A movement grows on Wall Street
The Wall Street Protests are catching on. This morning I heard Cokie Roberts say she’d seen protesters in Spokane, Washington over the weekend. Our Canadian newswire reported that a group calling itself “Occupy Toronto Market Exchange” is planning to march on Bay Street Oct. 15.
The AP reported that 700 protesters were arrested Saturday after they blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Our cartoonist, Marquil, pictures things this way today:
The Wall Street Journal reports the protesters are now camped out in a nearby park:
As anti-Wall Street protests spread from New York to other U.S. cities, the activists beginning their third week inside a Lower Manhattan park urged participants to dress up as “corporate zombies” on Monday.
Organizers told the Associated Press that they would hold an anti-police brutality protest on the steps of City Hall, as well as a rally in support of union workers outside Sotheby’s auction house on the Upper East Side.
The WSJ reports a website occupytogether.org has been instrumental in the “organic” growth of the movement.
In New York, the protesters initially set out to occupy Wall Street but were rebuffed by police. Instead, the group set up in a nearby park, keeping the “Occupy Wall Street” moniker. The spread to other cities appears largely organic—the protests don’t have a central organizer—and the idea came from a Canadian magazine and grew on social media websites.
The site is in the midst of a major reorganization right now, it says, because the number of groups and “occupations” across the country is growing “exponentially.” They’ve got a Facebook page, too of course.In new York, “occupy” is listing groups in a mix of cities: Albany, Rochester, Binghamton, Ithaca and Utica.
Among the mostly young protesters’ grievances:
bank executives received “exorbitant” bonuses not long after receiving taxpayer bailouts and companies have “poisoned the food supply through negligence” and “continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate better pay and safer working conditions.”
What do you think? Are you with them? Or…?
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No, I’m with these guys:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html
They’re winners!
You never want to start a movement in October. Mother nature will break this one up soon! I like it when the capitalists like Michael Moore get down there with them and shout at the other capitalists.
Also, this should be good for the capitalists that are selling their wares on the streets down there. It is a small “stimulus” program for the street vendors.
When some entrepreneur starts making and selling guillotines, the bankers won’t be laughing.
Once the heads start rolling, it will provide an opportunity for Adirondackers who make pack baskets to sell their product to catch the heads.
Paul said: “You never want to start a movement in October.”
You may not want to, Paul, but some Russians did back in 1917, and they won pretty handily: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
Happened in the former East Germany, too, though, like these Wall Street protests, it started in September: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_revolution_(German)
And late fall weather didn’t bother the Czechs and Slovaks much, either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution
oa, bringing facts to a discussion is like bringing a (hypothetical) gun to a (hypothetical) knife fight.
The uprisings in the Middle-East are born of such and similar dissatisfactions. There are, in the world, a LOT of underserved, and undernourished folks. People get grumpy if you don’t feed them. People get bored if they don’t have work. People get angry if they don’t see a path out of it. And now it comes to our door step. High unemployment, government diddling, and huge bonuses for the already rich…where are we going? Will heads roll?
There’s a part of me that hope so.
Thank you for covering this Martha. You are the first local media outlet to cover this significant movement in any way. Just another reason NCPR is such an important part of our lives.
oa, I agree we will see what type of perseverance we have here.
“Recently fired Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker is walking away with more than $13 million in cash and stock as shareholders stew over a rocky reign that saw the technology company’s market value plunge by nearly $40 billion in just 11 months.
The parting package spelled out Thursday in a regulatory filing wasn’t surprising. Most major companies guarantee generous payments to ousted executives as long as they aren’t dumped for unethical or criminal conduct.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/recently-fired-hp-ceo-departs-13m-14636978
General Electric added $25 billion to its bottom line by not funding worker pensions for over a decade while at the same time slashing over 30,000 jobs and collecting $billions in tax benefits from the government and $billions in profits all while not paying corporate taxes.
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12022/ges_bogus_reason_for_ending_its_pension_plan/
Sen. Betty Little … I don’t think I have to say any more.
http://poststar.com/news/local/little-state-agencies-holding-up-mandate-reform/article_d30651b2-ed52-11e0-a2f3-001cc4c002e0.html
And major media outlets don’t seem to understand why this is happening.
Who can blame them? Yesterday on Onpoint it was quoted that there are more young people with bachelor degrees working as servers and bartenders than there are engineering students.
At some point there will be a serious discussion on the role of the corporation in our society. Our forefathers were as concerned about the excesses of the East India Company as they were about King George. In the early days of the Republic corporations served quasi public purposes such as building a canal or toll road. There is no natural right to form a corporation. One reform might be to require corporations to serve the public good in some way. In the past that was a requirement for a broadcasting license. Maybe it should be brought back.
Corporations became too powerful the moment they were granted the status of individuals ala the Supreme Court ruling. A good first step toward curtailing their power would be reversing this decision.
What is it that the protesters want exactly?
Companies were losing billions of dollars on Wall Street yesterday that should make them happy. They will probably have another bad day today.
If we lose our millionaires and billionaires than how are we going to balance the budget?
“”Recently fired Hewlett-Packard CEO Leo Apotheker is walking away with more than $13 million in cash and stock as shareholders stew over a rocky reign that saw the technology company’s market value plunge by nearly $40 billion in just 11 months.””
Knuck, the shareholders should not have given him this deal if they didn’t like it.
“Corporations became too powerful the moment they were granted the status of individuals ala the Supreme Court ruling.”
Clapton, the supreme court didn’t give them this “power” they already had it.
Major media tends to be a little clueless because many of them are millionaires too.
What’s the major morning news today? The stupid Michael Jackson trial. Like I’m supposed to care? Or I should be concerned about the opinions of Hank Williams Jr.? Another millionaire who isn’t a tenth of what his father was.
Paul: “the shareholders should not have given him this deal if they didn’t like it.”
Yeah, right.
Here’s how the executive compensation package scam works: companies hire executive compensation consultants. The consultants, knowing which side their bread is buttered on, recommend immense salaries, frequently basing them on industry averages. No company wants to say publicly that they are below average, so the average keeps going up and up and up. (It’s the Lake Woebegone effect, where all the CEOs are above average.)
Boards of Trustees, composed of the CEOs of other companies, approve the compensation package, and recommend its adoption by the shareholders, who mostly vote in lock step.
I have voted against every compensation package I have ever received a proxy on, but I might as well not have bothered… individual stockholders smaller than Warren Buffett are powerless.
This whole game is run by the one-percenters for the one-percenters, who have gotten better and better at locking the rest of us out of all of the decision making process (and that includes politics).
We’re all just along for the ride, sucking up the TV and thinking what we’re told to think.
On October 4th Morning Edition, Margo Adler followed the corporate media lead by describing the protestors as “Happy rainbow” hippies etc. If anyone cares to look at a video of the more than 700 people arrested on the Brooklyn bridge (one of the largest mass arrests of peacefully assembled people in US history) they looked like anything but unwashed hippies.
Margo Adler said the protestors “Want to tax millionaires”,, but the truth is corporations pay a fraction of the federal taxes that citizens do and get tax payer bailouts of private corporations,with out reforms or arrests. She also said the protests started spontaneously like the tea party. This is also wrong, the tea baggers arose from piles of corporate money and corporate media support. It is not a party, but is treated like one.
Occupy Wall Street is not a party, but a peoples uprising, and does not deserve to be degraded by the likes of Margo Adler and NPR.
“and recommend its adoption by the shareholders, who mostly vote in lock step.”
Like I said they should not have approved it if they didn’t like it.
“I have voted against every compensation package I have ever received a proxy on, but I might as well not have bothered… individual stockholders smaller than Warren Buffett are powerless.”
Than vote with your wallet. Sell your stock if you are not happy with how you are being treated. If enough people did that you would eventually get the result you are looking for. Communicate with other stockholders. Or you can stand in the street and wave a sign and be ignored.
I don’t think the Occupy Wall Street crowd sees this strictly as a money issue, but the undue influence in our society of corporations; that our democracy has been harmed by the power they wield. Two individuals interviewed on NPR yesterday were very clear that they personally, at least, did not see this as anti-capitalist.
BTW, a Supreme Court ruling in the 19th century has been interpreted as treating corporations as natural persons, which of course they are not. There is no natural right to form a corporation, they are created and given legal standing through the state and federal governments and their respective laws.
“I don’t think the Occupy Wall Street crowd sees this strictly as a money issue, but the undue influence in our society of corporations; that our democracy has been harmed by the power they wield. Two individuals interviewed on NPR yesterday were very clear that they personally, at least, did not see this as anti-capitalist.”
I agree. What is it that they want? Why are they on Wall Street instead of on the mall in DC? The people who make the decisions that can change these things are in Washington not NYC. Go tell their elected officials to stop being influenced.
Paul,
Here is the Supreme Court ruling I’m referring to:
“In 1886, . . . in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a private corporation is a person and entitled to the legal rights and protections the Constitutions affords to any person. Because the Constitution makes no mention of corporations, it is a fairly clear case of the Court’s taking it upon itself to rewrite the Constitution.
Far more remarkable, however, is that the doctrine of corporate personhood, which subsequently became a cornerstone of corporate law, was introduced into this 1886 decision without argument. According to the official case record, Supreme Court Justice Morrison Remick Waite simply pronounced before the beginning of arguement in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that
The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”
The court reporter duly entered into the summary record of the Court’s findings that
The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
“Than vote with your wallet. Sell your stock if you are not happy with how you are being treated. If enough people did that you would eventually get the result you are looking for. Communicate with other stockholders. Or you can stand in the street and wave a sign and be ignored.”
Paul, you’re just full of useful advice! I’m sure that selling my stock will send a message loud and clear to the CEO and the board, and leave them shaking in their boots! “Oh no, Walker’s sold his shares. I’d better take a cut in salary right away!”
And do you have some good advice on how to contact the other shareholders? And how much should I spend on the mailing campaign?
FYI, shareholders routinely do try this sort of thing (those with way more money in the game than I have). You see their pathetic efforts in almost a third of all proxy notices. The Board always recommends a “no” vote, and that, my friend, is that.
Any other helpful advice on how to do something about obscene executive compensation packages, Paul? Something that might have a prayer of succeeding?
Based on some of the one on one interviews I have seen most of the protestors don’t know why they are there. One thing seems common among them though. They don’t feel that they have enough money and think it only fair that they be given some by those who have some.
Walker, my advice is sound. Don’t support a company that you are not satisfied with. If these shareholders you describe are so unhappy with things why did they buy the stock in the first place? You make them sound like some kind of prisoner that can’t escape. If they don’t “escape” than I can only assume that they have their money there because they think they can make a profit. If they think that way that they are not as dissatisfied with the management as you describe. Tell me why would you not sell if the company is making poor decisions in your judgment, just because you own a small portion of the company? Makes no sense to me.
“Any other helpful advice on how to do something about obscene executive compensation packages, Paul? Something that might have a prayer of succeeding?”
Let me try again. Buy companies that you think have fair compensation packages. There are plenty. Let someone else own the others and lose their money as you predict.
“Buy companies that you think have fair compensation packages.”
Fair to whom? Given that CEO compensation has risen from 50 times that of the average worker salary in the 1940s and ’50s to 400-500 times average worker salary today, what is fair for the shareholder would necessarily be unfair to the CEO.
Paul, you make it sound as if this is a non-issue. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_compensation#United_States and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_cost#Agency_costs_in_corporate_finance
This is not a trivial problem.
Essentially, what we have is a bubble in CEO pay in a marketplace that is rigged to avoid its deflation. The last time this happened was 1929, and the pay bubble burst because there was no taxpayer bailout.
Tell you what– google “executive compensation” and see how many articles you can find that say our present levels of executive compensation are right where they ought to be.
Those looking for more in-depth coverage on this topic might be interested in checking out CBC’s news events program “The Current” for Tuesday morning.
They spent a half hour on the Wall Street Protests with interviews from John Samuelsen, President of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, and Nathan Schneider (editor of a website called “Waging Non Violence”). Schneider has covered the Wall Street protests since the beginning.
That audio and related links can be found here.
A bit more on the executive compensation thread…
The Crash of a few years back proved that the heads of some of the biggest financial companies in the country were absolutely INCOMPETENT. Anyone else who did such a bad job would have been fired and perhaps even arrested. Still, many of them are still employed and even those who left received millions in compensation that by all rights should be in the hands of the shareholders.
And when a company declares bankruptcy the executives get MORE MONEY!!! under the theory that you have to pay the people who know the most about the business more in order to get them to stick around, as if somebody else was going to hire them.
Finally, about shareholder attempts to reign in executive compensation, I don’t have the exact statistic at my fingertips but something like 80% of ALL stocks, bonds and mutual funds are owned by the top 1%.
Oh, there’s a lot more to this story– take the “‘Retirement Heist’: How Firms Trimmed Pensions to fatten CEO pay.” NPR did a piece on it recently at http://m.npr.org/news/Books/140344871
And if you aren’t fed up yet, try http://www.jamesakaplan.com/wordpress/2011/06/20/control-fraud-looting-and-corporate-culture/
Hats off to the protestors.
Of course the protests aren’t just about executive compensation. Young people have seen the results of many years of unrestrained capitalism and deregulation run amok. They see how GREED and GLUTTONY have pervaded our economic system so their grievances are many.
The news media seem to be coalescing around the theme “the protesters don’t have a clear message.” So let me try to paint the picture.
College can cost $30,000, $40,000 or more per year while colleges claim it is a 4 year degree even though huge percentages of students take 5 years or more to get the degree, at the same time that colleges sit on $billions in endowments. Then students graduate to find that their degree is watered down and not as valuable as claimed, and no jobs. And I’m not even talking about for-profit colleges.
Large corporations are sitting on $TRILLIONS in cash while ordinary people suffer from lack of work.
Corporations control Congress through a combination of direct donations to individual politicians, massive armies of lobbyists, PACs, superPACs, and that is just the legal stuff.
Corporations and extremely wealthy individuals fund think tanks and scientific studies that are not meant to shed light but to spread the fog of confusion over nearly any subject you care to think about, cigarettes and cancer, PCBs, environmental issues, GMO foods, pesticides, food borne illness…
Corporations and very wealthy individuals are manipulating the political system and even the judicial system through the old golf game ploy, or a weekedn on the yacht, or a stay at their ADK Great Camp, and providing cash to politician and judges wives’ businesses, pet projects and charities. Just for instance: http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/10/democrats-call-investigation-clarence-thomas
Corporations control the way you think and see the world through their ability to manipulate the media, directly and indirectly, through advertising, and through sheer repetition — think about the cozy relationship between developers/builders, real estate, and banks all working together to convince the American public that they need bigger and more expensive homes for “resale value.”
I’m not even going to get into the relationship of crackpot right-wing religious zealots and the corporate/political establishment.
So why is it that the protesters can’t articulate how their generation is getting screwed by the baby boomers in a 5 second sound-bite?
“This is not a trivial problem.” Walker, don’t get me wrong it is an issue for many companies. One way to change this is for folks start to steer clear of these firms. Just like with socially conscious investing the share holders can effect change. Put your money where your mouth is. It sounds like you own stock in companies that you are unhappy with, dump it. Invest in companies that use “pay for performance” at all levels of the organization. HP should have done this, bonuses should only come when the stock is up.
The protests are becoming a new tourist attraction for NYC. Like I said it also could have positive economic impact. The NPR story this morning had a bit about them deciding how to buy 120 sleeping bags. One guy did suggest they make them but it sounds like they will purchase them from the capitalists zombies!
Paul, you’re so enamored with markets that you assume that there is a market-based approach to everything. Well we aren’t living in Adam Smith’s world any more. Remember Enron? Familiar with the concept of asymmetrical information?
And in my particular case, I no longer own individual stocks– only the truly wealthy can afford the risk associated with managing an individual portfolio. And yet “Big U.S. mutual-fund companies are prime enablers of extravagant salaries for corporate CEOs” ( http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fund-firms-have-stoked-runaway-ceo-pay-report )
“The amount of shareholder wealth that has been transferred from shareholders to CEOs has doubled in the past 10 years,” said Richard Ferlauto, director of investment and benefit policy at AFSCME. And although Vanguard (my fund of choice) is better than most in this regard, “We think that no mutual fund has actually met the gold standard yet in terms of aggressively rooting out pay that’s not deserved.”
Face it, Paul, a lot of people ARE trying to do something about this, and it isn’t working. The best approach is via the tax code, but since Congress is in the pockets of the 1%, that approach is shut down tight.
Look, this isn’t about capitalism vs. something else. It’s about the greed that is destroying this country.
“The news media seem to be coalescing around the theme “the protesters don’t have a clear message.” Yes, Knuck, and they’re fond of pointing out the hippyish aspects of those gathered. As if, until some well-groomed suits get involved, it’s all just BS. Which could well turn out to be the case, but it doesn’t for a minute mean that there aren’t a lot of folks out here who are fuming over the same abuses that the “hippies” are gnashing their teeth over. Greed is NOT good, especially when it subverts democracy.
“And in my particular case, I no longer own individual stocks– only the truly wealthy can afford the risk associated with managing an individual portfolio.”
This is complete baloney. There are far more small portfolio investors now than we have ever had. This is partly due to online trading that has eliminated the middle man. Many members of my immediate family and many friends that I have manage their own portfolio (shrinking these days!) and none of us are anything close to “truly wealthy”. I do it with a broker but I make all the picks (sometimes bad!). The same goes for many of the people I work with. This comment above is just simply false.
“at the same time that colleges sit on $billions in endowments.”. This was an interesting comment. Knuck, you are starting to sound as bit like Ronald Reagan attacking even higher educational institutions. Is anyone innocent?
“Paul, you’re so enamored with markets that you assume that there is a market-based approach to everything.”
Just being realistic. The markets that you appear to be so appalled by are the foundation on top of which our economy sits. I don’t know if you have noticed lately but folks are not doing well economically that is mainly because the capital markets are in turmoil. You may not like the markets but without them all the cards fall to the floor.
Gee, Paul, trouble in the economy? I hadn’t heard.
You don’t suppose the trouble in the economy is BECAUSE the foundation upon which it sits IS the financial market, the stability of which was ruined by deregulation and greedy, manipulative, and exceedingly clever financial institutions do you? Perhaps if you’d look around, you’d see that it is precisely BECAUSE the markets have been manipulated for the benefit of a tiny slice of the population that things are presently so utterly out of whack.
Markets work well only when they are well regulated for the benefit of all, when buyers and sellers have equal access to information, precisely what was lacking in the recent housing bubble, when almost no one understood the true risk in the slice and dice mortgage portfolios that fed the bubble.
Walker, actually Adam Smith warned that unrestrained capitalism would be a danger. He told us that a free market needed restraint or it would run amok. Once again Adam Smith is proven correct.
These protests are a result of the growing inequality in our country that began with Reagan’s insulting trickle down economics. It has taken a generation of decline before the 99% of the population in the new underclass, finally has noticed. Perhaps now, this huge underclass won’t allow itself to be manipulated and divided by the oligarchs use of “social issues” and their absurd allegations of class warfare.