the swelling protest movement.
“I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel, that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street, and yet you’re still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this problem in the first place,” the president said at a news conference in the East Room.
For the struggling president, the nascent movement offers a chance at salvation, the opportunity to excite liberals with the sort of populist energy that has fueled the Tea Party for two years. But, as liberal leaders already know, the young movement must be careful to avoid Obama’s embrace: He decimated the progressive cause once, and he would do it again if given the chance.
Liberal activists who rallied behind Obama in 2008 watched as he defied their wishes and instead made unrequited concessions to the Republicans. “Every one in this crowd, I am certain, has had disappointments and frustrations with this White House,” Robert Borosage, a director of the Campaign for America’s Future, told the audience as he convened the Take Back the American Dream Conference, an annual gathering of liberal activists in Washington, this week. He accused Obama of being “too cautious” and “pre-compromised” and criticized his performance on jobs, global warming, defense and foreign policy.
Another of the speakers at the confab, former Obama White House official Van Jones, said it was liberals’ own fault for placing too much faith in the president. “We all affiliated [with] him,” he said. “We made a mistake.” Obama “got to become head of state, he got promoted — good for him,” said Jones, who was forced to quit the White House when conservative critics attacked him. “But here we are — and it’s worse than before.”
More from The Washington Post
Opinion: Rescuing America from Wall Street
Who are the 99 percent?
Russ Feingold endorses Occupy Wall Street
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“Banks should not be servicers and they should not be pretending, much less allowed to make decisions on modifications of loans that were irresponsible, dead-beat proposals before any borrower signed for them.” Neil F Garfield, www.livinglies.wordpress.com
EDITOR’S COMMENT: The good news is that the Occupy Wall Street Movement hit the front page and the editorial section with this op-ed piece from Nicholas Kristof. The bad news is that the act of demanding the truth has become a “revolutionary” act. How did that happen? — in the “land of the free” where the very first amendment allows freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which I guess has come to mean the freedom to sell out to big business and big banks.
Kristof is wrong when he says these protesters have no list of demands. Their list is a short list of getting the truth and forcing their government to hold the “banksters” accountable for performing acts that would land any common person in prison. Kristof misses the simplicity of the message. And he misses the simplicity of the solutions that are easily available to our financial system, our society and our standing around the world. If we start from the truth about what happened and account for the money, then we can start the process of reversing what has appeared to be irreversible damage.
It’s not like we have a choice. Either we let the banks have their way and leave them alone to continue the rape and pillage of countries around the world or we don’t. And we need to act while we still have the power to do so. If the banks get their way (and mind you I am only talking about a handful of powerful bankers, since the others were kept out of the “game” or even victimized by it), then we have the virtual certainty of a floundering housing market going further into the abyss dragging the economy, jobs and prospects for any recovery with it. And yes it IS that simple.
The alternative is simple: since we know that the investors had their purse stolen, and the homeowners were used as pawns in a vast game of economic brinkmanship where the “loans” were secretly paid off or settled, let’s get the banks out of the game. Banks should not be servicers and they should not be pretending, much less allowed to make decisions on modifications of loans that were irresponsible, dead-beat proposals before any borrower signed for them.
The opportunities must be created for people of good faith to enter into discussions to settle the matter — the real stakeholders (investors and homeowners). For those who blithely predict that no homeowner will enter into discussions for modifications if they think they can get a free house, my message is “DO THE MATH.” Millions of people have sought modification or settlement of issues with the servicers and banks whereas only 2-3% of those foreclosed upon have litigated. People would rather settle than fight — they have already proved that.
And for those people who do not act in good faith there can be consequences. But even if collateral benefit arises from addressing this issue with integrity and honesty about how this mess was created, from a practical standpoint, which is better — letting the bankers keep their ill-gotten gains or letting a few people make a little extra money that will be pumped back into the economy as soon as it is received?
Nobody is saying the investors should bear the complete loss or that the homeowners should bear the complete loss — but that is what is happening under the Alice in Wonderland system we now witness: BOTH investors and homeowners have been burdened with the total loss. To make matters worse BOTH insurers AND taxpayers have been burdened with the total loss. So the total loss has been paid four times, so far and it is climbing. Now title insurers and probably rating agencies are going to bear some loss too. Who is collecting all this money? The mega banks and their puppet servicers and puppet trustees (known as SHAM TRUSTEES) are becoming the largest landowners in history and they are the largest holders of cash in the world.
In my world, if you steal a purse, you get caught, return what is recoverable and pay a penalty — loss of freedom. In the world of Wall Street finance, they get to keep the purse, use the ID to make other money, get paid by taxpayers for the loss of the purse, and they get to buy homes with worthless “debt” paper that doesn’t belong to them, which they found in the purse. Some people think this is OK. What is most interesting is the divergent views on this subject have converged geographically on “Wall Street.”
If holding a purse snatcher accountable is a revolutionary act, then count me in.
October 1, 2011
The Bankers and the Revolutionaries
AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.
“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards — mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches — but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.
I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people, and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there’s a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.
“This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. “Enough is enough!”
The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.
In a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism, the pizzeria quickly added a new item to its menu: the “OccuPie special.”
Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. The participants pursue causes that are sometimes quixotic — like the protester who calls for removing Andrew Jackson from the $ 20 bill because of his brutality to American Indians. So let me try to help.
I don’t share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it’s also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.
In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.
We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it — and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?
So for those who want to channel their amorphous frustration into practical demands, here are several specific suggestions:
¶Impose a financial transactions tax. This would be a modest tax on financial trades, modeled on the suggestions of James Tobin, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize. The aim is in part to dampen speculative trading that creates dangerous volatility. Europe is moving toward a financial transactions tax, but the Obama administration is resisting — a reflection of its deference to Wall Street.
¶Close the “carried interest” and “founders’ stock” loopholes, which may be the most unconscionable tax breaks in America. They allow our wealthiest citizens to pay very low tax rates by pretending that their labor compensation is a capital gain.
¶Protect big banks from themselves. This means moving ahead with Basel III capital requirements and adopting the Volcker Rule to limit banks’ ability to engage in risky and speculative investments. Another sensible proposal, embraced by President Obama and a number of international experts, is the bank tax. This could be based on an institution’s size and leverage, so that bankers could pay for their cleanups — the finance equivalent of a pollution tax.
Much of the sloganeering at “Occupy Wall Street” is pretty silly — but so is the self-righteous sloganeering of Wall Street itself. And if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud Tagged: Bankers, bankruptcy, borrower, countrywide, disclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, foreclosures, fraud, Kristof, LOAN MODIFICATION, modification, quiet title, rescission, RESPA, revolutionaries, securitization, TILA audit, trustee, WEISBAND 
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