The Raven

The Raven

Saturday, October 15, 2011

He is right- even though he is technically a Wall Street fat cat!

Dear Wall Street, this is why the people are angry

Josh Brown may be in the same group as the bankers and brokers that the Occupy movements are protesting against, but he's just as angry as the protestors are at his own industry.

'Occupy Wall Street'

'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrators protesting near Wall Street in New York. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

TESS VIGELAND: Inequity is arguably the main rallying cry of the Occupy movement. And on that score, the primary bogeymen are the nation's bankers, brokers and traders -- the so-called "one-percenters" who control about a third of the country's wealth.

Commentator Josh Brown is one of those one-percenters. He's an investment adviser at Fusion Analytics in Manhattan. If you think you know what his take on all this is going to be, here's his open letter to the banks that don't seem to get why people are mad.


JOSH BROWN: In 2008, the American people were told that if they didn't bail out the banks, there way of life would never be the same. In no uncertain terms, our leaders told us anything short of saving these insolvent banks would result in a depression to the American public. We had to do it!

At our darkest hour we gave these banks every single thing they asked for. We allowed investment banks to borrow money at zero percent interest rate, directly from the Fed. We gave them taxpayer cash right onto their balance sheets. We allowed them to suspend account rules and pretend that the toxic sludge they were carrying was worth 100 cents on the dollar. Anything to stave off insolvency. We left thousands of executives in place at these firms. Nobody went to jail, not a single perp walk. I can't even think of a single example of someone being fired. People resigned with full benefits and pensions, as though it were a job well done.

The American taxpayer kicked in over a trillion dollars to help make all of this happen. But the banks didn't hold up their end of the bargain. The banks didn't seize this opportunity, this second chance to re-enter society as a constructive agent of commerce. Instead, they went back to business as usual. With $20 billion in bonuses paid during 2009. Another $20 billion in bonuses paid in 2010. And they did this with the profits they earned from zero percent interest rates that actually acted as a tax on the rest of the economy.

Instead of coming back and working with this economy to get back on its feet, they hired lobbyists by the dozen to fight tooth and nail against any efforts whatsoever to bring common sense regulation to the financial industry. Instead of coming back and working with the people, they hired an army of robosigners to process millions of foreclosures. In many cases, without even having the proper paperwork to evict the homeowners. Instead, the banks announced layoffs in the tens of thousands, so that executives at the top of the pile could maintain their outrageous levels of compensation.

We bailed out Wall Street to avoid Depression, but three years later, millions of Americans are in a living hell. This is why they're enraged, this why they're assembling, this is why they hate you. Why for the first time in 50 years, the people are coming out in the streets and they're saying, "Enough."


VIGELAND: Josh Brown. He wrote a scathing blog post along these same lines earlier this week. You can also follow him on Twitter @reformedbroker. While you're at it -- follow me @radiotess.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

FAR OUT!!!!





I was so excited to find that I have had similar ideas:

I have discovered the secrets of the Universe!... Creation is like musical vibrations coming together in a symphony…Hints of the works of God are discovered by mathematicians, astronomers and musicians. It is the formula God made us from on Earth… Who knows what is in far off other places! If we study the elements of Nature, we will be enlightened. We will not be God-like, no never… we are merely an idea behind the All Seeing Eyes of God. Behind God’s Eyes is the Cosmic Garden we call the Universe. Overcoming the darkness of our minds will enable us to defeat all obstacles reversing human progress-hatred, prejudice, hunger, poverty sickness, WAR -Death’s advocate- bringing out all the demons of mankind.

The second reason I wanted to share was because I recently heard on NPR about something that made me think time travel is possible, but not like how they write about and show on TV. The development of a new telescope that can "capture images of what the universe looked like just 400 million years after the Big Bang, " said NPR during an interview with Peter Stockman, leading the development of this telescope in Baltimore. Named The James Webb Telescope, after the second founder of NASA, the light it will collect is very faint, from stars that are more than 13 billion light years away.

"And a light year is about six trillion miles, so if you do the math it's a long, long way away," he says....

The NPR website said that The James Webb telescope will see about half a billion light years farther than the Hubble!

IMAGINE

www.npr.org