General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Occupy's tactics are hurting their message and the left [View all]glowing
(12,233 posts)I don't believe its possible until next spring or summer.... but it is possible. OWS is already morphing and has changed the narrative... I hear little of deficits these days and more of Politicians having to speak about jobs and protecting people over corporations. I love the Occupy Foreclosed homes initiative. Could you imagine what they PTB would do if everyone en masse decided not to pay their cc, home, and car payments for just a couple of months? They would be begging us to pay them.. forgiving debts, working to make adjust the principle on home loans to actual value, and quite possibly coming up with ways in which to loan money at non-usary rates.
Students seem the most adept with knowledge of OWS and are quite fluid with sending messages around the world in an instance. If they were to lead the way with refusal to pay student loans en masse, we would see how the financial institutes were willing to work with the debt and how they would be asking politicians to come up with meaningful reform on higher learning so that they were no longer on the hook for so much debt that literally has no security of being re-paid in today's job market.
That would help people to envision a payment refusal on the larger items such as mortgages, car loans, and credit cards. People are afraid of losing a credit rating, losing their homes, losing their mode of transportation, and losing the ability to put emergencies on a credit card to cover what jobs haven't for some time now. I think it would be more plausible for the country to en masse refuse to pay for a couple of months if they saw things working out better for student tuition/ costs/ debts. If at least 75% of the people participated in NOT paying, they would not penalize the people because then their would be no incentive for people to pay again and the banks would go bust without re-payment on debts that they lent out. The banksters and politicians would have to come up with the solutions very quickly if Americans decided to hold their money until a solution was had. They wouldn't have the police force to march into everyone's home and force their hand in writing a check. They have already been hurt by people switching banks. Even my hubby who doesn't pay a lick of attention to any of the politics or actions that I involve myself with, has on his own, come to the conclusion he's switching our money to a credit union. I put the bird in his ear, since our Wachovia accounts have officially switched to Wells Fargo, he doesn't like the way they dictate how he does the bill pay. So, he's opening the accounts at the credit union he seems to like the most and is working on switching his direct deposits, etc over to the accounts... AND on top of it all, they are going to pay us interest on a checking account. We will make money, albeit small, for having the money in the credit union. He's so excited that I put the bird in his ear to check out a credit union while he's looking to change banks. He's already told Wells Fargo that he doesn't like what they are doing. The agent lady told him that many people have complained about the "rules" and that the policies may get switched. He told the lady, while y'all think about possibly changing the rules, I'm just going to change my bank... LOL. He doesn't even realize he's part of a movement; just looking at a practical way of dealing with our finances.