Wall Street protests spread to Sweden

It would be really great if this changes some things as far as accountability and responsibility go for the top 1% but I'm not holding my breath.

They showed a video the other day of the protesters in New York and some Wall Street brokers came out on a balcony, opened a bottle of champagne and we're drinking it while laughing at the people below. It just seemed to show such a lack of concern for the "little people" below.

It is just the socialist movement in the US spreading to Sweden . . . but since Sweden is socialist, why would it matter?

Of course they are spreading into Sweden. Why not? Sweden cannot be behind anything in the world It has to show that the little country can copy whatever is good or bad, but just copy it. And do not be surpised if Prime Minister Reinfeldt organizes a worldwide conference to discuss the "Wall Street Movement". That is how we are.

I'm confused! Since, in order to correct the financial mess caused by unregulated actions by bankers/fund managers, most of the world followed 'the Swedish Model', am I not correct in understanding that such unregulated actions cannot occur in Sweden?

If so, what is the purpose of protest here in Sweden? Norway I can understand (where Sovereign Fund Managers increased the investment in Lehman Bros. 6 fold in the few months prior to Lehman's crash thus wasting public money) but I am not aware of any such similar abuses here in Sweden.

TT is a local news agency, and not completely correct: There are a lot more places than Stockholm in Sweden that are planning demonstrations.

Hippies like the one in the middle are giving the rest of this movement a bad name.

But don't you dig the orange socks?

Stock markets cause global economy meltdown together with banks, governments bail them out, they continue to do the same thing and taking the same risks for high profit.

meanwhile people lose their jobs, houses , seems to me they should have invaded wallstreet and hung the idiots that caused everyone to suffer while they get richer and richer.

The great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too dumb to figure out who to be mad at.

These inane demonstrations are pretty pathetic. It's the usual malcontents and gaggle of social misfits (and spoiled brats) without a WTO conference to go to. An agenda driven media is obviously trying to hype it into more than it is and turn attention away from the governmental policies responsible for creating the current economic mess.

It will be be interesting to see if these people grow frustrated by their impotence and turn destructive and violent.

#cogito #9

That has gotta be one of the most profound statements I've ever read. Brilliant. I bet even Stalin or George W never came up with that one :-)

Columnist Mark Steyn gets credit for the most accurate and concise summation of these demonstrations when describes them as 'Anarchists for Big Government'.

They are not the most coherent or logical bunch you'll ever encounter.

"Roy E

Is your 'coherent or logical bunch' description directed at the 'anarchists' or 'Big Government'?

Hope you don't mind me asking :-)

The US government has to do more to get money into the hands of it's people, not banks and big business.

@-Roy E

The line I quoted in #9 is actually from Steyn's article (forgot the " " marks), which, I agree, is the most lucid summation of these demonstrations.

These "anti-capitalist" dummies are so clueless that they don't know they are being manipulated. Their organizers and PR are paid for by a notorious hyper-capitalisit crook recently convicted (in France) for insider trading.

@Keith #5083

It's referring to the inherent contradictions of protesters who have no understanding of where the things that they demand come from. They are oxymorons with feet.

swedish or english banners? more immigrants or swedes likely to partcipate? any guesses. I guess majority will be swedish cops.

Do people actually still believe that Sweden is "socialist"? Does nobody know the meanings of words anymore?

Hello! It's Companies (Corporations) that supply jobs. You have to produce something then you pay taxes to support the Government. LQQk how much you pay! If everyone in Sweden or anywhere else worked for their government and all these government employees taxed each other to pay one another, how long do you honestly think you would last?

The Government can't even help SAAB be bought out by another company. Just this very weekend while these uninformed soles were in the streets before they have to put on their snow tyres. Volvo (Geely) walked away from the deal to buy SAAB because of gross governmental malfeasance. Go ahead keep believing in big, sorry I mean humongous government. This is what is really destroying the USA and Europe.

The only people who should be protesting are Trollhättan's SAAB employees and their unions. They should be telling the Government to stop their games and allow business to do what it does best. Taking care of Business!

#RoyE #16

I was certain that was what you meant and I totally agree with your #16 comment, except that I believe they do understand where things come from but are too lazy or spoilt to do it themselves.

I was educated to believe thát if no-one would gave me a job, then I should make my own. In this 'handout world' so many have no idea of what this means - except, perhaps, in 3rd world countries.

As for the SAAB scenario - if you make goods competitively that people want to buy then you don't have these problems.Inneficient production at too high a price means you go down.Sad, but innevitable - ask the dinosaurs.

interesting that things have started to pick up but I see no point in protesting against something unless we have a viable alternative around like the Venus Project or the Swedish based EOS group propose.

Saab has been doomed ever since it went HMM, low quality, low tech , poor build... The 93 is a vauxhall/opel vectra in disguise. Why should anyone bale then out. It's a failed product. The state can retrain staff, but not fund a loss maker.

Most of the protesters are probably students on fluffy courses who don't even know about Sweden bank crisis, they were 2 or 3 years old!

What a lot of people fail to recognize s that Wall Street *caused* the current global depression and that it was Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, Clinton's Treasury Secretaries that deregulated Wall Street and wrote the "rules" that permitted Wall Street firms to package up junk mortgages and other exotic financial scams, marking them as AAA rated investments, and bilked entire countries out of their retirement savings, medical saving, reserve funds. Currently, and Der Siegel has a very good article on this, they have been manipulating food and other commodity prices and availability with the result that they have murdered over a million people in Africa and the developing world. These, and make no mistake about it, international criminals, no different from the industrialists and government officials of Nazi Germany that we hanged after the Second World War. What is necessary is a new international tribunal to hear cases against these monsters and their political bosses, both Clinton's, Bush, Obama, the entires stinking US government, along with the corporate and Wall Street vermin that employed them.

@millionmileman

Yes, it is the companies that supply jobs...for people in China.

And I definately agree with post #9: It's like waking up in the morning and finding bites on your body. You know something's been sucking your blodd, but you're not sure what.

Actually the mortgage problem started with Jimmy Carter. He wanted everyone to own their own home. Although a nobel thought it snowballed into the 'bundle mortgage' fiasco. Bank's loaning money to those not qualified, realitors sell homes for more than they were worth, and finally banks and Wall Street cashing in on it. A huge factor in todays problems.

Well good luck to them I guess but it's completely pointless. Only Americans and countries with big economies can have any sort of impact on Wallstreet. Besides, Sweden already has a lot of procedures in place to protect the average person from corporate greed so by simply being citizens of Sweden we're already doing our fair share to help the problem. :D

Companies are operated for the benefit of senior management, politicians and political parties are funded by bankers.

Countries operate to meet the needs of 1% of the population, wasting resources and screwing the rest of us.

All power to the protestors.

Now Germany & France have brokered a deal that will shore up banks that will lose money if Greece, Ireland or whoever default on debt. However individuals who lose their homes because they have been left unemployed because the same banks who bought governments bonds, will not give a credit line to their employers, get nothing and the wall street brokers and the bankers, continue to drink champagne.

I am in favour of a free market system that in the past has generated competition and growth, but when you see the fat cats that engineered the whole global financial mess, continuing to profit from the mess that THEY created and even laughing at the plight of the people who are suffering most. We are nearing a situation analogues to that in 1790's in France.

Louis XVI ascended to the throne amidst a financial crisis; the state was nearing bankruptcy and outlays outpaced income. Yet the nobility ( fat cat bankers etc. of today) continued to live as if nothing had changed. Marie Antoinette's famous speech of " Let them eat cake" was the spark that started the revolution, I do not expect to see Bankers and other financial moguls who have created and profited from the global financial crisis sent to madame le guillotine, but here's hoping........

They will have 7-11 Slurpies in hell before that happens.

"Gbowee also emphasized how important it was for protestors to have a clear goal, and to stick to it, reported TV channel al-Arabiyya, among others."

If protesters have not a clear goal, they should call for Zlatan.

Seriously. If you make a survey amonst protesters against anything you can imagine about, you will be surprised that at least 50% of them do not know what are they protesting against. They just go where they are called, they are given leaflets with instructions of how to demonstrate in front of the cameras and how to shout when a reporter is in the neighbourhood. A great majority has not the faintest idea of what is going on. Just try what I am saying and you will see the truth.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6164/6225849088_4fd0c3e282_b.jpg

I believe that says it all.....

I bothered myself reading a flyer they gave me and I think most of you don't know what these guys are asking for and automaticaly think they are communists or something like that. It's a bit different from the demostrations we've seen before and they are not so clueless.

Just some days ago, a 'friend' sent me the following:

"A glowing appraisal of Sweden just appeared in the US media, the decidedly 'Right' side of it. The conservative magazine in question, 'The American Spectator', notes Sweden is -- in a number of ways -- effectively embracing what many term 'neoliberal reforms' even more than the US, singing Sweden's praises because of this.

The article ends by observing: Nonetheless, it's surely paradoxical -- and tragic -- that a small Nordic country which remains a byword for its (at times obsessive) commitment to egalitarianism has proved far more willing than America to give economic liberty a chance.

'Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America' - from the decidedly 'Right-wing' magazine 'The American Spectator'

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/09/29/free-market-sweden-social-demo

Of course, what isn't said in this article is how such reforms led to substantive societal pain, with too many today seen 'scapegoating' immigrants for that pain, and so keeping focus from the neoliberal reforms which cut the funding for the benefits that would have precluded both the pain and divisiveness now present. But with 70 billion kroner in income tax cuts alone, not to mention 'corporate welfare', at least society's most affluent members are happy.

I'll add that US Progressives would view praise from The Spectator as a sure indication they were doing the wrong things."

I'll add that as it's widely acknowledged that today's Governmental options are limited due to the imperatives which making Sweden 'attractive for business' demand, it's worthwhile reading former US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (Roosevelt was president during the 'Great Depression') words upon fascism: "The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."

The FDR excerpt comes courtesy of Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Franklin_D._Roosevelt

In summation then, and especially with a party having neo-Nazi roots today sitting in Parliament, it would seem that we in Sweden should be grateful that there are enough left here with the vision and courage to 'Occupy'. I for one wish Godspeed to them!

End of conversation -- punkt slut.

Amazing...we've tried communism before. Anybody want to go back to that?

All those protesting, please pull out $1000 and send to Greece, Spain, Italy or Ireland. How the European model is falling apart...yet the urge is to blame the US.

The US is finally coming out of its recession and now Europe is pulling us back down and if not Europe the protesters.

Every protester should go home, open up a science book and start studying on their own. Then get a freaking job...any job and be pleased with any pay....afterall you must realize why we're going through all this.... why the cheap credit didn't work in any European or American country........we are the lucky generation that has to absorb China and India into the world economy. Live it and love it because it is our reality. Lower your expectations.... you are not number one anymore.

China and India are just starting to penetrate Eurpose. It will be fun to see what the reaction is in a couple of years.

Ciao!

For a better peaceful world, a fair and totally honest declaration of Amnesty will do the magic right now in regard to Assad, then many Sheikhs in a positive chain reaction.

The source of the knowledge is so genuine, clear and strong that no one will believe it to be true now and I shall not devulge to anyone!

Just watch how things unfold in an unprecedented way, one by one before the now digitally interconnected World. The days of old style politics are now history! The moment any of the heads of powers starts just one killing of own or foreign Country Citizens to remain in power, a crime against Humanity gets committed and such crime approving Head, just like a ordinary Citizen: Criminal, now have to face True Justice backed by the new Global Public.

Simultaneously, in pace with the natural or cosmic weakening of all the old political platforms in disguise of religions, the old autocratic days of Emirs, Sheikhs, Kings etc. are not too far from ending.

The land piece of Syria will be "King-Free' soon and many other lands such as Nepal, Thailand, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi, Oman etc. will be among the next ones.

The evidences (noted and automatically saved by electronic Medias, therefore, by the collective Public minds on a ongoing basis) of extremely negative cruel acts or in other words, crimes against Humanity are now not destroy-able anymore.

Brutalities like the following fact in Arab-lands, for example, now, will have great negative impacts on the future generation of declining pilgrimages in all parts of the World.

Demand of the time: Smart non-violent politics.

The Greatness of the West: 1 Pre-meditated murderer of 80 lives still alive in the West and 8 needy thieves, earning not enough as foreign workers in a richest Country to became accidental killers and die in unimaginable brutal ways in the East.

Recently, one Norwegian killer in a pre-planned way killed 80 and probably won't receive even suspended death penalty in the World Class generous atmosphere of the Western Justice System and in Super rich: Saudi Arabia, 8 poor foreign workers from Bangladesh (with insufficient wages (e.g. US$ 5 to $10 a day for 12 hours of hard laboring job) have been murdered openly by autocratic order of a non-benevolent king in this modern, globally awakened time: in a primitive, brutal, barbarian style as a punishment for accidental killing of one!

The evidences of these types of heinous acts (Just like Assad's of Syria; for personal enjoyment of hereditary power, in old styled form of politics, to suppress awareness of true justice by brutal treatments for creating fear in isolated portion of the collective global Public) that are currently taking place in this rapidly growing digital communication technology and time are now invincible and not subject to procedural destruction anymore, therefore, to the surprise of the perpetrators, the painful memories shall never be wiped out!

Hello. In the US, these are not anti-capitalist protests. Americans are overwhelmingly capitalist. If you are in the States, go down to your local Occupy site and you will see that these are workaday Americans who are against Corporations owning the politicians and against giving out welfare to corporations. This is primarily anti-corruption anti-corporate welfare. And trying to get some real representation from our elected leaders. Getting money out of politics. Not anti-capitalist. Fox News will tell you these are anti-capitalist hippies. Not True. This movement is more libertarian than anything else. Americans don't want welfare from the government, they want accountable politicians and corporations that don't come before people. I'm sure it will just be hijacked by socialists in Sweden since Libertarians are almost non-existent in Sweden.

The other side of the coin

Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters accused of living in filth as shocking pictures show one demonstrator defecating on a POLICE CAR

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2046586/Occupy-Wall-Street-Shocking-photos-protester-defecating-POLICE-CAR.html

"Scathing criticism was leveled Friday by none other than Liberia's peace campaigner Leymah Gbowee, shortly after she was named joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

She praised the US activists for their energy, but said: "If you are doing a protest you need to have an agenda. If you wake up in the morning and poke a guitar, take a drum downtown and someone is singing and another one is dancing and movie stars are coming and saying do this, do that... and everyone is confused, you'll be there for a long time."

This is what she said. The Local should copy the whole and not just a condensation of it..

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8357747/wall-st-protestors-aims-an-enigma-3-weeks-on

Want more? Do your job

@Marc the Texan

"Americans don't want welfare from the government, they want accountable politicians and corporations that don't come before people."

I agree with this assessment. Big business and the Wall Street groups have learned to play the system. Taking bailout money and then enjoying they're multi-million dollar bonus's. Most Americans don't play they system. However in Sweden and the rest of Europe it is a way of life.

Here we go again. We'll never get out of the downward spiral unless we act in a measured way. It is typical of people to get upset with things going on and the immediate reaction is often to go all the way in the opposite direction. Extremes don't work. You don't change a system because the laws in place to regulate it are weak and people abuse them. You make the laws stricter, demand higher accountability...

Let us change the world! Wishful thinking.

It's all about this stupid iPhone race instead of making real goods. Who needs iPhone? But all society is managed to produce only iPhones. Western model of capitalism can not offer something new. It's The crises of ideas, not the crises of finance.

From Russia with Love.

Protesting against intelligentsia is a must for those who do not belong to the elite of the society.

Believe me, few Americans take these protests or protesters seriously. They're incoherent and ridiculous, for starters. They're also clueless: How long do they believe they'd survive anarchy?

Regarding corporations buying votes from politicians, this couldn't happen if the politicians weren't selling their votes to corporations. So why not demand that the politicians stop selling their votes? Duh, er, um, EVIL CORPORATIONS!

This bizarre, knee-jerk stupidity enabled politicians to get away with limiting our political speech through McCain-Feingold instead of limiting their own corruption (until Citizens United, that is). I still don't understand why 300 million Americans willingly gave up their civil rights when Congress, i.e. 535 politicians, could solve the corruption problem by imposing anti-corruption rules on themselves. Yes, that's right: Congress can govern themselves through their own rule-making and enforcement processes.

Regarding corporations ruling the world, you've got to be no smarter than a bag of hammers to believe this. Most of what corporations do can't be done without our voluntary cooperation and participation, from producing and buying their products and shares to watching their commercials to voting for their political cronies. Again, I don't understand why we don't get our own houses in order before attacking others. Are we so completely powerless to control our own thoughts and deeds?

We could try the 'wipe out everyone who can read and write' idea, anyone who earns over a certain sum or has any talent in any field. Worked well for Cambodia......or NOT.

Sure parts of this Capitalist system suck but the world is far better off overall than under any screwed up Communist/Marxist alternative. We could all be equally poor then.

Free market economics works only when those who take part do so ethically, honestly and transparently. Adam Smith made that abundantly clear. When human nature (greed, envy, lust, etc) make their way into the game, as they always will, any system will fail. The problem with the global economy is not the free-market approach but rather the immoral manner in which the rich have stolen from or otherwise exploited the poor.

@Stockholm Sam

I think you hit on something concerning "..exploited the poor". I think it has been a tactic used by governments, big business, and religous leaders the world over to keep people poor and uneducated. Even though they say different. By telling them it is always someone elses fault for they're problems. Then maybe give them a few crumbs to pacify them.

Whatever, it happens to be one of the cardinal virtues of Western Democracies that people can protest peacefully.The very act of protest at least demonstrates some form of commitment (time/energy) and even if I do not agree with every peaceful protest I celebrate the freedom of our societies to allow it.

For as long as we entertain the concept that there are 'THEM' and *US* , and everything is always the fault of 'THEM', we support the myth that we are not in control of our own life. We abdicate control because the responsibility is too much hard work and then blame those to whom we have abdicated when our dreams have to turn an unexpected corner!

It is we who give the media it's life. It is we who give all companies their existence.It is we who legitimise the actions of governments. It is our unconcerned apathy that supports the 'THEM'. We should beware lest our principles disturb our cotton-wool comfort lives.

Was it the pot that called the kettle black, or the other way around?

Hooligans to the streets. No football? Wallstreet.

Lavaux,

I take them seriously and so do a lot of other people I know. I'm sorry to say that you just don't know what you're talking about. It's the system that's corrupt. You can't win office without big money. Politicians who don't take money run all the time. And guess what... Duh! They don't win. Demanding politicians not take money is assbackwards. Not only that, it's been tried and the ones who don't take money or don't take enough, end up losing. You have to remove the money first. Does all this have to be spelled out for you?

Big corporations pay lobbyists to write most of the legislation that passes through congress. Not only that, they draft the regulation for many agencies that is just enacted without any oversight at all. How is it that they don't rule?

This movement is about getting corporate money and influence out of politics. It's about the interests of the citizenry coming before the interests of corporations. If you can't grasp that concept then there is no hope for you.

Marc the Texan in comment #36 hit the nail on the head.

"these are workaday Americans who are against Corporations owning the politicians and against giving out welfare to corporations. This is primarily anti-corruption anti-corporate welfare. And trying to get some real representation from our elected leaders. Getting money out of politics. Not anti-capitalist."

We're sick of the bullsh#t and want corporations and politicians to be held accountable for what they do just like everyone else is.

Next "Nobel Prize" in Economics to the Wall Street protesters. Motivation? For their efforts of changing the world economic rules without having the faintest idea why, how or when.

Well, they do have a nebulous idea how they want to change the world. It goes like this:

We feel we are entitled to other people's stuff without actually having to work for it.

"We feel we are entitled to other people's stuff without actually having to work for it"

Yes, that is the attitude of Wall Street and the Banks

The protests on Wall Street are not anti-capitalist, they are totally capitalist! Those people want banks to be held accountable for their corruptness and to not be bailed out by the US Government, who bails them instead of the American people-- who are constantly loosing out. The American people want work and the ability to go shopping--- totally capitalist!

COMMENT # 28

I agree 100% , and the sooner the better.

A revolution is going to occur in the United States.

The lamp posts there will be full.

However, that revolution must spread to Europe, and in Ukraine in particular. l

Amazing...we've tried communism before. Anybody want to go back to that?

All those protesting, please pull out $1000 and send to Greece, Spain, Italy or Ireland. How the European model is falling apart...yet the urge is to blame the US.

The US is finally coming out of its recession and now Europe is pulling us back down and if not Europe the protesters.

Every protester should go home, open up a science book and start studying on their own. Then get a freaking job...any job and be pleased with any pay....afterall you must realize why we're going through all this.... why the cheap credit didn't work in any European or American country........we are the lucky generation that has to absorb China and India into the world economy. Live it and love it because it is our reality. Lower your expectations.... you are not number one anymore.

China and India are just starting to penetrate Eurpose. It will be fun to see what the reaction is in a couple of years.

Ciao!

Someone should start a protest against the protesters, because if not, the protesters will protest because we do not protest agains them. And then... well... and then.

Their agenda is as a cloud of cosmic gas or dust in outer space. Time will tell.

I live in New York. I am a retired teacher and never protested before even though I went to college in the late 60's. I was part of the demonstration that was in front of CEOs' residences. The average age was in the 30's with about 30% over 45. These were not left wing kooks but ordinary people who are fed up.

Rather than typing more, just read all the post from Marc The Texan. He hit the nail on the head with his posts.

@cogito,

"Well, they do have a nebulous idea how they want to change the world. It goes like this:

We feel we are entitled to other people's stuff without actually having to work for it. "

.......... where did you get that from? They are demostrating agaits corporations and bankers stealing our money and devaluating our work and you automaticaly say a nonsence. De verdad que eres "Cogito" ......... pero de la cabeza!!!

Anything planned in Gothenburg?????

@rumcaja

Ceci est un espace anglophone.