This is just going to put more fuel on the flames of the opposition and we will have to work that much harder to put them out. 

If the author thinks they’d face some kind of reprisal for expressing this sort of sentiment, I certainly respect their desire to post it anonymously–however, I certainly dislike their attitude because it seems like a mirror of the ugly class-warfare attitude I see on the right.

Debt needs to removed from the system, and not at the expense of someone barely scraping by on a pension. The large bondholders of sovereign governments and those substantially invested in the banking system – who reaped record profits after 2008, I might add – need to negotiate the haircut, and do it now.

I also have an issue with people posting here complaining about anonymity. It is this attitude that allows full body scans, face recognition algorithms, scanners installed on school buses, CCTV networks with no accountability. Being able to post without fear of reprisal is a foundation of free expression. I’ll let the rest of you blithely line up and get your wrists tattooed with the new TSA boarding pass protocol (Oh wait, they haven’t done that yet… just wait.), but I’ll be damned if I will sit silently while someone posting some controversial satire gets piled-on for being anonymous.

Like it or hate it, but don’t throw away free expression just because it gets under your skin. It isn’t “inconvenient” or “a real shame” — it is a basic RIGHT and should be defended.

Cheers,

TraderTim

Hi Julian. I have a sneaky suspicion that the opposite of this statement may be true. Finance doesn’t actually produce a thing except for creative ways to steal more money. Perhaps reading some William K. Black would help. He wrote, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry, 2005. Dr. Black was a central figure in exposing Congressional corruption during the Savings & Loan crisis.

Black assets that the banking crisis in the United States that started in late 2008 is essentially a big Ponzi scheme; that the “liar loans” and other financial tricks were essentially illegal frauds; and that the triple-A ratings given to these loans was part of a criminal cover-up. He said that the “Prompt Corrective Action Law” passed after the Savings and Loan Crisis mandated that ailing banks should be put into receivership. Black also stated that trying to hide how bad the situation is will simply prolong the problem, as happened in Japan’s lost decade. Black stated that Timothy Geithner is engaged in a cover-up, and that the administration does not want people to understand what went wrong or how bad the banking situation is today.

I agree there are strong individual cases of greed and malfeasance, but saying the entire economic crisis was the product of greed by the wealthiest Americans and not collective action failure mistakes the worst offenses for the most significant causes. We can’t solve our problems with recrimination and blame; we need technical solutions to technical problems. Our rage and upset at the damage done by this economic crisis is well deserved, but directing it at the wealthiest 1% is scapegoating. Why not direct it at individuals, as the latter half of this article seems to with its silly recipe names? Why make wealth the determining factor for how “bad” they are instead of their actions?

Tell that to the thousands of people who had had their houses taken away by mistake. Tell that to the fired workers while their bosses get even bigger bonuses.

Instead of focusing on these serious policy issues, though, I find that much of the focus of the protests is being wasted on condemning the wealthy and engaging in what is seen as “retaliatory” class warfare. Your reflexive assertion that the middle class’ income was being “soaked up” betrays this attitude somewhat; even if income inequality continues to increase it’s likely due to the same factors that have been causing the trend since its inception in the 1980s and not due to the recession at all. Nobody’s income is getting stolen by anyone else. Instead, conditions that lower labor demands by firms and favor capital-intensive  information-based technology have consistently depressed wages in the lowest quintiles of American society, leading to stagnating income and quality of life for those quintiles. This is a serious problem that is making a lot of people suffer, but it’s a collective action failure and not predation–as this article slyly implies by satirically suggesting reciprocating.

Yes, everybody’s net worth drops during the recession, but when it’s over the rich are much richer and the middle class is much poorer.

Unless you’ve seen statistics I haven’t, of course.

It’s called “The Cannibal’s Guide to Ethical Living”, by famous author Mykle Hansen.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll enjoy the book more– it’s funnier.

http://www.amazon.com/Cannibals-Guide-Ethical-Living/dp/1936383284/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318314941&sr=8-1

I doubt many wealthy people enjoyed having the values of their stock portfolios or homes plunge by nearly a quarter, especially given that a huge proportion of their net worth was likely invested in some fashion.

Are you kidding? Depressions and recessions are when the wealthy soak up all the money that the middle class has been investing during the boom years.

We all want a more stable and fair financial system

No, I’m pretty sure there is a fairly sizable population (~10%, I’d guess) who are perfectly happy with the status quo. And a good subset who would love to see it move further in the wrong direction. That’s the 1%, and they absolutely should be devoured at the earliest opportunity.

Edit: Also wanted to add my agreement that anyone who follows any philosophy with blindly religious zealotry is a moron and an oxygen-thief.

Now I have to repack all the good silver I was tricked into soul-crushing debt to accumulate.

And even then, it’s hard to blame Apple when the (communist-ish, might I add) Chinese government allowed it to happen.

There is nothing communist-ish about the PRC. They are a state-corporatist nation where all market participation is at the pleasure of the political ruling-class selected by blatant cronyism. They are indeed capitalists; they reinvest capital earned from prior enterprise using a monetary standard. This is the very antithesis of communism, wherein money does not exist because the means of production are owned collectively by everyone and directed to task by central planning (whether by elected committee or ruling junta). In communism, money is irrelevant because no one owns the products of their or anyone else’s labor; the fruits of all labor are owned collectively.

What China is not is a free market. Market participation depends on government connections, bribes and purchases of the right to do business. A close comparison is the fictional Ferengi Commerce Authority on Star Trek. We too are headed firmly in that direction, though not because of anything the Occupiers are doing, but because we the People have allowed our government officials to sell and gift market dominance and natural resources to the highest bidder, obliterating the free market, and to bail them out, at public expense, when their anti-competitive practices bring them and us to ruin.

If the Occupiers are anti-capitalist – and I’m certain many are not – they are mere padawans to Wall Street’s grand masters.

If the point of satire is to stimulate discussion, this is certainly working.

And for the people who are simulating horror at the sentiment in the article, all I can do is simulate patience in return.  Of course nobody wants to eat anybody, ferpetesakes.