Monday, November 21, 2011

To the Occupy Wall Street crowd

As you woke up and got ready to make your way over to the Occupy Wall Street protest rally today you may have brushed your teeth with toothpaste made by Procter & Gamble or Colgate, checked your e-mail on your Dell or HP computer utilizing a Windows or Mac operating system, got directions to the protest through Google Maps, then put on your Nike, Crocs, Uggs, Steve Madden or perhaps Timberland footwear, slipped on your Wrangler or Lee jeans and perhaps your Columbia or Under Armour shirt or sweater. After you got dressed you jumped in your Ford or GM car, called your mom on your iphone or maybe text messages a friend from your Blackberry, slipped on your headphones and fired up your ipod, and then stopped to get a quick convenient breakfast or coffee at Starbucks or McDonalds, and then made your way over to protest Wall Street.

Did it ever occur to you that all of the above was financed by Wall Street capital; all public companies. You should ponder and better yet research what life might be like without capital markets?

Oh by the way, if you happen to have a sick parent, grandparent, loved one or friend, you should look into where all those medications keeping them alive came from; who manufactured them and where the research dollars came from for development and how many jobs they create.

I could go on and on, but I hope you’re smart enough to get my point. Your anger is misdirected… try 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the Capital.

If you really want to protest Wall Street don't be a hypocrite... be a real protester and stop using products and services derived from Wall Street... let's see how long you last and what quality of life you have.

My gripe is not with protesting or with standing up against greedy pieces of shit that break the law or take advantage of people. My gripe is with classifying everyone into one bunch. Most people involved with or running a public company are hard working Americans. There are bad people everywhere, but not all people are bad, even on Wall Street.

Mark Minervini
Posted by at 11/21/2011 06:02:00 PM

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the eye opener Mark.

    ReplyDelete

  2. Excellent examples of the 1980's and 90's working for capital markets and the public. Now, I'm going to load up on today's offerings. Pandora, Linked In and Groupon look great. My money's tied up at MF Global, though.

    ReplyDelete

  3. I haven't heard a single protester suggest everyone who works in finance or at a public company is selfish or corrupt. It's a cultural indictment that you did a fine job of illustrating in this post. Yes, Wall Street allocates capital that in some instances enables the development, manufacture and distribution of products from toothpaste to pharmaceuticals. But that's it - they're not the geniuses with the foresight and creativity to imagine new and better products, they just have the tightest grip on capital. If the best argument you can muster is that protesters should put down their cell phones because Samsung does deals on Wall Street then you have an inflated sense of what finance should mean to society.

    ReplyDelete

  4. I think this is misleading, like Luke said, no body is talking about the healthy capital investment for the development of society as a whole. If Wall Street were to be doing only that, the society would have been very grateful to them.

    The point of contention (which OWS is bringing up) are the highly leveraged bets that were/are being made on other's money that enriched the Wall Street Community (with a looming trouble of several trillion dollar derivatives). All this was done because of lack of regulation and Wall Street still wants to operate in the same way.

    Once the bubble busted in 2008 more than one-fifth of work force was out of work. Then Fed started pumping dollars in the name of helping American people and Banks started playing the same again by creating a Liquidity Driven Rally instead of easing lending processes and reduction in real-interest rate for small businesses.

    ReplyDelete

  5. That's a very good analysis Mark. Unfortunately, the majority of the Occupy Wall Street crowd that I've seen interviewed expresses more of a disdain for free markets and the profit motive than about poor fiscal and monetary policy. I think it would hilarious/great if the Mises Institute handed out miniature copies of Economics in One Lesson like Gideon Bibles.

    ReplyDelete

  6. Dear Mark,

    As much as I enjoy your posts I think you have missed the point of the protests and in addition most media is trying to push the same analysis as you. The protests are not about capitalism, the protests are about all the fraud in the system. The most recent example being MF Global. Zombie banks have been bailed out by taxpayer money and in turn pay huge bonuses to themselves. MF Global is not a bank, but as an example all bonuses were given 2 days before they declared bankruptcy. There is nothing wrong with capitalism, or financing of industry. There is a huge problem with corruption and fraud.

    ReplyDelete

  7. Spot on Mark. I agree their anger is justified but misdirected. They should be protesting government policy that creates Corporatism. A truly Free Market is it's antithesis.

    ReplyDelete

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