I went to visit the Occupy Wall street protesters here in New York City. I went three times and stayed several hours. I left concerned, inspired and deeply reflective.
I was concerned because their were so many police officers in Riot gear. One evening while I was there the protesters began to march toward the banks and the New York Stock Exchange. They were prevented from getting to close by horses and barricades. The police also moved big buses near the protesters to round every one up if any thing got out of hand. Although the situation got very intense and very loud, no one got arrested and no one was pepper spread.
Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of every one there is infectious. Every one was in a good mood but their energy and commitment was really on display. The protesters played drums, sang songs and chanted many slogan’s such as “WE ARE THE 99%”.
Many of the Occupiers, just by their insistence on not moving and staying in the Wall Street area have shown many of us how serious they really are. And so now the Occupy Movement has spread across the country to Atlanta, Los Angeles, Albany, Portland, San Francisco, Philadelpia and Chicago to name a few. This infectious spirit has caught on. Many people around the world have caught on too. So recently there have been Occupy London and Occupy Amsterdam.
But what does the Occupy Wall Street have to do with our current Foreclosure Crisis? In a word: Everything. All one has to do is look at many signs on display. “Arrest the bankers”, “Kill the weed of corporate greed”, “Too big to fail is too big to allow”, “Tax Millionaires”. These signs have a common theme that runs through them all. A general idea that the protesters want to affect is greater income equality and income limitations as well as political favoritism for the big shots, the 1% percent, of wall street.
The foreclosure crisis did not begin in 2008 when the bubble burst. The foreclosure crisis began when the Wall Street banks designed financial products that were designed to lend more money to more people. The more people that the banks lend money to the more money they made. Mortgages products were designed to cast a wide net and soon any one could get a mortgage. These mortgages were subsequently packaged as security instruments, that received AAA rating, and later sold to large investors as good investments. And for a while every one made money, lots of money. Every one was happy.
But there were flaws all the back to the beginning of the process. The underlining investment that these security instruments were based on, the home mortgages, were weak and far from AAA. As an example low credit requirements and little to no down payments. So, once the mortgages began to fail in large numbers, the investors who invested in the mortgages began to loose money. Who sold the mortgages that failed? Well, every one was in the game, all the major banks: “Wall Street”. Who were these investors that brought the Security Instruments that later failed? Here again every one was in the game, but not just the banks, but also insurance companies, hedge and private equity funds, wealthy individuals, etc. The common man was in on the game too, with their pension funds from their employer and mutual funds in there investment portfolio. And the net that was cast was wide ranging: from Green land to Ireland to Spain, every one wanted a piece of the mortgage pie.
But it all came crumbling down. Millions of homes have been sold via foreclosure sales and many more are on the way.
Wall Street firms were at the center of the implosion. As buyers, as sellers, as marketers of financial products that spanned the world and imploded the world over. So Occupy Wall Street is timely and direct result of the foreclosure crisis.
Go ahead read the signs they are all saying the same thing.
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