and you would think even a Republican might understand these fairly simple facts.

PTxS

Of course they understand these facts. They embrace and apply them very very well. Look at the "emergency managers" in Michigan, ENRON's installation of Ahnold Schwarzennegar in California, etc.

And why in the world would he speak of OWS in the past tense? Just because corporate-owned media will not cover us does not mean we have gone anywhere, or ceased. And we know politicians will not hear our voice. Some wonder at a "lack of demands"...demands only legitimize those in false power. We will work to remove them from false power and corporate marriage. Iceland allowed, per capitalism, their fraudulent banks to fail. Ireland may be following suit.

Why can't we?

"The big key is understanding that the banks have built a model that profits from tricking people into taking bad loans, screwing investors by selling those bad loans to them (bad loans offer high returns, and look good on paper), then taking out insurance policies that collect if the loan they just sold to sucker investors goes bad. Then when the loan explodes, they collected those insurance payouts which, when the insurance company (biggest was AIG) went out of business were backed by TARP bailout money footed by the U.S. taxpayer. They then evict the homeowner and collect a second set of huge insurance payouts (homeowners insurance pays out full value of home upon eviction, and this is setting aside all the equity money which is pure profit). When your neighbor gets evicted, your property value drops simply from the bad luck of being beside him. If enough neighbors get evicted, your house's value falls to a point it's no longer worth paying, you walk away, and now your house is part of the crisis too.

As the cycle continues, the all-consuming maw of the banks buys these houses backs, flips them into rental properties, and before you know it you've got a Corktown, MI story where the average home value is reduced to ~$14,000, or a mortgage payment of ~150/mo, yet 85% of residents are tenants and the average rent is ~450/mo. Why? Because the banks also have the power to grant the loans people need to own the homes, and have decided that no individuals and/or small investors can receive loans, even tiny ones like ~$10,000 mortgages. As a result, giant corporations and wealthy investors (many bank owned, and all bank-affiliated) are buying up massive tracts of housing that are suddenly affordable, with bank-provided competition elimination in the form of no small loans being granted, then flipping them into rentals and enslaving the former homeowners who can't even afford to move.

Do you see how the banks have figured out how to make this situation profitable at every step? I'm not even going to go into how, thanks to being part of the Federal Reserve (not government, privately owned, don't forget it) ownership team and most important in-crowd in the world, the banks have literally UNLIMITED money with which to buy up these homes, and the only person who loses as they do so is us, the taxpayer, AGAIN, because the more money that is printed to use to buy our homes out from under us, the less the dollar in our pocket becomes worth, a fact only relevant to those who do not have the power simply to crank up the presses more.

'We can promise money to pay any debt. What we cannot promise is its purchasing power.' - Alan Greenspan, while Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

The game is rigged, and we need some time to unrig it. That's all we're asking for, and it benefits every person who is not a bank, while still allowing them to remain profitable throughout (even though they don't deserve it)." -Matt Occupy Ward, OccupyLA

economics to occupiers. I hope Obama will get rid of his economic team and ask people like Stiglitz to join his cabinet, Roubbini, Galbraith and a few others. They got everything RIGHT years ago. The cabinet he now has were part of the problem.