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Great post. This guy is a hero and a leader and I will look him up.
Oh and the yellow ‘power tie’ is sooooo 80’s
Good on hedges. I don’t agree with a lot of his politics, but more people need to refuse to talk to those tv clowns. At this point the only audience TV news has are shut-ins who already have their minds made up.
I resemble that remark.
The show Chris Hedges was on is Canada’s CBC network’s answer to FOX news nazi garbage.
I’m surprised he would consider going on that show, the ads for it on CBC are VERY annoying. CBC is in a long spiral descent to oblivion. No longer an unbiased national broadcaster… But for ratings stooping to the tactics of American “news”….
Total garbage.
Good for Chris Hedges for sounding off!
Kind of sad to see CBC buying into the trash news that we have down here in the USA. When I lived near the border and had CBC on my cable system it always seemed like it had pretty good news reporting.
It has been a few years since I’ve seen any Canadian news. They used to be so independent and objective. This is what happens when politics interferes with neutrality.
The man says it all as he rips he ear phone out of his head. “It’ll be the last time.”
Not because because the CBC has any choice about it.
Its obvious that the interviewer had his mind set to minimize and marginalize the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I have no fucking idea how this got on the news except that the actual news director has more integrity than the condescending bastard reading the questions off of the teleprompter at him.
The CBC, Canada’s national news network, actually paid attention to what really is happening.
Chris Hedges clearly has no idea what caused the mess that this economy is in. The reality is that it was caused by a large number of foolish people who got themselves into debt way past what they could afford, then defaulted on repayment and acted like it was the fault of the big banking corporations. Because Fannie and Freddie May were strongly encouraging irrational loans then reselling them to the large banking corporations they created loans that were worthless, which the banks bundled with more reliable instruments and got insurance for them from AIG. With massive mortgage defaults the entire FedGov scheme fell apart, but the directors at Fannie and Freddie made big bucks. The hit was taken by the banks that bought the mortgages from the government. If anyone is to blame it is the Democrats who perpetrated the insanity that everyone has a right to own a home, and everyone else should give them money so that they can buy one. Of course a bunch of Republicans helped out because a lot of their constituents in real estate, construction and mortgage lending (these are the small time crooks) were making big bucks and wanted to see the money machine keep cranking. Home construction provided fantastic jobs for illegal aliens from Mexico and Central America, and big profits for construction contractors.
Be sure to ask all the protesters how much they paid in taxes last year. Did they vote? For whom? Who do they plan to vote for next year? The answers to these questions will tell you what their agenda is.
Sorry pal, but if I cheat you in a deal are you going to take the hit while I walk away scot free?
… Damn right you won’t!
To think that the solution to all these problems lies in which party you vote for, in the current political scene, is somewhat naive. It’s a bit like ordering eggs at breakfast, get them scrambled or get them sunny side up, they’re still eggs, no matter how they are served.
Greetings,
I could spend the next few minutes tearing your argument apart line by line. Everything you said is wrong. Everything.
We are now beyond silly people such as yourself as we know what happened and who is to blame. Now is the time to pick sides or get the hell out of the way. I know what side I am on.
The financial terrorists must be treated as such.
Your whole comment is just lie after lie.
More Tea Bagger fiction. Blame the victims so the uber rich can have a few more dollars.
And by the way, Fannie and Freddie never did make loans. They bought them from the banks and mortgage companies. It was the banks who sold the “diced and sliced” mortgages to the GSEs.
If F&F were the only ones giving high risk loans, we would not be in such dire straights. Private banks saw the money flowing and decided to give up on under writing.
People were approved for loans they never should have been given. Mortgage lenders weren’t interested in if a person could pay their loan. I was personally told by a broker that it didn’t matter if I was struggling to pay the interest only loan he was trying to close me on. He said I could just refinance again and again! Fortunately, I didn’t go for the full amount and I am current on my mortgage.
It’s easy to see how people would go all in when the broker or banker is telling you that it will be fine. As for these people standing up for the banks, I guess they’re just masochists.
That was not regular CBC news, that was the The Lang And O’Leary Exchange, a program that reports on the financial markets and the business world. The male co-host is Kevin O’Leary, who insulted their guest by calling him a “left-wing nutbar”, which is okay as long as you preference it with “don’t take this personal, BUT…”.
At no-point did the guest say that corporations need to shut down, he was pushing for accountability, but that didn’t stop Kevin from accusing him of that by outright dismissing the dissatisfaction of the people calling it “nothing-burger” and “low-rent”. Whether the protests will change anything is anyone’s guess, but Kevin’s attitude was insulting and the CBC should have known Kevin is not the person to interview this author.
More on this interview: “CBC ombudsman says O’Leary’s ‘nutbar’ remark violated journalistic standards”, http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/breakingnews/cbc-ombudsman-says-olearys-nutbar-remark-violated-journalistic-standards-131876988.html
I am quite certain that the so called ‘demands’ of the protesters are many because frankly the problems are many. So to ask that there be a few specific demands by the protesters is merely asking for a reductionist solution to which corporate/financial interests could easily formulate a smoke screen with some nice words and ineffective changes.
The problems that need to be addressed are many and span many levels of financial, corporate and governmental/political interests. It does not however fully excuse the average citizen from also taking some responsibility for their own actions (be the motivations financial or political). Canada’s banking system has come through this crisis in fairly good shape due to a responsible and somewhat logical level of reasonable financial institution regulation as well as the sane choice of many of the bank directors to acknowledge and choose to not play the dangerous derivatives games that many US and international banks played.
To be extreme in viewpoint for either of these two people (as in the interview) will not yield any solutions but merely sets up a dangerous chess game.
Nanny State, see if you can read this with an open mind. It’s pretty succinct about what the main problem is, and why so many of middle to low wage earners (not bums) are upset.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011106141230738325.html
The sheeple are waking up and they say BAAA. Too late. There will not be a jobs surge unless those that run the place turn from their ideology. That is not going to happen. The corporations will not employ Americans. They are consumers not producers. That is the fundament disease of globalization. A new middle class may slowly emerge from Asia but that is too slow to consume. Hence we are finally witnessing the end of consumption.
First of, Kevin O’Leary is an entertaining blowhard on this financial show. He is the pure capitalist, meaning that it is his opinion that the failed banks should not have been bailed out. They should have failed and served as an example. He is the “Simon Cowall” of Canadian financial news. Any person coming on that show should expect nothing less of him.
Anybody who does not support Occupy Wall Street is either someone abusing the system or is a complete moron who deserves to be the one to should all of the bailouts.
well he hardly told them to shove it..
Kevin O’Leary is the John C. Dvorak of CBC… There, that sort of nails it, no? 😉
Rudy Giuliani said got it right. They should have arrested the first person sleeping in the park. Then the second, and so on. It is one thing to protest, but to just stay overnight is ridiculous. If they are homeless they can go to a shelter.
People talk about reparations for slavery and Jim Crow, and I’m sure the mostly white crowd of Occupy Wall Street would parrot that as well. But I think instead of reparations they should do eye for an eye. Let’s have Samuel Jackson turning on Bull Connor’s hoses.
Its called “Peaceful Protest” and its how societies change when they are broken. NO ONE would spend their time doing this if they thought/hoped they had a viable alternative.
VOTING OBVIOUSLY DOESN’T FIX THE SYSTEM!!!
Will the third day of rain and cold stop them? = usually.
THAT was a beautiful thing to see. Chris Hedges is an ex-seminary guy if I recall correctly. Too intelligent for dogmatic non-thinkers, often too religious for me.
Amusing how people run from the truth.
This guy stated he is a fan of Carl Marx. What ever else you want to say about Carl Marx his disciples have demonstrated beyond any reasonable shadow of doubt that Carl Marx knew less about economics than a hamster.
They killed people by the millions implementing his economic polices and turned nations with food surpluses into nations with starvation. Take a good look at North Korea.
The problem with handing all the under people the same pay check is you need to give somebody a loaded gun who will use it to go out and make them work because nothing you, the worker, can do will buy you more than the lowest butt dragging slacker on the job site so all your work force wants to do is get drunk and stay wasted. I base that on Russia. In most other locations the under people couldn’t get their hands on enough booze to get drunk.
Of course the party members normally do a lot better but many of the party elite in the Soviet Union actually grew enough food to feed themselves at there little country cottages that were taken from somebody less worthy.
The only people that thinks this stupidity works are people like our author, Hugo Chavez, Dallas, Congressional Democrats and the mad men running North Korea. You won’t find the Chinese pushing that BS. They tried it and paid the bloody price.
Now they are going for the gold and life for the masses has gotten a lot better.
Of course I’m sure some of you want to bring the joys of Maoest China to the US so all the sane people can do is to try and stop you not for your sakes but ours and those we love.
Do-ill==ever read Karl Marx or just the talking points version?
Blaming Marx for Communist Excesses is like blaming Jebus H. Christ for the child pedophilia passing for holy communion right now. Even if Karl Marx was wrong===he was never for what you are complaining about.
And for saying so, and probably thinking so as well, you deserve the : Shit for Brains Award.
Again–its amusing how people run from the truth.
Stoopid Hoomans.
“The only people that want this ..blah blah blah is..Dallas.. blah blah”
I never said I wanted this. Prove it or that makes you a liar.
Who is Carl Marx? Did you confuse him with Karl Marx?
If you can’t even spell the guy’s name right how the hell can you claim any credibility?
Marx was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century. His thinking influenced every nation that came after him. Even Bismark heeded him and instituted universal healthcare in Germany.
But then I guess we could blame Adam Smith for the European genocides against aboriginal populations.
DVORAK = PLEASE FIX THIS BLOG:
I’m trying to follow this issue and the count went from 28 to 29 and I cannot find the latest post. Where is it? Why make it so hard?
WHY NOT FIX THIS BLOG?
Wow, blog IS broken. How do I get to see ALL of the comments? Seems I can only see old ones or new ones.
Also…the world runs on Eastern time.
So, if you’ve got the time, I’ve got the Eastern money?
(joke)
I am curious as to what these protestors want.
Do they want to these companies they are protesting against to take their profits and pay an equal share to every person in America?
They should all be in Washington agitating the senators and representatives. They are the ones who ultimately caused this fiasco.
And if they don’t hurry up, Winter will end this demonstration for them.
Akio Morita, founder and head of Sony said it best:”Nobody needs more than one million dollars a year.”
Companies pay all these multi-million dollar salaries because the guys at the top don’t understand what they’re doing anymore and use a meaningless number to keep score.
Unfortunately it happens to be the number of dollars they can rip off of their customers, their employees, their investors, the tax man, the government…
Because its just a meaningless number, and its treated as such, it grows quasi-infinitely until it busts the bank, then everybody gets hurt except the very poor…
Akio Morita, founder and head of Sony said it best:”Nobody needs more than one million dollars a year.”
Reminds me of Bill Gates, “640K should be enough for anybody.”
If you force a company to reduce the salaries of it’s top management, profits will go down. History has shown this time and again.
And if profits go down, my, your, everybody’s 401K will take another major hit.
Hyph3n said it best — put the guys in jail who violated the law. Vote out the guys who made the laws easy to break and who paved the way to bad loan guarantees.
Oh, to answer you question of “What do these protesters want?
What they really want is for people to not be such dicks.
A little application of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as thee would have them do unto thee.” would go a long way to prevent revolution, but of course its not applied until after a Louis XVI or a Lenin or a Stalin or a Mao or a Pol Pot or a Kim Il Sung or …
Go read a history book. Its filled with people who said: “You will do this!” and people who said “That’s nuts, and nuts to you too!.”
We live in interesting times.
Any day now I keep expecting to read about another Tony Balony type cop who gets a little too carried away and somebody gets killed or, worse for the public purse, gets paralyzed for life.
I don’t think we’re going to see a bloody revolution like we’ve seen in the past. Where is all the wealth tied up at? — in a computer bank. You can’t storm a computer bank and throw the electrons in the street for the people to take and buy food with.
They are going to have to force our legislators to make the change.
Suuuure, you want to know. If you’ve been in a comma or doing an isolation experiment for the past month you have an excuse. Otherwise, you’re just playing ignorant.
The “let them eat cake” attitude of those who disagree with the OWS protests boggles the mind. That very hubris is the main focus of their discontent and of the majority of Americans.
Seriously, I am curious what they expect to accomplish by yelling at someone with all the money. Do they really expect these companies to change the way they do business on their own?
If you agree that is what is going to happen, you are in for a rude awakening.
It’s going to take the government to make the changes. They aren’t going to do it because a bunch of people are sitting out in the cold yelling at them.
These folks are right about the criminal band of Wall Street bankers, and the criminal band of politicians they own, but the solution of handing more power to the politicians is, well, laughable.
One thing would change everything – remove humanity from corporations. Corporations were created to be limited-liability legal entities to allow groups to invest and develop a company. It should stop there. Corporations are not people, and should never have been treated as such.
All corporations or just “for-profit” corporations?
If brains were made of dynamite you still couldn’t blow your own nose. Try reading smartalix’s comment again.
ANY corporation is designed to remove liability from shareholders and employees and place it solely on the corporation.
The Liebertarians never seem to quit with the garbage.
If brains were free, you would still offer to pay for them.
Charities are also designated as corporations, to remove the liability from the volunteers. They are incorporated just like any other corporation with officers and directors and a business plan.
The only difference is shareholders are not required — but a non-profit can sell shares of the corporation to raise money.
Are you willing to remove the personhood status from charities?
Yes! Remove the personhood from ALL corporations. Any real libertarian understands that corporations are creations and protectorates of the state. As such, they are subject to the whims of the state. They do not have rights like people do!
Shesh! Why is this so hard to understand?
spsffan — Freedom of Association is one of the tenets of a free society.
If 1,000,000 people decide to have someone else speak for them, what is illegal about that? Just because they are registered with a state as a corporation, does that make them any different?
All of the following are corporations. If we remove the ability for these corporations to speak on behalf of their members, are we doing the country a service or disservice?
http://charity.lovetoknow.com/List_of_Nonprofit_Organizations
This list is by no means complete, but it does give an idea.
FYI — I’m leaning in your direction but haven’t quite fallen that way yet.
All corporations.
If ANY corporation wants to participate in a political issue, they would need to have a majority of the corporate ownership (stockholders) vote to do such, whether they are charities or not. No group should have more rights than any one individual, and any group must have conscensus to act.
Not all corporations have shareholders — non-profits don’t.
How do you propose handling those?
And for those with shareholders, the stockholders do vote on the board members to speak on their behalf (mainly, it’s MAKE ME MONEY). Or are you suggesting they should have a separate vote anytime the actions of the corporation would be considered political (let’s assume for brevity that the definition of political is pre-defined).
More garbage from the regulars who post here. The video was enlightening, the comments anything but…
Hedges is great. A proper crank.
Proper diagnosis of the problems too. The separation of investment and deposit banks is the main problem. I don’t have any problem with the myriad any exotic financial stuff, but that risk shouldn’t be on the public’s dollar.
Privatization of profits and socialization of risks. This doesn’t have anything to do with Marx or anybody wanting to become communists. Please.
The dude had an awesome point about packaging ‘assets’ that you know would fail into funds and then the packagers betting against those funds.
The penalty for this type of behavior should be instant 10 years in a real jail with no parole, for every executive at the top of those companies.
Hedge funds and short selling should be illegal. Period.
LibertyLover says:
“If you force a company to reduce the salaries of it’s [sic] top management, profits will go down. History has shown this time and again.”
Name six, please.
Deowll says liberals want to bring Maoism to the US, but he is exaggerating. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a return to Eisenhower Republicanism, but even that’s way too left-wing for today’s conservatives.
Every company in every country in the USSR.
In the USSR there was only one company, the nation. OK, name your next five examples.
There were many MORE companies before the USSR took over. Notice how their profits dropped after being taken over by the government.
While I’m not an advocate of Marxism. I do wonder if there shouldn’t be limits on just how rich any one person can be. I mean, having tons of anything else, piled up in one’s backyard, would rightly label one a “hoarder”. But being paid billions of dollars, for doing squat, except signing one’s name to it. And squirreling it all away in tax exempt bank accounts, and holding corps, all over the world. Until one gets around to thinking it might be a generous act to let some less fortunate people have a tiny bit of it, back! Such greedy addition to amassing wealth, for no useful purpose, ISN’T also considered hoarding too? I think the CEOs and board members of too many US corporations are allowed to pay themselves far too obscenely high an amount in salaries, bonuses, and/or stock options. And while they’re busy looting and pillaging American enterprises into bankruptcy (that the taxpayers will bail out of). The workers all have to take pay cuts, and loss of medical and retirement benefits. If they get to keep their jobs at all! How is this concerned a sound and healthy economic system? When it only benefits the top 1% of the population?
The salaries and benefits of these high rollers wouldn’t be a problem if there was risk involved.
You hit it — bailouts. Why be careful if the government is going to save your ass?
This talk of taxing the rich and class warfare is all so myopic. THE POINT IS: the system is shifting money from the poor to the rich in a whole series of REGRESSIVE tax ploys fraudulently presented by the Pukes as the only way to create an environment for Jobs. ITS ALL A LIE!!!
On top of that, I don’t think anyone begrudges the CEO’s of manufacturing entities from making lots of bucks===they actually MAKE SOMETHING. They are productive. The salt in the wound these days is that the really Super Rich are all in finance: aka making money by moving money around, NOT producing anything on the LIE that they make the market efficient or liquid or whatever. Truth is, in the main, its all a skimming operation.
Skimming = taking money from the poor and shoveling it to the rich. AND THEN when this activity that had been illegal for 60 years is legalized under the LIE it was needed for business the whole system goes bankrupt after the corrupt fraudulent schemes played out their ponzi schemes.
And no one has gone to jail. Still no reform. Criminals back stealing more than they were before.
People really should at a MINIMUM read Marx. If you ever would, any claim of someone starting CLASS WARFARE would then be laughed out of town for being an uneducated clown.
Business and Labor/Capital and Labor are locked in class warfare by their very antagonistic zero sum game: its called the material dialectic. Marx in essence identified the crucial forces at work in our society and its prosperity. Figures everyone thinks he is a communist.
Nascar Race Car Drivers all.
Silly Hoomans.
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I have not checked in here for a while since I thought it was getting boring, but the last few posts are great quality so I guess I’ll add you back to my everyday bloglist. You deserve it my friend 🙂