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Subscribe to RSSUpdate 06:28 a.m. ET: New York's Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway confirmed that the owners of Zuccotti Park had postponed their planned cleaning operation.
Emmanuel Dunand / AFP - Getty Images
Occupy Wall Street protesters clean Zuccotti Park near Wall Street in New York on October 13. Protesters from the movement spent the night cleaning Zuccotti Park following Mayor Bloomberg's demand that the demonstrartors leave the park for city officials to clean it.
Emmanuel Dunand / AFP - Getty Images
Two occupiers kiss during a clean-up of Zuccotti Park on October 13.
Emmanuel Dunand / AFP - Getty Images
A protester cleans Zuccotti Park on October 13.
msnbc.com news services report from NEW YORK:
Protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement launched a cleanup effort in Zuccotti Park on Thursday afternoon, with protesters urging each other to "pick up a broom, pick up trash," The New York Times reported.
A source told NBC News' Michelle Franzen that protesters were hoping the cleanup effort would be enough to allow them to stay in the park, but demonstrators were prepared to hold their ground if they were told to leave.
Owner Brookfield Office Properties plans to clean the park where several hundred protesters have been sleeping on Friday, a move that demonstrators believe is a ploy to remove them. Read the full story.
See a 360 degree view of the protesters' encampment and more coverage of demonstrations across the country on PhotoBlog.
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Beginning in 1998, banks began to loosen the defined risk management standards used by their trading desks. Bank risk soared. Banks began to take riskier bets in search of higher profits. Usually, the financial system has safeguards to control bank risk by forcing banks to place more capital on hold as non-invested collateral, if the banks want to increase their risk.
Unfortunately, the banks joined the investment banks to set up a dual market, by setting up independent, off balance sheet financial vehicles to obscure risk. The great liabilities of these investment vehicles were not included on the books of the parent institutions and the parent bank was not listed on the vehicle’s balance sheet as a primary beneficiary. By doing this, the banks and investment banks created an automatic, legal dumping ground that yielded enormous profit for them.
The banks “securitized” the bad loans, selling off the repackaged mortgage-backed securities to the global market. The banks also encouraged their off-balance-sheet vehicles to buy these mortgage-backed securities. The large financial institutions involved made huge fees selling these securities to their own independent investment vehicles. These independent investment vehicles (which were really just the original large banks) used these just-purchased mortgage-backed securities as collateral to buy commercial paper from the global credit markets. What a scam!
Since commercial paper has always been considered a highly safe form of debt investment, when the global housing bubble burst in 2007 (beginning in the US), the global traders decided to make no distinction between the parent banks and the independent vehicles that they had created (legally, but dishonestly). Financial stocks collapsed and global credit seized up as businesses found it a lot more difficult to obtain credit.
This caused the industrialized world economies to weaken in 2008 (The Great Recession), beginning with the US economy.
I couldn't agree with you more. thank you for the necessary insight.
If 400 scientist got together and agreed upon a set of solutions that were based on the latest data from all the fields of study and came up with recommendation, would or should we follow their advice? what observations about human nature and the larger universe that we live in will we turn to for directions if we dare to imagine, there is a better solution.
we took a chance on a constitution that called for free speech and freedom of religion, not from it. In order for the best ideas to have an opportunity to surface and have room to be judged by our collective spiritual conscious and good sense; one rational nation under God? And if not God, then at least let us use whatever we consider the best direction from our inner compass and plot a course we can agree on to the best of our collective abilities. Let the internet and movements like Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party and countless other groups find a forum that allows for the discussion this movement clearly represents. No one is asking for extremism.
Continued . . . .
We use institutions to help hold our civilization together but it is we the people who keep those institutions alive. If we must choose some group to look at the all the statistics and the polls, the historical precedence and the our collective capacity for good and evil, they why not the Nobel prize committees or other similar bodies If you don’t want it in the hands of groups like occupy wall street or the tea party. But one thing is very clear, We have been lied to on every side by vested interests that are have no interest in what is good for any majority but the shareholder. We are more concerned with blame than solutions
Well I ask you are they not trying to find a solution. Are they not trying to legally, peacefully do the right thing? Only solutions can help us now. I want to see the data. I want to see the facts. I want them in one place open to all to agree or disagree with. I want to put all this confusion to bed. I want to know what the math says, the physics, the psychologists, medical doctors, and chemists. And after they have their day in court, I want to hear from the theologians and philosophers because in the end it’s all just a guess anyway.
So what will it take to make the best decision that we can. How will we know the proper place to have that discussion if not with our vote’s then maybe with our protests? So if you look around the world and you believe that everything is just fine the way it is than by all means list your reasons, but what is the point in the name calling and the belittling discourse.
The only recently became familiar with the OWS movement during last visit to New York when I found myself at Zuccotti Park. It was awesome, I had a fantastic time.
I got some really great pictures that really captured the excitement, please feel free to check them out: