The financial sector spent literally BILLIONS of lobbying dollars to effect these changes–all in the name of some airy “free market” ideology, i.e., let the financial markets just regulate themselves, everything will be fine, etc.

But when they finally got everything they wanted–what happens? They immediately go about creating incredibly risky investments and instruments (given AAA ratings by the ratings agencies that are in their pockets), all for the sake of making SHORT TERM profits. Without ANY concern towards anything long term.

Perfect example: credit default swaps. The firms selling these “insurance policies” made millions upon millions of profits in the short term. But of course, they did not have sufficient capital set aside to pay in the event that the defaults they were insuring against took place. And why? Because they LOBBIED Congress to make sure that they didn’t HAVE to have any capital set aside. Thanks to fucks like Phil Gramm, the derivatives market went completely unregulated. And then, after getting what they wanted (a deregulated market), they immediately went about making absurdly risky investments that would be guaranteed to make money in the short term, and also pretty much guaranteed to cause massive failure in the long term. They didn’t care.

Why didn’t they care? 2 reasons. First, because the compensation structures on Wall Street and in investment banks do NOT reward long term success or punish long term failure. They ONLY reward short term success. Second, Wall Street knew they could count on the Fed and the government to bail them out in the event of a crisis–just like they had over and over again for the past 20 years.

Oh yeah, the people in the risk management departments in these firms, the ones who saw what was perfectly obvious to anyone who cared to look, and who raised red flags and tried to warn the executives of the crisis in the offing? They were FIRED. To a man.

Oh yeah, the people who made the decisions to raise the banks’ leverage ratios to 30:1, and to sell the credit default swaps with no capital set aside to pay in the event the underlying assets defaulted, and to stop investing in the productive aspects of our economy and to engage entirely in speculation–those people, the ones who fucked us ALL…they got rich. Obscenely rich. They didn’t go to jail; they didn’t lose their jobs; they got rich. And they’re getting richer.

And all this is just a perfect example of the ongoing trend over the past 20 years: Banks are participating less and less in actually GROWING the economy (making loans to businesses, etc.), and are using more and more of their capital on speculation (the mere trading of commodities, financial instruments, etc.).

Meanwhile, as a result of this, the spending power of the middle and working classes has declined enormously. And as anyone who knows anything about economics can tell you–if the middle class has no spending power, then we go into depression. It’s as simple as that. I am a small business owner; I need a robust middle class to buy my products. If they go, I go. And so do thousands of other businesses.

But Wall Street doesn’t give a shit about the U.S. economy. That is the thing that OWS is trying to communicate to anyone who will listen. After all, Wall Street is dealing with a GLOBAL economy. As long as money is moving around SOMEWHERE, Wall Street can get rich. It doesn’t need to be in the U.S. They couldn’t care less about the U.S. middle class; those people aren’t the ones buying Wall Street’s products anyway.

So what is the big lesson we learned in 2008, and the one that OWS is trying to spread? First and foremost that the right-wing ideology of Let-the-financial-markets-regulate-themselves DOES NOT WORK. Wall Street firms are designed to make money–they are motivated by greed. Which honestly is fine–people wanna make a buck, you can’t fault them for that. BUT that doesn’t mean we have to let them use OUR money in whatever reckless ways they want. They need to be thoroughly REGULATED.

So yeah, lets bring back more vigorous regulation of all these financial markets; lets require banks to use a certain percentage of their capital for making loans to businesses to help GROW the productive aspects of our economy; lets outlaw compensation structures on Wall Street that reward only short term success, and allow someone to become a multi-millionaire because he designed a financial instrument that makes a short term profit, even if that same instrument ends up costing the firm twice as much in losses down the road; and when we hand trillions of tax dollars to the banks, lets be sure we vigorously regulate how that money is used; lets abolish too-big-to-fail banks; und so weiter…

OWS isn’t about anti-capitalism; rather, it’s opposed to the notion that the financial sector can be left to its own devices, and be trusted to behave responsibly. It cannot be so trusted. 2008 PROVED that.

Honestly, I can’t help but think that the complete IDIOCY of the current Republican candidates arises like a death gasp of that now proven-false ideology. They know that their philosophy of deregulation has been PROVEN to not work. So they are all desperately trying to justify that ideology with more and more extreme and weird justifications…culminating in the remark of Herman Cain, probably the most pure mystification ever heard in a presidential debate: If you’re poor, it’s your fault.

It is time to rise up and effect REAL change.

Most people get their “news” from whatever major sources best match their own political bias, so it’s no surprise that they’re confused bye the spin. I deliberately seek out multiple sources, with varying political slants, so I can then filter the spin from the facts. One of the best articles I’ve read recently in regard to what OWS is trying to say is by Matt Tabbi in Rolling Stone. One quote from the article sums it up pretty well, “These people aren’t protesting money. They’re not protesting banking. They’re protesting corruption on Wall Street.”

The full article… http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025