The Banks Win, Again

The banks made unqualified loans to people and made money. The banks sliced and diced these toxic loans (derivatives) and sold them as Triple A investments... and made money. The banks then bet against those toxic investments and made money. The banks had their clients invest in these toxic instruments, and made money. The banks were then bailed out by the taxpayers and made money. The banks now own all the foreclosed property.

Tell us something we're not already #Occupying about, please.

Capitalism can't work properly if risk-takers are insulated from the consequences of bad bets. The #1 priority should be making sure that no institution is "too big to fail" next time we get what is effectively a global margin call.

Only if you misunderstand who is insulating the banks from risk and advocate for more governmental restriction.

The capitalist would advocate for the government to stop unconditionally underwriting mortgages under the guise of promoting home ownership.

It seems like there's no way for the majority of people to care.

I wish I could explain this better, but... I've been living in the Midwest area for the past few years. The day-to-day lives of the people here are just so incredibly different from the vibrant and politically-active crowd in NY, or the tech scene in SF.

My wife's father is in a desperate struggle to prevent his family from going bankrupt. He owned a business that designed and built pole barns and other buildings (in fact, he built a restaurant for one of his clients). Just before 2008, it was doing so well that he actually quit his day job. Then the economy tanked, and all of his signed contracts became meaningless. The clients literally just bailed. Anyway, he suddenly found that he had a lot of business debt (which unfortunately was personal debt) and no way to pay it off since no income was coming in. Needless to say, he and his family have been in a rather poor situation for the past few years.

What's my point? Well, here's what I've noticed: everyone around here seems to be dealing with a "disaster situation". Not necessarily due to 2008; just in general. The people here seem to mostly be in "oh-crap" situations. Most of them have more debt than they can handle. The students barely care about doing well in school (and have a massive amount of debt from it). Most people have poor credit.

What I'm saying is... There just seem to be so many problems that people have to deal with nowadays. Average people. I don't know why; the problems certainly aren't due to any single reason. It's a combination of globalization and the current economic situation, I think. But regardless, people just can't seem to spare the time to care about anything except survival and drowning their concerns via alcohol or pot.

Not everyone is like this. I'm just saying most people seem like this, to me, from my point of view here in St Louis Missouri (and previously Michigan). I realize that this is hardly a statistically significant viewpoint. I'm just trying to understand why our government is so focused on the rest of the world, when there are so many crisis-level issues that face the day-to-day lives of average American citizens.

It's not that these people are lazy, either. My wife's father is one of the hardest workers I've had the pleasure of knowing. Though... people do seem to make bad decisions without realizing it (e.g. taking on personal debt to support business operations). So I know they're not blameless -- and in fact, when the situations are examined with a critical eye, most would conclude that it was entirely their fault that they are in these "oh-crap" situations. Nevertheless, the fact is that they are in terrible personal situations, and we must study the implications of that.

I look around and see that so many average people around here seem to be spending most of their lives simply surviving: dealing with some sort of personal disaster, or paying off student debt, or... etc. Yes, they messed up. But it's unreasonable to expect them to care about nebulous long-term issues when every day is a constant struggle simply to keep their head above water.

I don't know what to do about this; I'm not even sure anything can be done. I, too, wish more people cared. But we'd be foolish to not try to examine the reasons why people aren't caring, and to ask ourselves, "Why is this so? Are people merely lazy? Is it because they feel powerless? Or is it due to their day-to-day situation? How can we change this? Can it be changed?"