Matt Taibbi With Don Imus - My Advice To Occupy Wall Street: Hit Bankers Where It Hurts
Fox Video - Matt Taibbi with Don Imus - Oct. 13, 2011
Photos and editorial from Taibbi are below.
By Matt Taibbi
I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.
But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.
Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.
That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.
No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:
1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.
2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.
3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.
4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.
5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.
To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now– will be there in an instant.
This story is from the October 27, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone.
Oct 21, 2011 at 1:28 AM
Reader Comments (14)
Change this one banking rule to "Debt Restructuring DOES NOT first require a default", and main street can begin to fight back against the banks.
All this by educating people to whats going on, and Tings do Take Time.
Its gaining momentum, thats the moust impostant aspect, above all the others.
And to maintain momentum.
Educate
The Frenc revelution dint happen in some days, it went for years, infact, what the moust of us persiv and learns about just happened in the last weeks.
He wrote the most definitive piece on this subject but forgot to mention what happened to the CAFR money invested in CDO's. The Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports reveal the tens of trillions of dollars that were first stolen from us by over taxation, then was stolen by Wall St and now they expect us to cover those losses again. If he were an agent of truth, he wouldn't be joking with Imus ( another useful idiot), he would be screaming like his hair was on fire. The crime is going on right now and could still be stopped.
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Shadow, you have a great diabolical mind, very sexy.
Cheers.
C.A.F.R. Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports are issued by State pension funds declaring their assets, holdings, management and valuation. States invest pension contributions and excess tax revenues (in good years) into publicly traded companies' stock. Normally State pension funds represent a "net buyer" of stock and continually move the market upwards a benefit to executives and employees who are paid in shares as compensation or investors. A notable example of stock ownership would be Motorola which is 70%+ owned by State pension funds so there is constant pricing pressure. Two problems since 2001 have begun to show themselves here;
1. Many States can use the pension funds to balance their budgets and they are doing this, those funds are guaranteed so State taxes will be increasing in the near future to cover this activity if the market does not skyrocket.
2. State pension funds are now "net sellers" as baby boomers retire, compound that with the spending of fund revenues instead of investment and a falling market and you get a serious issue, State's dipping into their funds (like Illinois) will have to replace lost revenue and assets by raising taxes. Remember this when you listen to Presidential candidates claims about lowering federal taxes helping you personally, that will help, but your State will be raising your taxes at the same time.
While I agree with him on this, if you follow that all the way through to its logical conclusion, you wind up in a lot of places where I bet Matt wouldn't want to go... you end up sounding much like the Tea Partiers he claims to hate so much. I don't have a problem with that myself, but I'll but a lot of OWS fans would.
Huh? More laws? How in living hell is that going to help when we can't get existing laws, including ancient ones like fraud, enforced against Wall Street? We got new a new law in Sarbannes-Oxley, which criminalizes the filing of knowingly false financial statements. Is that being enforced? Hell, no.
Fuck new legislation, Taibbi, and get your head out of your ass.
#Occupy would be better off demanding Wall Street executive prosecutions and, failing that by a time certain, demand the members of Congress appoint a special prosector to do the job that that milque toast of an AG, Eric Holder, won't do.
After all, how many congressional districts don't have an #Occupy movement? However small the number is, it's getting smaller.
The best you can hope for is the morphing the OWS movement into a 99 third political party that restores the republic and human centric fair valued rules...
Otherwise in the coming chaotic asset devolution nonlinearity...
... close your eyes and visualized the frenzied mad with anger crowd coming after a bloodied grandfather begging for his life only to have one of the more extreme members of the crowd put a bullet in his brains or the septuagenarian grandfather that had a noose legally placed around his before the floor dropped out......
May your luck be as good as your intentions to your fellow humans...