The Occupy people have done a wonderful thing. On Monday, just as the comment period on the new regulation was closing, a subgroup of seven known as Occupy the SEC submitted a 325-page comment to all relevant federal agencies demanding a stricter “Volcker Rule” — the part of Dodd-Frank that aims to limit the amount of proprietary trading, or risky bets made with a firm’s own money (frequently and ultimately meaning YOUR money), in which megabanks can participate.
This is Important, as the comment explains:
Proprietary trading by large-scale banks was a principal cause of the recent financial crisis, and, if left unchecked, it has the potential to cause even worse crises in the future. In the words of a banking insider, Michael Madden, a former Lehman Brothers executive:
Proprietary trading played a big role in manufacturing the CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) and other instruments that were at the heart of the financial crisis. . . if firms weren’t able to buy up the parts of these deals that wouldn’t sell. . .the game would have stopped a lot sooner.
Go read it! We haven’t read the full thing, but we will… later. (No, that’s not even a joke this time. We will read it later! Unless something good comes on the teevee… No but really we look forward to reading it! Maybe…)
In the meantime, here are a couple of reviews from Reuters and Mother Jones.
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Breitbart would like us all to "stop raping people!"
Sure Andy, as soon as they stop raping us.
I need someone from Fox News to tell me if I'm being raped too much.
What is the proper amount of rape? I am never clear on that
It's just enough, but not too much. Or too little. Here, let me demonstrate…
Stop! Right Now! These last couple of threads have been a bit too rapey for me.
Tobias Funkë would know, let's ask him!
I think its like doing shots of tequila. You keep saying I can do one more until you get to that point where you're standing on the pool table in your underwear, singing Don't Cry For Me Argentina.
Maybe if you didn't dress so poor; it just looks like you're asking for it.
Thank you, Melissa Cloutier!
Cenk tells Breitbart, ‘Stop having gay sex in bathrooms!’: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/15/young-turks…
Breibart has really let himself go after Wags left him.
Whaa? Is that like smoking weed out of an apple? What will these kids think up next!
And I hope Breitbart gets rotten tomatoes thrown at him every day for one hundred years for what he did to Shirley Sherrod.
But unwanted vaginal penetration is still cool, right?
Ron Paul wants to know if these are honest rapes.
Behave yourself!
Behave yourself!
Behave yourself!
Actually, Breitbart's comment was, "Stop rapping, people!"
He's just a poor speller who doesn't like rap music.
Just cut to the page where they demand the use of guillotines…
Page 261: "In the event the bankster declines decapitation by guillotine, he or she may specify an alternate means of self-destruction, including hanging-and-quartering and death by drowning in a barrel of wine." I read fast!
Ctrl+F is your friend.
As a former printer I champion the lengthy verbiage of these printed entreaties but as someone who prizes brevity I think a simple 'QUIT FUCKING US OVER!' would have sufficed.
That is the shorter version that goes on the placards.
Such is the soul of snark.
Do they even mail out hard copies of the Federal Register any more?
As he letter notes, "the Proposed Rule was designed to avoid 'definitive bright lines' in favor of a 'more nuanced framework',” the bright line being, as you suggest "Quit fucking us over," of which a more nuanced version would be "Please quit fucking us over."
Sadly, chascates, I have several friends who are also former printers. Three of them worked together printing maps that delivery drivers used. Remember maps? Another worked in the printing dept of the WaPo. Remember newsprinting?
Tom Tomorrow's take is pretty right on:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/10/1024469/…
You mean that buying and selling instruments you know to be shit isn't a good idea? Who'da thunk it?
Are you kidding? It's a great idea! Buying and not selling, on the other hand… you want to make sure you have a seat when the music stops.
Ah yes, everything I needed to know about life I learned in Kindergarten.
No sweat. AIG will cover your bets.
And reinsure it 40 times while involving every other insurance company in the known world.
Doesn't anyone remember how this behavior ended for Lloyd's of London in the 1980s.
Selling shit, that's a good idea. Buying shit; that's different.
Sorta like junk bonds: "With a name like junk bonds, we figured what could possibly go wrong?"
The name gave ME confidence.
It took 325 pages to explain that "shit is all fucked up and shit"?
And how are they going to do this with the big puppet heads?
Somebody's been watching "Idiocracy"…
Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world.
Mandatory T-shirt purchase right there, Harry. Oh, and good call on the nuking of Japan.
Over a million occurrences in Goggle, yet no one seems to know who said it first. Harry Truman?
Give me a bank, and I can buy more books.
I'm glad that there are people that have the patience to read something like that. And maybe even understand it.
#occupyyourprinter
How about we pass legislation to let the 99% of us use the same 40:1 leverage ratio that these scumbags got to use? "Hey look, I got $15,000 in my bank account now!"
What are these "bank account" things you speak of?!
“an unfortunate consequence of the generalized language throughout the Proposed Rule may be the shift of risky practices out of liquid and transparent markets into the less regulated illiquid and OTC products”
Unfortunate consequence seems a bit harsh. Don't forget how well moving shaky/illiquid/insane investments to off balance sheet entities worked for Enron.
"Liquid and transparent" would be gin and vodka, while illiquid stuff you can buy over the counter includes doughnuts, right?
The Free (To Fuck Everyone Over But Us) Market must be preserved!
reviews from Reuters and Mother Jones
And we know our Mother would never be Jonesin' us.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jonesing
to have a strong need, desire, or craving for something. see also: jones.
I know what your mama's Jonesin' for.
Get us off that credit – mortgage needle.
Economy clogged up? Call Reuter-Rooter!
But according to all the Republican candidates Dodd-Frank must be repealed because the regulations are too stringent and are going to ruin the economy! Ignore the fact that underregulation allowed the financial companies to cause the recession in the first place.
Nonsense, Soros. Everyone knows that the free market always works always except when it's being strangled by regulation. Ergo, the only times the free market doesn't work are when regulations made it not work right. That's air-tight hobo logic there.
Building a house of fucking cards from turdlike home loans posing as AAA securities was not the cause of the recession, it was those damn loans pushed by the Dems….bwaahaahaaaa. I really wonder how much money these dicks took out of the system during this rampant raping. After the S&L debacle you think we'd remember – but fuck no.
Hell, you would think we should have learned from the Great Depression; but no, Reagan and the Bushes learned nothing from history and doomed us to repeat it.
i.e., our only hope for the sinking ship is if we hit another iceberg.
This must be a forgery – everyone at Fox says that the Occupy people are just smelly lazy dopes who are only after handouts paid for by the taxes of hard-working Americans.
And rapists; don't forget rapists.
Quite correct – I was too quick off the mark. I also forgot "rat magnets".
I heard they're reefer addicts.
… who can't BEHAVE THEMSELVES!!!!!!!!!
Rapists who play bongos and smoke weed.
And their so-called music is nothing but noise.
Heavy on the bongos, weed, patchouli, organic hummus, liberal arts degrees.
Technically it is 325 pages long, but most of that is padded out with used hypodermic needles.
Damn kids and their reefer sticks.
325-pages is about what people had to sign to get a tainted mortgage and buy into our Great American Scheme
324 of that is language making it impossible to sue, and the other remaining page is just "HA HA" printed over and over to fill the space.
Well, now we know how they Occupied Their Time
(see what I did there? Huh? Huh?)
"Edit check, edit check, edit check edit check….
or maybe "Spell Check! (Spell Check!)"
Banking should be simple: take deposits from savers and pay them X%, loan those deposits to borrowers at 2X%, figure out a reserve for bad loans, fraud or the collateral burns down.
Anyone who can't make money doing that just needs a new career.
Bankers used to live by the 2-4-3 rule.
Pay 2% on deposits,
charge 4% on loans,
be at the golf course at 3.
They would make a lot less mischief that way.
Yes, but if you follow that formula it may take ten or twenty years to get fabulously wealthy. Who wants to work that long?
"Anyone who can't make money doing that just needs a new career."
This reminds me of the part in "The Gang that couldn't shoot straight", where one of the characters had a car dealership that lost money, even though he stole the cars.
Teatards are working on a response…as soon as they upgrade their Microsoft Word 5.5 for DOS….
"How come I can't open this document with WordPerfect!?"
Because you need Volkswriter on a Kaypro.
Wordstar! FTW!
You could get a decent codebehind for formatting on that version!
John Corzine says there is already too much job killing Volcker Rules.
I know what I'm doing this afternoon!
This comment is 100% snark free.
Me too, but I'm not nearly so happy about it.
This comment is 100% snark free.
Edit: Just to be clear – what I'm doing isn't reading the report. Dammit.
A report like this must be like porn for you accountants. And just think, it's work related!
Pssst! Dude! Remind her she doesn't need both hands to read it!
I thought you did laundry yesterday.
I *need* to do laundry daily.
That's a euphemism for something, isn't it?
I've downloaded it and have reached page 5 of the pdf document. It's either read or comment.
This is fabulous! Now the SEC is going to have to respond to the comment point by point.
How many answers would be "Yes, we agree with you but Wall Street wouldn't like that very much."?
At the risk of being obvious, "all of them, Katie."
The SEC was all set to read it but, uh, everybody there came down with the stomach flu.
I like the idea of a 325 page report . It says to the 1% we 99% know how you fucked us the last time and we aren't going to let you get away with that again. Go Occupiers. Oh and Brietbart is still an asshole.
That and the fact it should shut up the Republiklans/Tea Baggers that keep claiming that the Occupy Movement has no real purpose or demands.
It's awesome that the OWSers are getting down and geeky with this law, since the details of this sort of financial regulatory structure are the origin of the damn 2007-8 meltdown in the first place. And I hope it does them no discred to say that this comes from someone who almost never knows what state his bank account is in.
I'd read it, except I'm suffering from a case of the stomach flu.
DANGER ALERT: Fox says once you get past the first page, the next 324 are filled with subliminal type repeating "Obey Saul Alinsky" and "George Soros Will Decide" over and over on top of a Che Guevara watermark, and that reading it will turn you into an Muslim terrorist! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!
Plus, if you read it backwards it's satan telling you to eat your vegetables.
I don't know about that, but for some reason i want to eat Selba Tegev.
Roddy Piper has a pair of glasses that let you just plain fucking see all that shit right out in the open.
And he's all out of bubble gum…
too bad we weren't all wearing them in 1980.
Tell Fox News to just lie back and enjoy it.
Fortunately for all of us, there's a built in safeguard of preceding the propaganda with several pages of "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy".
The SEC asked for "commenter input". Imagine what would happen if Wonkette got a 325-page comment.
Also, from what I've seen over the past few years, the staff at the SEC seems far too dim and/or lazy to make any sense out of this document.
A Wonkette comment extended to 325-pages would be a trashy homoerotic romance novel.
Remember remember the 5th of blowvember.
Too dim, lazy and/or corrupt…
The last time I read anything which had close to 325 pages it started "It was love at first sight" and ended "The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off."
I just can't snark. This has me too thrilled and excited. Power to the 99!
But Obama wants to make us all use rubbers which is SOCIALISM!!!
Bring back Glass Steagall!
I hate Phil Gramm.
For fucks sake, occupy a red pencil…even the Unabomber's Manifesto was only 50 pages.
Un-related to this post
Bacon's Ma is sick… Baconz pretendz to be sexists and racist, but that is just for the snarky….Baconz Ma made Baconz who he iz today…… Baconz ma said "Be odd. Odd is where it's at! At Neil Simon once said 'never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity'. That's good advice Baconz. Goof off more and you'll find a good lady"
Slithytoves wishes Baconz Ma wellness, as her Ma taught her how to be outraged at and in love with the world at the same time, as well as be weird enough to make people laugh.
And Mr. Happy sends his good, innocent cat wishes for health, too.
"always be strange" as my ma said. My grand dad said "If you can't laugh at a crippled italian midget then you can't laugh at your self". We came from a wise family.
So I'm inferring that your grandpa was a crippled Italian midget?
Green Irish! "You want things done lad you ask Shinn Fein! The IRA never get's shit done" I suspect he might of came to this country under shady circumstances.
Wishing your ma good health. But cut down on the sodium and phosphates.
She thanks ya. She is a strange woman. If she knew how to ues the inter web she'd like Wonkette. She liked the Jesus Lizard when I took her to a show on mother's day.
Get well soon, Bacon's Ma!
Baconz Ma thanks you. She's a neat lady. I was a latch key kid before it was cool.
I was kept chained in a dungeon, but we don't talk about it.
Would you like to share? 'Cause you can go on Yahoo & do that.
Best wishes of health to your Ma. My own mother once had me arrested for owning 4 reefers, from which I learned some valuable lessons, too…
Ma don't know what "reefers" are. She calls the reefers "goof balls". She is addicted to sudafed though. But that use to be OVC.
My Pa told me to stay away from angel dust pasta. Pass that good advice along to your Ma. I want her to get better.
Good thoughts for your Ma.
Maybe Prezident Obama can visit Baconz Ma since he can't see Scott Walker.
Seriously, best wishes and good luck with that.
OLDZ LIBLE!!!!!!
Feel better soon, Ma Baconz!
It means alot from you MissTaken. I gotta a crush on you. (don't tell LimeyLizzy though)
Ah shucks!
**blushing**
*Adds Baconz to the watch list*.
STALKING LIBLE!!!!!!!!!!
Not bad for a group of unwashed, pot-smoking, murderer, rapist, hippies. Eh, Mr. Brightfart?!??
Isn't it a wonder they could take time out from their crime spree to type 325 pages?
Proprietary trading? Is that what it's called? I think I heard about that on Ira Glass's show years ago.
And it's about fucking time that people started paying attention to these schemes. You would think that banking instruments being compared to a Mel Brooks musical would get more traction in the press.
Maybe if those Occupy losers would get a job, they wouldn't be killing trees creating a 325 page bitch session. Get a hoverround, dammit, and go clean up a parking lot.
"let me explain, no there is too much. Let me sum up!"
This deserves another thumbs up.
Does it have porn? Cuz if it doesn't have porn, I don't want to sit through 325 pages.
Even just a little furry action. That's OK.
Participating in the rule-making process by submitting extensive public comments, in hopes to effect change in how government works?
Wouldn't it be more effective just to gather a bunch of people in costumes, carrying guns and misspelled signs expressing vague outrage at an imagined loss of freedom?
If by "effective", you mean, "corporations throwing ass tons of money at them", then yes.
These kids need to take a shower and get a job, then they would't have time to sit around "commenting" on things that are none of their business, like the economy.
I'm finding this exceedingly difficult to masturbate to.
And it's kinda long, too.
Huzzah!
325 pages? It better start with: "It was a dark and stormy night….." and have lots of sexytime and some-such.
The SEC's response: tl;dr.
That's the problem with the rapier wit of our commenters — some threads are just rapier than others.
wishing your mum many years of jameson and joyce.
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