Panic of the Plutocrats | Hacker News Reader

Panic of the Plutocrats

nytimes.com

275 pointsdiogenescynic129 comments

I've noticed that wall street is taking a very clever tactic in what is clearly a critical PR battle - they are trying to associate anger against wall street with anger against wealth creators in general.

It's a great tactic, because Americans generally are not hostile toward very wealthy individuals when they perceive these individuals as wealth creators - in fact, they actually admire these people [1]. Yes, most support progressive taxation and would support higher taxes for the rich (even wealth creators whose activities we want to support), but they'd oppose a "soak the rich" kind of class warfare, on practical and moral grounds.

No surprise, then, that people who profited, first from risky and economically worthless activities [2], and next from a massive taxpayer supported bailout, would want to get real close to the founders of tech companies in silicon valley and hope that nobody notices the difference.

I'm not surprised that the movement against "wall street" is incoherent right now. There are so many angles, so many different opinions. You have the anarchists who protest globalization in general, but you also have Tim O'Reilly stating that he thinks wall street bankers got away with a crime [3] (and kept the money too).

As someone in high tech, the most important thing to me is to make sure that financial "engineers" don't get to associate themselves with the wealth creation of real engineers and other people who are wealthy because they created wealth.

[1] An interesting article about this in the nytimes titled "How we value the super rich" talks ab it about the mentality behind this distinction...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/weekinreview/28stone.html

[2] For a pretty comprehensive version of the argument that much of investment banking is useless, check out a New Yorker article "what good is wall street"...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_...

[3] https://plus.google.com/107033731246200681024/posts/Sy8Z2uWy...

Well stated ... and you really have to be careful defining wealth creation. I view most of Wall Street's activities as sucking money out of the wealth creation stream as if flows by. (I won't even claim that the investment banks are the only ones stealing from other's hard work ... where is the interest on my savings account? It was 5.25 percent when I was younger).

And before I get completely flayed by the big company supporters, I'll also state that I don't have a problem with money lenders and brokers making a living ... but what we're watching today is flat-out usury.

"where is the interest on my savings account? It was 5.25 percent when I was younger."

It's very related to the interest rate set by the Fed, which is very low right now.

That may be true right now, but it won't be going back up to rates like that until there's a severe cash shortage. Now that banks have accustomed us to receiving a pittance on our nest-eggs, they'll keep the spread as profit before increasing interest rates.

Well said. I mean the dichotomy couldn't be more starkly illustrated than with Steve Job's death.

I was at the Apple Store in Chicago yesterday and the glass wall was covered in sticky notes and there were flowers and apples on the sidewalk in front of the store. Tourists were gathered around to take pictures of the impromptu memorial, for a man who was worth about $7 billion when he died. These same people wouldn't piss on Lloyd Blankfein to save his life, even though he is worth less than $0.5 billion.

Wall St. is responsible for raising capital for companies representing a huge portion of the American economy. Outside of Silicon Valley, people don't do VC. Instead they go to Wall St.

I'm not going to defend rampant mortgage speculation and public bailouts. But be careful at the venom you heap on Wall St. We will miss it when it's gone.

I don't think anyone is saying banks shouldn't loan money to new and growing businesses, it'd just be nice if they didn't crash the entire economy at the same time.

Sure, Wall Street serves a purpose in allocating capital. So do personal injury lawyers. That's not why people are mad at them. Read the New York Times. The outrage is largely directed at activities that don't pass the "smell test." Traders losing billion dollar bets with pension fund money, private equity firms loading up healthy companies with debt than cashing out, the insidious relationship between Wall Street and the Treasury/Fed. If Wall Street stuck to underwriting IPOs and providing business loans and other unobjectionable activities, it wouldn't raise peoples' ire. But if they stuck to unobjectionable activities, their revenues would also be cut by more than half and profits by even more than that.

An interesting statistic is that Google's is more profitable than Goldman Sachs by almost every metric. They have higher revenues per employee, higher profits per employee, higher profits per unit of equity, etc. Nobody is demonstrating in Amphitheatre Parkway about how Google is ruining the country. Because people are smarter than you give them credit for.

Yes, absolutely. It's not just that they are making high risk bets for clients who are advised of the risk. It's that they are taking "investments" that have zero percent chance of payout, such as selling million dollar McMansions to unemployed high school drop outs, and scheming the system to package them as AAA securities by creating bogus insurance schemes that have no chance of being paid out, then ensuring their profit by investing the money in "donations" to political candidates. The idea that this is investing in productive economic activity or that these are investments at all is a fallacy. It's fraud.

I think the issue here is not that Wall St. should be closed down but rather that it should be better regulated, and when in doubt, regulations should air on the cautious side. No one has a problem with success, even if they don't make a dime from it. The issue here is when people who never shared in the profit, not even in the form of taxes, pick up the bill for all the losses ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatizing_profits_and_sociali... ).

Absolutely a fair point - and another big part of why they "occupy wall street" movement doesn't speak with one voice.

Did you check out the new yorker article I mentioned about ("what good is wall street"). Even an article like this, which takes a very dim view of wall street, notes the vital role that banking (and, yes, wall street itself) plays in a modern economy. "Moving money from where it is to where it is needed", is unbelievably important and good work, even if it is transactional in nature. A system that can get money from savings accounts and turn it into capital for businesses is spectacular.

The problem (well, according to the article) is that this core, economically useful activity is not the main function of walk street anymore (one academic cited in the article estimates that if the financial sector were limited to the useful activities, it would be one-third to one-half of its current size).

I would point you to this post by James Kwak: http://baselinescenario.com/2011/10/09/wall-street-and-silic...

Venture capital has been around for centuries, and in its modern form, since about the 1950s. Very little of it comes from Wall Street.

Well stated. Let's be honest, the sytems is certainly rigged. The banking sector and the government are absolutely destructive as they exist. I'd like to know who is claiming that "closing tax loopholes" and "endorsing the Volker rule" is socialist. Oh, it was a "number of financial barrons". Right.The way Krugman pulls "facts" and "stats" from his ass is unreal. This dude would get kicked out of college writing crap like this.

Why do we assume that "rich people" are all wall street people? Does everyone that makes over $200K a year work on Wall Street? I, frankly, am offended that people like my neighbor (who owns a local chain of muffler shops, and works his ass off) is representative of a Wall Street "financial barrron". Sure, he makes probably a few hundred K a year, but did he earn it? Hell yes he earned it. The comparison is obsurd.

The way people like Krugman use one unrelated issue to argue for another...is offensive. Elizabeth Warren is not trying to punish Wall Street, she is trying to punish the rich. There is a big difference. Krugman, you sir are a useful idiot.

I'm not an american, I have to say that I'm surprised that paying taxes is being punished over there. In that case, the poor/middle-class over there are taking quite a punishment; if I'm to listen to Warren Buffet ( http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ec... ).

Elizabeth Warren's point is simple, if you don't want to pay taxes, then don't expect any of the services that are paid for by those taxes. Plain and simple, otherwise you end up with a society that has extremely sharp inequalities and then you will really know what "class warfare" is. I think the point here is simple, buy your nice house and drive your nice car et al, but please save a little for the next guy.

The problem is in the definitions of "a little" and "the next guy". When "a little" turns out to be several thousands of dollars per person (when divided evenly, which it's not in a progressive tax system) and "the next guy" is every flunkie who took out a mortgage he couldn't afford, Solyndra and, indeed Wall Street firms -- then it's, if not extreme or class warfare, then intellectually dishonest to talk about raising taxes as if it's for roads, education and police.

"a little" here should be relative, if I have a billion, a few hundred million is a little.

The "next guy" here implies anyone who needs it more than you. Be it that inner city school child, or old man with cancer who has to rob a bank in order to get treatment ( http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/man-robs-bank-medical-ca... ) or even the next entrepreneur who will need roads, educated workers and security in order to build his business.

On a different note, I must say that I blame more the system that made it possible to give people mortgages who can't pay. Even more, I blame a system that demolishes houses ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124148169574985359.html ) instead of pricing them better. As a bonus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_lending

> The "next guy" here implies anyone who needs it more than you.

Yes, but you only need open a single newspaper to learn that inner city children and old men with cancer are NOT the recipients of the money you're being asked to fork over. So framing tax increases in terms of those worthy causes is essentially fraud.

> On a different note, I must say that I blame more the system that made it possible to give people mortgages who can't pay.

Sure. But it's the exact same system that asks for your tax money to clean up its mess.

I think budgets exist to solve that problem. When money comes from the people, it must go back to the people. But its seldom done that way.

In case of the US it went too over board. With tax payers money being used to supposedly bail out large corporation and banks. Instead that money went into paying Jets, paying bonuses and insane severance packages to executives.

>Sure. But it's the exact same system that asks for your tax money to clean up its mess.

This makes the system even worse! It's like a cancer, and if you look closely, the people who benefited the most are the ones who created the mess. Not, what I'd call, biggest victims who lost their jobs because of the mess and ended up not affording what they could afford before. I'm not sure the mess was cleaned up either, I think it was whitewashed.

On the issue of where taxes go, instead of the rich refusing to be taxed to fund wars and give bailouts, why not insist on policy change and frugality to ensure that taxes are utilized properly and efficiently. Much as it will never be perfect, it can be close to perfect if with the same vigor that people fight taxes, they would fight for better utilization of the taxes.

I agree. I always hear proponents talk as if roads, police, education and utilities were a large part of the budget, when that is demonstrably untrue. It's an easy target for people that refuse to make tough decisions on the real spending problems.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/30-yea...

Yes, I agree very much with your insightful analysis. I'll add that the PR firms of the caliber they hire work out the positions in focus groups and through polling so they know in advance of a campaign what sort of propaganda approach works. Through working with industrial psychologists on staff they also know the most effective ways to present their position. It's a very professional and evidence based approach to swaying public opinion to the side of your clients.

While your comment is a great piece of rhetoric, I have to point out that nobody in their right mind would confuse a startup engineer with a financial quant. The quant has a much better understanding of statistics and probability, something you might not want in the startup engineer, who works in an industry where 99% of their work crashes and burns in obscurity. "Wealth creation" is a misnomer; wealth destruction would be more accurate for their efforts.

Fundamentally, the banks' role in the subprime crisis was to remove the incentive for lenders to do their due diligence before offering mortgages to people. There was a whole chain of "just take the money" - from the janitor buying a mansion, to the lender transferring the loan, to the banks packaging the loans into derivatives, to ratings agencies rubber-stamping AAAs.

At every level, money was offered, and money was taken. This is what this much-maligned 1% has done, in their own eyes. I believe this is no different from what happens to the 1% in the Valley. Witness the recent spate of startups cashing out. People on HN rose to defend (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3089634) this behavior. "The VCs offered money, founders have no reason not to take it", seems to be the general consensus. Pot, kettle, black?

I work at a startup myself. I believe things like Twitter and Reddit et al., while unprofitable, still contribute to human wealth in the sense of changing society and fostering communication. But I don't believe this sort of thing gives us the right to cast stones at the financial industry, whether or not they want to call themselves engineers.

We wouldn't exist without them.

(99%s and 1%s intentionally hyperbolic, just like the protest.)

The big difference between startup risk and financial industry risk is that when 99% of startups fail, the losses are contained to those who took the risk. When the banking system fails, the losses are systemic and uncontained and affect people all over the country and world.

I'd also debate your point that the average quant understands statistics and probability much better than startup founders. The former have created a system where the expected payoff is negatively asymmetric, the latter a system where the expected payoff is positively asymmetric. Which world do you want to live in?

And do I even need to mention how quants' recent attempt to use Gaussian statistics to model a non-Gaussian world became one of the primary causes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?

Yes there are smart, savy quants like Paul Wilmott & Co. whose intellectual integrity is impeccable. But so far they've been the exception, not the rule.

I agree with all of your points. I just dislike the knee-jerk reaction to "financial engineering", as though it's a total fraud.

For somebody who is watching this from outside the US. This seems to be a very different kind of protests to me. These protests don't have the same flavor of the Middle east spring. Or even that took place in my country(India, against corruption), which had a very massive Middle class backing.

More precisely, protests in Middle east and India were driven by a sense of desperation and last resort of helplessness. Protests in the US seem to be driven by frustration. There is a very evident thing that is emerging out of this protests. Lack of urgency and co operation from all segments of American society. By reading articles on internet what I see is, a very large section of the American society is still in two minds about how to go about it. This isn't a great sign for any revolution.

Besides Americans don't face the same problems as the developing nations. There is genuine sense of urgency and desire among youth in developing nations to do some thing big and change their lives. They see macro changes in government policy as a way to achieve that. They feel such way because for decades they have been starved off opportunities, growth, money and development. There fore they see a genuine urgency in fighting for what they need right now.

America doesn't have those kind of problems. You've had honeymoon period for decades now. You've had fastest developing Urban cities. Clean roads, great infrastructure. Values for capitalism inculcated in your culture. You've had the money and muscle power to twist any foreign government to do what you want. You gone to war and with little resistance achieved what you want.

The problem seems to have started recently, after excessive spending on wars. Employment problems due emergence of China and India on world scene. Mess in the financial system due lack of regulations.

You still don't have that magnitude of pain nor desperation to go to a tipping point to drive a full scale revolution. The American ego that its invincible as a nation is still carried by a lot of people. Although there is hardly any nation on earth today whose glory has remained for ever.

The shrill tone in American politics has always irritated me. Be it economic policy or going to war, it seems terribly easy to choke off a sensible argument by calling it 'unamerican'. Maybe controversy and argument should be resuscitated as American values... Clearly having had a sensible argument over, say, the Irak war, no matter the outcome, would not seem so ridiculous now. The way I remember it, this was pretty much impossible in the media.

It's really the height of irony.

If there's one guiding principle that Americans should believe in, it's that we're all Americans, and that America is all of us. There's really nothing more un-American than calling someone who lives here un-American.

But of course ya can't say that.

Very good point. If the majority of Americans advocate for something "un-American", then you really need to think what's what. That's the revolution Wall St is trying to prevent.

The movement seems situated somewhere between the Bonus Army, which had a clear and attainable goal, and the Hippie Movement which was far more diverse.

The 60's counterculture still managed to have a huge cultural impact. Refusing to take part in a system which is apparently working against your interests is a necessary step one, even if you don't know what step two is.

Perhaps, but sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty, right?

I like Krugman, but a Krugman editorial is the epitome of the sort of topic HN should avoid, imho.

And I don't like Krugman, but if I wanted Krugman-bashing, I'd go read _Best of the Web Today_, so I'll refrain from any name-calling and just agree with you. :P

1000 upvotes. Let's keep both the regular NYT and WSJ opinion page writers off HN. The regular columnists provide zero signal as you can predict their positions on any issue (does anyone think Krugman will counterintuitively oppose OWS? Or that James Taranto will support it?)

These editorials carry zero information in the Shannon sense.

There is a lot more information in an editorial than a directional vote.

The substance -- not the source -- is what should be considered in every encounter with an idea.

There are too many ideas to consider them all. Source is a valid filter.

I'm in favor of Shannon based assessments of information. But you've assumed that the only information that could be carried is whether or not the author agrees with OWS. In addition to that (predictable / null) information, he also puts forward a theory on how WS reacts to criticism:

In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized

He may or may not be right, but either way it's a valid viewpoint, and one I find interesting. IMO, that's where the real signal is in this piece.

Yeah you could've seen Krugman's article coming from a mile away. Nothing surprising, really.

  > These editorials carry zero information in the Shannon sense.

Hyperbole much?

I think I disagree because I'm more interested in what some of the more inbiased Hacker News'opinions are. For example, I very much enjoyed geebee's comment and insight and it is one I don't think I would have gleened from the NYT Comment section or other source.

Why not say why you think Krugman's articles in particular should not appear on HN?

I want to see this kind of article on HN because it's hard to find a high-level discussion of these issues elsewhere.

You've touched on a need I've often felt as well. Frankly, I enjoy debating politics and would enjoy doing it here on HN if it weren't for the fact that I've mostly internalized a !politics filter, which there seems have fairly strong consensus.

Still, a forum for political debate that's both open and inhabited mostly by the reasonable and well-informed... I don't know if it's possible, but I'd like to see it.

*Edit: as for the why, I'd argue that most non-tech editorials shouldn't be here, period. Krugman's in particular -- even though I often agree with him -- because he's partisan and something of a lightning rod for the right.

> Still, a forum for political debate that's both open and inhabited mostly by the reasonable and well-informed... I don't know if it's possible, but I'd like to see it.

Probably not: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Why is this being down-voted?

Paul Graham wrote a very well though out article on why debating politics, even with the best intentions, is extraordinarily difficult.

More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants. What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people's identities.

Would you also rather HN avoids the topic of Krugman's editorial entirely, or just his take on it. Personally, I think the topic in general is extremely important, and relevant, for HN members, and I for one am interested in HN members' opinions.

We can start with Krugman in particular. He puts opposing views in the worst possible light and makes personal attacks on the virtues of his opponents. Those are not the debating practices of an intellectually honest individual. Whenever I am reading a Krugman column one adjective repeatedly leaps to mind: juvenile.

Krugman gives off the vibe that you'd have to be an idiot to disagree with him. But I've read many thoughtful writers who disagree with Krguman, giving him far more credit than he would ever give someone on the other side.

Well put. While Krugman occasionally makes interesting points, his style is abhorrent. I'd have more respect for him if he'd written about the protests the first day they were happening and hadn't tried to frame it as a partisan issue with his usual cast of good guys and bad guys.

The thing is that Krugman isn't framing the protests or the current economic crisis in traditional partisan terms. His columns and blog posts for at least 6 months now have continually heaped blame on Obama, Congressional Republicans, and European officials from a variety of countries and parties for not following Keynes advice and heeding the lessons we learned during the Great Depression.

Krugman has heaped blame on Obama? Maybe in a mild way, but in other ways he treats the Obama Administration with kid gloves. Case in point: here are a few of the top 20 businesses that contributed the most money to the Obama presidential campaign:

Goldman Sachs $1,013,091 JPMorgan Chase & Co $808,799 Citigroup Inc $736,771 UBS AG $532,674 US Government $517,908 Morgan Stanley $512,232

Source: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cid=N00009638

Clearly, the narrative that it is only Republicans coddling the upper strata of the American plutocracy is failing.

Krugman has noted Obama's cozy relationship to the bankers before. Just last week he had this to say in his column about the protests:

"The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confrontin...

Do you consider Krugman a voice of dissent though? In my opinion he chimes in once the issue is already "safe" and rarely says anything that would endanger his status as a columnist or his relationships with powerful people.

I would only go as far as to say that Krugman is a dissenter from the prevailing line of economic thought in the United States and Europe. He's useful precisely because the prevailing thought crippled our economy and has little success in repairing it.

I can't really speak to his relationship with powerful people.

And during the Clinton Administration, he criticized protectionist Democrats.

Just thought I'd throw this out there. If you're looking for a way to help/support the protesters: Why not order them some food and have it delivered to Zuccotti Park Zip Code: 10006

I found this pizza place that accepted online orders. http://www.majesticpizzatogo.com/

upvoted you for a specific practicality - too rare and precious element in the environment where many talk, yet a few do.

Though personally i will not order the pizza or do anything else that would leave records trail on the government servers and till the end of my life can be mined with "an active sympathizer to extremists" result.

Maybe you can pay with bitcoins.

The funniest thing about today's plutocrats is that they fail to see that they are setting the economy up for an implosion in which they will be the greatest losers.

Funny? I find it utterly bizarre.

The people who owe $300,000 on a house they never should have bought? They're going to be left with no debt and a house to live under. The people with $700m in net worth are going to lose everything they can't fit in their pockets; their houses are all going to get looted and razed the night of the collapse.

So why the hell is the guy with debt working hard to prop up the system, and the guy with investments doesn't seem to care what happens to it?

And thus thus the satire :)

[Edit] They will be the biggest losers because by the time the cataclysmic implosion occurs, the middle class they depend on so much will not have much left to back the up with. If you think that 2007 was something, brace yourself for what is next if things don't change. The sad thing is that I doubt that President Obama has what it takes to make the necessary changes.

Yes, that's clearly how what's going to happen. Revolutions historically share the single property that they're totally predictable.

And, by the way, your disgusting cheering for violent robbery is exactly why, even though I sympathise with some of the fundamental grievances of the movement, you will never find me expressing support for it.

What the hell makes you think I want this to happen?

Shit, I'm not wealthy, but I'm upper middle class. You think I'm coming out on top in this scenario? It's pure self interest: I'm the guy who doesn't want to get looted.

I'm glad that's not the case, and I apologise for assigning you ideas you don't hold. However, I did, and still do, have a very hard time reading your comment differently.

What are the Tea Party 'riots' of Summer 09 he is referring to?

Seems like both the Tea Party and OWS demonstrations are peaceful (I'm sure there are a couple of knuckleheads in each group).

Wow! Now I know that only Republicans represent the obscenely wealthy. Thanks, Krugman!

The bank bailout is the one thing that seems to have actually worked.

The Fannie and Freddie bailout is still sucking money. TARP was a disaster.

And, the less said about Obama's green initiative, the better.

I'm a bit confused. TARP was a part of the bank bailout. And according to the Congressional Budget Office, the 700B investment will actually cost about 19B.

That said, to claim that they were "too big to fail", bail them out, and then not address that "too big" issue is bullshit. Either they're too big and need to be broken up, or they weren't, and should've been allowed to fail. Trying to have it both ways is, in my estimation, part of the reason for discontent today.

> TARP was a part of the bank bailout

Lots of things were bundled together. I'm pointing out what cost money and what didn't.

> That said, to claim that they were "too big to fail", bail them out, and then not address that "too big" issue is bullshit. Either they're too big and need to be broken up, or they weren't, and should've been allowed to fail.

I agree, but point out that there's no good reason to limit that argument to financial institutions.

For example, it applies to govt institutions (fannie and freddie come to mind) and even govts (the US govt being a prime example).

> wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is

Just like unions. You can't have it both ways.

To steal shamelessly from the George Will piece that Krugman pretends to respond to, "Paul Krugman is a pyromaniac in a field of straw men."

I see no evidence at all the "plutocrats" are panicking. "Rolling their eyes with the rest of us" is probably closer to the truth. So far these protests are a media creation, of which Krugman's effort is a part.

A brief review of OWS a few days ago said that Adbusters actually kicked it off.

They did, and it was quickly taken up by others. There was a great interview on it linked here earlier. Hold up. There: http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/10/07/Kalle-Lasn-Occupy-Wall-Str...

So far these protests are a media creation

That is categorically false. This protest is about as organic as they come.

"Adbusters Media Foundation is a not-for-profit, anti-consumerist, pro-environment organization"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

They concocted the idea, started it, Anonymous did some promotion, and it caught on with people

So it was astroturfed/seeded by a media organization.

Adbusters is an advocacy organization. Do you count PETA as a media organization?

My survey of the Adbusters wikipedia article suggests that it is a media organization dedicated to activism for particular political aims.

After skimming through the wikipedia article on Adbusters I have to say I find them interesting. But I would classify them as a media organization. Regardless of their intentions, they do things that we consider operations of a media organization if it were another company or group.

I also consider PETA as a media organization as they are all about propaganda for their agenda, which is apparently killing animals to save them from us.

The movement still, as far as I can tell, has no intellectual grounding. Watch the Reason.TV Video: http://reason.tv/video/show/what-we-saw-at-occupy-wall-str

You have a Ron Paul supporter next to a guy who wants to nationalize the banks. You have a guy supporting Obama next to a guy who thinks Mitt Romney will "fix the country".

And of course the folks "letting their freak flag fly"

So this movement stands for nothing. Except for maybe "we're unhappy with the world right now" and really who isn't unhappy with the world right now? The only thing more ridiculous then the Occupy Wall St crowd are the pundits and politicians trying to use them to make their own points (which includes Krugman and the people he's criticizing)

If they share one thing, it's a feeling of being unrepresented in government. The core purpose of making their numbers known is to impart to Congress and the Obama administration their discontent with the status quo, with legislation increasingly adopted for the benefit of the investment banks in particular, and the extremely wealthy more generally, to the detriment of the rest of the country.

It is a not-so-subtle reminder that while those other guys may fund their election campaigns, the rest of us are the ones who can take up pitchforks and torches, and have a good old-fashioned mob lynching if things go too far in the wrong direction.

The common thread may be an opposition to "privatize gains, socialize losses". They may not agree on whether socializing the gains or privatizing the losses is more desirable, but they know they don't like the current system.

That a Ron Paul person is protesting shoulder-to-shoulder with someone from the Green Party is very telling. Even though the solution to the problem isn't clear, they do have something in common; and this in itself is a rather important political development.

I disagree that the movement lacks intellectual grounding -- "heads we privatize profits, tails we nationalize the loss" is about as clear as you can get. Doesn't matter if your anti-corporate or anti-government, corporate/government collusion permits right wingers and left wingers to get on the same page.

I think you're illustrating a universal constant through your examples.

The political spectrum isn't really a spectrum or a line. It's a circle. There is always a point where right meets left, where people agree on the solution, but disagree on the problem that necessitates that solution.

That wonderful point is where the lunatics from either side meet, shake hands, and agree that everything must be destroyed and you have to start over. Of course, once they actually achieve that solution, they'll be at each other's throats again, since they never agreed on what the original problem was. Revolutionary Politics 101.

True, it's a circle.

But are the people who protest the current setup insane, or is it the people who think dumping trillions of dollars into a broken system while doing nothing amidst historic unemployment and stagnation who are nuts?

At the very least it can be said that they have one commonality, they feel their voice is unheard in society. On top of that the narrative seems to be that opportunity is not available to all, as it is those better off, regardless of how they got there.

But isn't that the point? Lots of people aren't unhappy with the world right now, and, wouldn't you know it, they mostly seem to be the people who have the power to change things.

Okay, maybe OWS stands for nothing.

But recognize that there is a populist frustration with the way America is going. It's no coincidence that Obama's election, Election 2010 (Tea Party), and OWN (2011) all intertie heavily with populism. There is a rising level of frustration.

Except that OWS is losing legitimacy because the political operatives have decided to take it over or at least try. By putting the union members on the line with genuine protesters they are making it out to be something it is not, as in there is a direct attempt to make this work for the DNC and not for the protesters.

The odd part about having the union members march along in NYC is many of them are very highly compensated both in yearly pay and retirement whereas the majority of protesters look like they still need mom and dad.

There is a rising level of frustration but I don't think OWS has the answer. The local Atlanta version very impolitely chased on Representative John Lewis shows that at is basis they are not aligned with any particular party. So attempts by the DNC machine to co-opt this to give them a legitimate counterpoint to the Tea Party are going to fail, and fail badly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that several of the unions weren't going to back national candidates for this upcoming election, beholden as many of them are towards the 1%, and were instead going to focus more support and funding for state and local candidates. If true, that sounds like pulling back from the DNC.

Shivetya, I'm a little confused as to how, in the span of one post, you say being co-opted by Democrats dampens their legitimacy, and then say the Democrats' attempted co-option will fail, and badly.

Legitimacy, I'm not personally concerned about. It's reasonable to presume that any significant group will have the pro political operators move in and attempt to coopt to various aims. The legitimate concern is the fact that 'relatively normal' people across the American political spectrum are unhappy with the direction of "Washington". Note the quotes and generalizations.

That's the real story.

> So this movement stands for nothing.

I read your comment, shrugged, then read the op-Ed. When I got back, I found myself scratching my head as to whether you'd even bothered reading it.

The thread of common anger among the protesters is the notion that banks took risk, enjoyed protection by tax payers and then, once resuscitated by the people, bought politicians to prevent regulation that would prevent future indiscretions.

I don't need to have philosophical agreement with my neighbor for us to be joined in outrage when the guy across the street gets mugged while we're watching. These guys have a legitimate beef. I'm not going to quibble about whether their proposed solutions are in agreement.

The seed of common anger is the perversion of regulation and governance at the highest tier of financial institutions.

However, the expressions of anger at the occupy* protests has been running the gamut. From moderate calls for financial reform all the way to straight up marxist wealth redistribution.

There may be fairly broad public support behind the sentiment that there's a fair number of problems with the system as it exists today, but there is nothing like widespread support for the gamut of messages coming out of occupy*.

What is interesting to me is how quickly this narrative infected the media. The only think reported about OWS is clashes with the Police, or the lack of clear message.

The narrative "OWS has no message" was started by media pundits. It's unfortunate they all decided on that exact narrative at almost the same time.

The conspiracy theorist in me, combined with an intense cynicism, wonders if the corporate parents of the media weren't the originators of this idea, but I'll leave that up to the reader to speculate.

I don't believe it's coincidence that the media started bleating the "OWS has no message" meme at the exact same time.

Yeah, I know it's reddit, but this comment from a P/R person was pretty eye-opening:

"Right at this moment, hundreds of journalists are receiving calls and emails from communication agencies, pitching them on the 'lack of focus' keypoints on the behalf of their clients. This is why the coverage we get only revolves on this point, because there is a concerted effort behind it. Sounds terrible? Well, that the way things work."

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/l428p/occupy_wall_...

If you read further down that thread another pr guy calls this guy out as being almost entirely wrong. The reason fire the lack of focus story is that... Drum roll... At best a journalist can say that there are many viewpoints. How would you report that story objectively?

Obviously opinion pieces are going to take that and run with it based on their own agenda, but the essence of the argument is correct -even though it is the kind of thing that can kill a protest. This is a problem OWS, et al will have to fix.

To their credit, it seems occupy boston formed a committee to ratify some resolutions.

To their credit, it seems at least occupy boston formed a committee to ratify resolutions

As far as I can tell, this criticism "but they have no coherent demands" is mostly an invented media talking point. It is the successor to the first attempt, "these people are inarticulate clowns", which was too clumsy to work.

Since when is a popular protest movement required to come up with a detailed policy paper? This isn't the Brookings Institute. What we see is exactly what you'd expect: a diverse group, overlapping agendas, a few common themes. It's not like those themes are hard to identify (viz., large banks were rewarded for wrecking the economy, the political process has been corrupted by money, most people are stagnating or suffering economically).

It's not hard to see what market-oriented types and anti-corporate types have in common here. They're both opposed to socialism for oligarchs.

I'd be extremely wary about coming to any conclusions based upon the Reason.TV video. They have a clear political agenda and it's difficult to really understand the complexities of any situation through a series of edited interviews.

In any sense, from what I understand it seems that the group isn't necessarily pushing for any particular policy but the fact that the Government is systemically broken. They feel there isn't any democratic say from the average citizen in the policies made by Congress and the Presidency. It seems that they choose Wall Street as their target because their large financial abilities allow for them to give massive amounts of financial contributions to key politicians, essentially cutting out the average voter.

However, I haven't been to the movement in person, so it's difficult for me to be sure with any certainty.

"and really who isn't unhappy with the world right now?"

Most people who are capable of rationally evaluating the standards of living we currently enjoy versus that of any other point in human history usually aren't that unhappy with the world right now.

I say this in the general sense; of course at any given time, N individuals will be hitting the bottom of the barrel, but the barrel is getting shallower and shallower with each generation.

Edit: Thanks for the downvotes; apparently I'm factually incorrect, and the Global Human Development Index is actually declining?

No, you're probably not incorrect, factually, but if you're expecting a bunch of upvotes for a rehash of the kind of mumbled apologetics we've been subjected to since at least the 80's (eg. the world is better now that it ever has been) when we're staring down the barrel of a massive deficit that wasn't here 10 years ago and you've got home foreclosures and unemployment rates sitting at or near historic highs, well...

How is a partisan political analysis Hacker News?

It's hardly news, the protesters have been there a while. And it's not an objective analysis of the economics involved -- in fact, there's hardly any economics in there at all.

Sure, he's a Nobel laureate. But this particular piece by him is clearly partisan. He calls parties and politicians by name.

Is this what Hacker News is going to turn into? Linking to partisan political columns?

Yeah, it's totally inappropriate by the book. On the other hand, the protests are an interesting new phenomenon and some discussion was inevitable. Might as well be this?

My favorite comment this morning is geebee's (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3094614), arguing that Wall St. should not get away with identifying themselves with true wealth creators in the public mind. It's reasonable, insightful, and has an HN slant. It's also the most upvoted at the moment, so things aren't too bad.

"On the other hand, the protests are an interesting new phenomenon and some discussion was inevitable. Might as well be this?"

What I would have appreciated was an article that took a step back and offered something more general about human nature, history, social movements, banking, various conflicts of interest, relationships between large corporations and government, small business versus large, etc.

I haven't really been following the protests, mostly because I'm waiting for them to start suggesting concrete actions and plans (which can take a while; I'm not disparaging them for not having a plan on day one). And even with essentially a blank slate, I read that article and learned nothing.

"My favorite comment this morning is geebee's"

While an interesting point, there are two problems: the comment format is not long enough to really flesh out an idea like that; and it's still well off-topic for HN. Regardless, every political discussion will elicit some insightful comments. There are plenty of other places to get something like that.

Anyway, it's pretty obvious that people wanted this discussion to happen here. The downvotes pretty much proved that I was wrong about the scope of HN.

Partisanship is not wrong per se. Why don't you critique the man's arguments instead of going into ad hominems?

I didn't say there was anything wrong with partisanship. I don't object at all to him writing that article or the Times publishing it. But that's not why I come here. I come here for hacker news. I understand it's a bit of a broad topic -- but this is way off the mark.

Oh well, I guess I'll stop coming if that's the way this site is going. I'm sure you won't feel any sense of loss. But I think something was lost -- a site where we could set aside these kinds of things and focus on the details objectively, or perhaps some personalities and interests that are more related to hackers and technology.

Perhaps Krugman has done some great research, etc (I don't really know). But this wasn't a link to his research or some summary thereof. This was just a run-of-the-mill political op-ed with no real economic analysis to it. No thanks.

Oh man, does mentioning the name of famous people or parties count as partisan now? How exactly would you like your news?

"A party tried to vote on a bill today. A leader of that party said it was a good idea."

Since HN is targeted at the startup crowd, many of whom hope to become or are already wealthy, this seems applicable. Doubly so, since Krugman is pointing out that the financial industry is using a false association with productive rich people to cloak their behavior. If the hammer end up falling anyway, Silicon Valley might be wishing that Wall Street didn't drag their name down into the mud alongside their own.

I thought the article brought up points worth discussing, but surely you're being disingenuous when you imply that it wasn't partisan??

FDR praise...complaints on "Republican politicians"...Cantor criticism...Obama the victim...

you could write a bayesian classifier to determine how a columnist votes :P

"Since HN is targeted at the startup crowd, many of whom hope to become or are already wealthy, this seems applicable."

Wow. Now that's a stretch.

His argument is not necessarily partisan; it's simply that certain individuals representing one of those parties have stuck their necks out especially far to disparage the movement, in order to score political points, and so they are the ones upon whom the blade naturally falls. This is an issue of class conflict more than partisan, and both parties are deserving of criticism in this regard.

"both parties are deserving of criticism in this regard"

This is an honest question: is hacker news the place for that criticism? Of course, a site like hacker news is defined by its readers, so if you say "yes" you are at least partially right, and maybe entirely right.

It's just that I thought HN wasn't that kind of place.

I was simply responding to the argument that Krugman was unfairly singling out the Republican party in a partisan attack, which I do not believe to be the case.

Personally, I don't see any topic as off-limits on HN (with the possible exception of cute cat photos with captions), as I'm always curious to get the community's take on a wide range of subjects. Once a topic has landed on the front page, I consider the argument settled, and the verdict delivered. Beyond that, it's a problem for the editorial staff to deal with somehow. Me, I'll just go with it, and I am rarely disappointed.

Please tell me you aren't nicknaming yourself after Jefferson Davis. ;)

Anyway, I admit it's a stretch, but Krugman is one of our most valuable economists, and this can be read as a social assessment of the current dynamics in our economy, including these growing protests. This has ramifications for us all, most certainly including hackers.

I disagree that Krugman's piece is overly partisan; it's not his fault that virtually all the plutocrats at fault happen to be Republicans.

As long as the administration takes a hands-off approach to their industry, the 'plutocrats' on Wall Street prefer to vote and donate Democrat, often for cultural reasons. Just like many other monied people here in New York. It's not a big Republican town.

Many recipients of the financial bailouts OWS is protesting have traditionally been big Democratic donors. Both Bush and Obama passed financial industry bailouts - this isn't a partisan issue.

Krugman knows this, and has chosen to highlight just the Republicans' responsibility and their crude attempts to rile up their base ('this is class war!') instead of the Democrats' responsibility and their attempts, largely through paid union staffers, to transform the protests into a pro-Democratic movement. (Who can blame them for trying? I think the Republicans came out ahead by co-opting the Tea Party, nominating goofs like Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle excepted.)

That's why this is a partisan piece. It's not what Krugman said, it's what he chose to omit.

"Please tell me you aren't nicknaming yourself after Jefferson Davis. ;)"

No association at all.

"This has ramifications for us all, most certainly including hackers."

By that reasoning, we should just post any political op-ed we happen to agree with, and we can just upvote as practice before the polls open. It's just not hacker news, or not what HN used to be anyway.

"I disagree that Krugman's piece is overly partisan"

I didn't say it was overly partisan. I said it was partisan. That's perfectly fine -- nothing wrong with being partisan. But it's just not the kind of thing I come to HN for.

And how does this comment add to the disucussion at all, if you're so concerned with the sanctity of Hacker News?

Since you've been here you have submitted exactly one article, over a year ago.

Maybe before you start complaining about the content, you should start contributing to it?

I aim for quality more than quantity. I try to write about what I know, and read about everything. And I think that making an effort to carefully consider the quality and applicability of my submissions is a virtue.

So, I wrote what I thought was a very innovative peer-reviewed feature to a prominent open source product, which took me a long time. Then, I carefully wrote an article about it and submitted it myself. It fell off the front page very quickly. That's OK -- maybe someone will think my next feature is interesting. But these things take me a while to do.

So, I'm really more puzzled by your comment than anything else. I write some truly new content (in every sense) that is highly applicable, and that gets little interest. A political op-ed piece gets upvoted. And then you criticize me for not contributing to the discussion.

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