Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Occupy Wall Street - the issues



1. "#OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations." It goes on: "The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future."


2. Our current capital markets are structured around a dangerous lie -- that the sole function of the corporation is to return value to shareholders. Under this construct, every action undertaken by Wall Street traders, mortgage brokers and the rest make perfect sense and are morally unambiguous. It was their job to sell as much as they could, to grab as much value as possible, in order to return that value to shareholders. So long as shareholder-value-maximization remains our governing principle, no change in regulations will change the fundamental behavior. Executives are simply acting according to their incentives.


http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/09/what-occupy-wall-street-got-right/?section=money_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_topstories+%28Top+Stories%29