NP - OWS is Winning

[David Morris]

Making Out Like Bandits

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_11/making_out_like_bandits033755.php

When the global financial industry was unraveling in late 2008, the
Federal Reserve was bailing out institutions [...] at an incredible
pace, and making all kinds of emergency secret loans. Bloomberg
Markets reports that, in a detail unknown before now, some of those
banks actually made a profit, reaping an estimated $13 billion of
income “by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates.”

[...]

Paul Krugman:

"What’s unforgivable is the way policymakers, both at the Fed and
elsewhere, basically declared Mission Accomplished as soon as the
panic in financial markets subsided and stocks were up again. When
spring rolls around, we’ll reach the third anniversary of Ben
Bernanke’s declaration that “green shoots” were making an appearance —
and there will still be 4 million Americans who have been out of work
for more than a year. Yet there has been no sense of urgency about
dealing with unemployment; indeed, most of the elite conversation has
been about stuff like cutting Social Security payments a decade or two
from now."

[...]

But there’s simply no denying the fact that those Occupy activists
waving “Where’s my bailout?” signs are raising an entirely legitimate
question. Indeed, it’s hardly even rhetorical.

Kevin Drum’s conclusion, contrasting how the financial industry was
treated vs. how the rest of us were treated, rings true:

"Things like principal write-downs, second waves of stimulus, aid to
states, and mortgage cramdown all got a bit of idle chatter but were
then left to die. For some reason, it would have been unfair to hand
out money to profligate homeowners, state and local workers, and the
millions who have been unemployed for more than a year.

And yes, in some cosmic sense, perhaps it would have been unfair.
Massive financial crashes always produce some inherent unfairness. For
some reason, though, we were willing to overlook that unfairness when
it was Wall Street that came begging, but became obsessed with it when
all the rest of us came begging."