JP Morgan literally budgets for fines. And it's a HUGE number, like 15 billion or something absurd. But they make so much they don't care.
HSBC was caught laundering a billion dollars for drug cartels and violating sanctions on a number of countries and ended up paying a fine that came out to 2 months' profit.
Not revenues, mind you. Profit. (Naturally, no one was indicted.) Their stock went up the day the fine was announced.
I really don't understand why we don't line these guys up and shoot them in the face.
I cannot agree with this strongly enough. A central tenant to the concept of a corporation is that the person or small group of people at the top become legally liable if the corporation engages in illegal activities. Do date, there have been no major arrests and only a handful of minor ones. The government just fines the banks, who pay the government back with money they make from TARP sales/loans and access to the teller window at the Federal reserve. There's no personal incentive not to go down the same path again, and no real legal barriers to doing so.
What was done that was actually illegal?
Besides, in my opinion trying to find people to blame for the crisis is a distraction when what we should really be angry about is the fact that profits at most corporations are up 50-100% or more since 2007, while salaries are not.
I cannot agree with this strongly enough. A central tenant to the concept of a corporation is that the person or small group of people at the top become legally liable if the corporation engages in illegal activities. Do date, there have been no major arrests and only a handful of minor ones. The government just fines the banks, who pay the government back with money they make from TARP sales/loans and access to the teller window at the Federal reserve. There's no personal incentive not to go down the same path again, and no real legal barriers to doing so.
What was done that was actually illegal?
Besides, in my opinion trying to find people to blame for the crisis is a distraction when what we should really be angry about is the fact that profits at most corporations are up 50-100% or more since 2007, while salaries are not.
Fraud. Lots and lots of fraud. Also money laundering as Salvation points out. But mostly fraud.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I cannot agree with this strongly enough. A central tenant to the concept of a corporation is that the person or small group of people at the top become legally liable if the corporation engages in illegal activities. Do date, there have been no major arrests and only a handful of minor ones. The government just fines the banks, who pay the government back with money they make from TARP sales/loans and access to the teller window at the Federal reserve. There's no personal incentive not to go down the same path again, and no real legal barriers to doing so.
What was done that was actually illegal?
Besides, in my opinion trying to find people to blame for the crisis is a distraction when what we should really be angry about is the fact that profits at most corporations are up 50-100% or more since 2007, while salaries are not.
South african miners unionize. South african miners strike. South african miners gets shot while on a strike. South african miners goes on a strike again. What's the south african unemployment rate? 25%?
We can spend a few more pages discussing the pathology of the rich, but when it comes to the working poor of the west, are the working poor nearly as powerless as everyone seems to be cheerfully agreeing?
Whether its straight up collective bargaining, unions owning newspapers or political endorsements, they all start in choosing to organize and efforts that extend far beyond showing up at the voting booth every four years and hoping the right old white guy dies. It makes me uncomfortable that the working class is reduced to a collective subject without agency or power in favour of stories about the might of the rich - even if these stories are set out to cast them in a negative light.
They have nothing to lose but their chains etcetc.
I don't know what this means. Guy getting shot is quite a big deal? No?
If the working poor were more powerful, they wouldn't be poor.
Why does that make you uncomfortable? What is bad about people organizing? Is there something bad about political organisation?
And what do you mean by the chains quote?
Honestly, this isn't disagreement couched as rhetorical questions. I'm not a fan of that rhetorical strategy. I just can't understand your point, is all. Would you mind clarifying a little?
I could be wrong, but it sounds like Calixtus is saying, "The working class aren't powerless; they should be using collective bargaining to achieve better wages. To those who suggest that the current environment of high unemployment and shady corporate tactics makes it too difficult for unions, I point to South Africa, where unemployment is 25% and strikers get shot at. Perhaps instead of pointing fingers at the 1% we should be encouraging workers to take control of their own destinies."
Historically and globally, unionization and collective bargaining has been and is respectively considerably more difficult than in the modern western world.
I'm fine with finger pointing at rich people, but it creeps me the fuck out to see it done in a narrative that simultaneously berates the beliefs of the rich with regards to individuality and sanctifies the same belief by refusing to aknowledge the power of collectivism and collective action.
There are parts of Europe where 30 years ago they tried - tried - to prevent the formation of unions with martial law and machine guns. For all the bullshit things Wal-Mart does to their workers, they ain't doing that.
I mean the history of labor is littered with unions which were almost completely wiped out by government action (just ask the Wobblies or for that matter the whole ideology of Syndicalism). I acknowledge that saying it's difficult to unionize doesn't mean you shouldn't, and that a history which bemoans the poor as agency-less saps is another cog in the ideological system which keeps this inequality running but it's a difficult thing to ask for people, especially when most of us have been raised on the idea that unions are a thing of the past and unnecessary now.
And I do think that there are seeds for a new run of unionization and in many cases (especially in states and in workplaces where unionization is banned) radical unionization, but we shouldn't minimize the difficulty of the process, especially when so many people and so many organizations died out a century ago fighting for the same damn things we're going to be fighting for over the next two decades.
South african miners unionize. South african miners strike. South african miners gets shot while on a strike. South african miners goes on a strike again. What's the south african unemployment rate? 25%?
We can spend a few more pages discussing the pathology of the rich, but when it comes to the working poor of the west, are the working poor nearly as powerless as everyone seems to be cheerfully agreeing?
Whether its straight up collective bargaining, unions owning newspapers or political endorsements, they all start in choosing to organize and efforts that extend far beyond showing up at the voting booth every four years and hoping the right old white guy dies. It makes me uncomfortable that the working class is reduced to a collective subject without agency or power in favour of stories about the might of the rich - even if these stories are set out to cast them in a negative light.
They have nothing to lose but their chains etcetc.
I don't know what this means. Guy getting shot is quite a big deal? No?
If the working poor were more powerful, they wouldn't be poor.
Why does that make you uncomfortable? What is bad about people organizing? Is there something bad about political organisation?
And what do you mean by the chains quote?
Honestly, this isn't disagreement couched as rhetorical questions. I'm not a fan of that rhetorical strategy. I just can't understand your point, is all. Would you mind clarifying a little?
I could be wrong, but it sounds like Calixtus is saying, "The working class aren't powerless; they should be using collective bargaining to achieve better wages. To those who suggest that the current environment of high unemployment and shady corporate tactics makes it too difficult for unions, I point to South Africa, where unemployment is 25% and strikers get shot at. Perhaps instead of pointing fingers at the 1% we should be encouraging workers to take control of their own destinies."
Historically and globally, unionization and collective bargaining has been and is respectively considerably more difficult than in the modern western world.
I'm fine with finger pointing at rich people, but it creeps me the fuck out to see it done in a narrative that simultaneously berates the beliefs of the rich with regards to individuality and sanctifies the same belief by refusing to aknowledge the power of collectivism and collective action.
There are parts of Europe where 30 years ago they tried - tried - to prevent the formation of unions with martial law and machine guns. For all the bullshit things Wal-Mart does to their workers, they ain't doing that.
I'm afraid this doesn't make any sense to me.
Collective action is the only way for the poor and otherwise powerless to get what they want. What's creepy about that? And how does that sanctify the idea of... well I'm not sure anyway. Nor am I sure what it means to sanctify a belief.
The fact that unionisation has sometimes been faced with armed suppression means... what, exactly? That they're dangerous? Well, that obviously makes no sense. Nobody is dumb enough to believe that only bad people get machine-gunned.
@Calixtus, you're arguing poorly enough for your position that rather than sounding as though you're on the side of more respect for working class power you sound as though you're calling people lazy for not being willing enough to die for the cause.
edit: HSBC is 100% literally a criminal enterprise.
I cannot agree with this strongly enough. A central tenant to the concept of a corporation is that the person or small group of people at the top become legally liable if the corporation engages in illegal activities. Do date, there have been no major arrests and only a handful of minor ones. The government just fines the banks, who pay the government back with money they make from TARP sales/loans and access to the teller window at the Federal reserve. There's no personal incentive not to go down the same path again, and no real legal barriers to doing so.
What was done that was actually illegal?
Besides, in my opinion trying to find people to blame for the crisis is a distraction when what we should really be angry about is the fact that profits at most corporations are up 50-100% or more since 2007, while salaries are not.
@Calixtus, you're arguing poorly enough for your position that rather than sounding as though you're on the side of more respect for working class power you sound as though you're calling people lazy for not being willing enough to die for the cause.
edit: HSBC is 100% literally a criminal enterprise.
I mentioned a few pages back that "live with your parents until you're 30" is a viable way for a non-1% to get their feet under them financially, one that just won't fly for the majority of North Americans due to social factors. Unions fall under the same category. For a large portion of North Americans, unions are considered bad for everyone. Even people involved in unions often take a "my union is OK, the others are all terrible" or "I wish that I didn't have to be in a union, and deal with all this bullshit." For most people, their only knowing interactions with unions on a day to day basis are negative - school teachers going on strike, transit workers going on strike, etc. For parents making $7.50 an hour, that school teachers want 45k a year to start and a pension (and won't be there to take care of their kids while the parent is at work), that doesn't go over well at all. If Walmart employees strike, they're more likely to piss off the people who just want a super pack of Pampers and a couple bottles of Coke for a cheap price than they are to realize any support from their fellow low-earners. People calling their phone company's customer service who need to wait thirty minutes because one site is on strike are going to be less than pleased at the striking people. And people on the left who support unions even when the unions are being ridiculous don't do the left or unions in general any good service, they just do more long term harm to the concept of unions.
You can name a lot of things that would help the people in the 99% who are struggling, but many of them will be actively resisted by the 99% themselves. Unions fall under that category.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Yeah but that's a political problem rather than a problem inherent with unions. The issue is that unions just haven't been making a broader case for the last several years as to why it's good for people to get higher wages and pension plans, and this is largely a product of
A)The moderation of the unions in the 50s and 60s into just being specific trade unions (AKA the AFL-CIO focused primarily on industrial workers, so if you weren't making cars then you likely weren't interacting with the AFL-CIO much)
B)The lack of new unionization efforts for the new industries (the service industry, IT, etc)
And that lack of unionization in new sectors has given us this weird idea that our middle class is deteriorating completely because of the lack of manufacturing jobs, as if steelworking or lugging shipping goods from one boat to another was an inherently middle class job. The thing is that, yeah, it's likely that old-school manufacturing is out (though not entirely, my friend works for Citibike and a lot of his job is literally manufacturing bikes), and if you look from the 50s on it's easy to say "manufacturing jobs supported our middle class, manufacturing is declining due to things out of our control, hence the decline of the middle class is out of our control"
What needs to be said is that if you look back another century, there was nothing inherently middle class about the textile or steel industries. Put simply: without unions, manufacturing would not be a middle class job. It was unionization efforts that led to people being able to live off of a 40 hour a week bluecollar job. And with that said, there's nothing to say that the service industry couldn't be unionized by a similar process.
@Calixtus, you're arguing poorly enough for your position that rather than sounding as though you're on the side of more respect for working class power you sound as though you're calling people lazy for not being willing enough to die for the cause.
edit: HSBC is 100% literally a criminal enterprise.
I mentioned a few pages back that "live with your parents until you're 30" is a viable way for a non-1% to get their feet under them financially, one that just won't fly for the majority of North Americans due to social factors. Unions fall under the same category. For a large portion of North Americans, unions are considered bad for everyone. Even people involved in unions often take a "my union is OK, the others are all terrible" or "I wish that I didn't have to be in a union, and deal with all this bullshit." For most people, their only knowing interactions with unions on a day to day basis are negative - school teachers going on strike, transit workers going on strike, etc. For parents making $7.50 an hour, that school teachers want 45k a year to start and a pension (and won't be there to take care of their kids while the parent is at work), that doesn't go over well at all. If Walmart employees strike, they're more likely to piss off the people who just want a super pack of Pampers and a couple bottles of Coke for a cheap price than they are to realize any support from their fellow low-earners. People calling their phone company's customer service who need to wait thirty minutes because one site is on strike are going to be less than pleased at the striking people. And people on the left who support unions even when the unions are being ridiculous don't do the left or unions in general any good service, they just do more long term harm to the concept of unions.
You can name a lot of things that would help the people in the 99% who are struggling, but many of them will be actively resisted by the 99% themselves. Unions fall under that category.
Which needs to change. Unions need to get their good reputation back and expand their support in the poor and middle classes. How quickly the public forgets that without unions they'd have less power in their own jobs, less safety for dangerous professions and union workers are human beings who deserve proper compensation for their work. How do they expect teachers to teach their kids when they can't pay the bills and their classes are filled with so many kids that its hard to make sure each student gets the education they need to prosper?
Yeah but that's a political problem rather than a problem inherent with unions. The issue is that unions just haven't been making a broader case for the last several years as to why it's good for people to get higher wages and pension plans, and this is largely a product of
A)The moderation of the unions in the 50s and 60s into just being specific trade unions (AKA the AFL-CIO focused primarily on industrial workers, so if you weren't making cars then you likely weren't interacting with the AFL-CIO much)
B)The lack of new unionization efforts for the new industries (the service industry, IT, etc)
And that lack of unionization in new sectors has given us this weird idea that our middle class is deteriorating completely because of the lack of manufacturing jobs, as if steelworking or lugging shipping goods from one boat to another was an inherently middle class job. The thing is that, yeah, it's likely that old-school manufacturing is out (though not entirely, my friend works for Citibike and a lot of his job is literally manufacturing bikes), and if you look from the 50s on it's easy to say "manufacturing jobs supported our middle class, manufacturing is declining due to things out of our control, hence the decline of the middle class is out of our control"
What needs to be said is that if you look back another century, there was nothing inherently middle class about the textile or steel industries. Put simply: without unions, manufacturing would not be a middle class job. It was unionization efforts that led to people being able to live off of a 40 hour a week bluecollar job. And with that said, there's nothing to say that the service industry couldn't be unionized by a similar process.
A major part of the problem is unions have been confined to lower skill jobs or blue-collar jobs and thus many of todays workers have become convinced they are white-collar and thus above needing a union. After all, they are salaried so it's no big deal or something.
Yeah, I'd like to see most of the anti-union bullshit get torn down. It's a really good example of how the shitheads that have made it to the top, have used class warfare and othering tactics to pit the people they fuck over against each other.
It's also a good example of how vile "both sides are the same, so sticking with status quo" is as well. Just so god damn grating, when people point out the crooked things that have happened with unions in the past, while ignoring all the dirty shit the self-proclaimed "job creators" have, are currently and planning to do in the future.
Yeah but that's a political problem rather than a problem inherent with unions. The issue is that unions just haven't been making a broader case for the last several years as to why it's good for people to get higher wages and pension plans, and this is largely a product of
A)The moderation of the unions in the 50s and 60s into just being specific trade unions (AKA the AFL-CIO focused primarily on industrial workers, so if you weren't making cars then you likely weren't interacting with the AFL-CIO much)
B)The lack of new unionization efforts for the new industries (the service industry, IT, etc)
And that lack of unionization in new sectors has given us this weird idea that our middle class is deteriorating completely because of the lack of manufacturing jobs, as if steelworking or lugging shipping goods from one boat to another was an inherently middle class job. The thing is that, yeah, it's likely that old-school manufacturing is out (though not entirely, my friend works for Citibike and a lot of his job is literally manufacturing bikes), and if you look from the 50s on it's easy to say "manufacturing jobs supported our middle class, manufacturing is declining due to things out of our control, hence the decline of the middle class is out of our control"
What needs to be said is that if you look back another century, there was nothing inherently middle class about the textile or steel industries. Put simply: without unions, manufacturing would not be a middle class job. It was unionization efforts that led to people being able to live off of a 40 hour a week bluecollar job. And with that said, there's nothing to say that the service industry couldn't be unionized by a similar process.
A major part of the problem is unions have been confined to lower skill jobs or blue-collar jobs and thus many of todays workers have become convinced they are white-collar and thus above needing a union. After all, they are salaried so it's no big deal or something.
Also the Jacobin had this great article about how the "do what you love" idea has made a lot of people think "hey, I'm doing something that I'm passionate about, who cares if I'm working 80 hours a week with no overtime?"
Seriously the more stuff I've heard about how ridiculously screwed over devs get in the game industry I'm surprised there hasn't been a movement for more workers rights in SF.
I'm less active in the grad student union than I should be.
It's not perfect, but I am 100% certain that without a union we would not be paid.
I know because of the GS union I'm a part of TA/RA'ships etc have most of their tuition paid for, a stipend that is more than $fuckyou, a big discount on the health insurance policy (which I don't need because of the ACA), and free dental/eye care insurance.
There's also an adjunct/contingent faculty union that may have sprung up around the same time that offers a similar array but with more money involved; basically despite the fact that the university is still using such faculty to "save on costs" (i/e pay administrators more and build facilities only used by a fraction of the student population) at least they're not treated as virtual slave labor as many adjuncts face across the country.
I'm less active in the grad student union than I should be.
It's not perfect, but I am 100% certain that without a union we would not be paid.
Be grateful you had the option. As a grad student, I did get paid ($1086 a month, plus taking off part of my tuition), but anything beyond talking about organization was decidedly a risk, assuming you wanted to teach again next semester.
So, in other words, like most organized labor in Georgia.
Posts
HSBC was caught laundering a billion dollars for drug cartels and violating sanctions on a number of countries and ended up paying a fine that came out to 2 months' profit.
Not revenues, mind you. Profit. (Naturally, no one was indicted.) Their stock went up the day the fine was announced.
I really don't understand why we don't line these guys up and shoot them in the face.
What was done that was actually illegal?
Besides, in my opinion trying to find people to blame for the crisis is a distraction when what we should really be angry about is the fact that profits at most corporations are up 50-100% or more since 2007, while salaries are not.
Fraud. Lots and lots of fraud. Also money laundering as Salvation points out. But mostly fraud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Money_laundering
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/hsbc-mexican-branches-said-to-be-traffickers-favorites.html
Mexican cartels were using boxes to deposit cash that were designed to fit perfectly into HSBC teller windows. #efficiency
EDIT: And that's the drug stuff that we could prove, as opposed to the terrorist stuff that (IIRC) we couldn't.
I'm fine with finger pointing at rich people, but it creeps me the fuck out to see it done in a narrative that simultaneously berates the beliefs of the rich with regards to individuality and sanctifies the same belief by refusing to aknowledge the power of collectivism and collective action.
There are parts of Europe where 30 years ago they tried - tried - to prevent the formation of unions with martial law and machine guns. For all the bullshit things Wal-Mart does to their workers, they ain't doing that.
And I do think that there are seeds for a new run of unionization and in many cases (especially in states and in workplaces where unionization is banned) radical unionization, but we shouldn't minimize the difficulty of the process, especially when so many people and so many organizations died out a century ago fighting for the same damn things we're going to be fighting for over the next two decades.
I'm afraid this doesn't make any sense to me.
Collective action is the only way for the poor and otherwise powerless to get what they want. What's creepy about that? And how does that sanctify the idea of... well I'm not sure anyway. Nor am I sure what it means to sanctify a belief.
The fact that unionisation has sometimes been faced with armed suppression means... what, exactly? That they're dangerous? Well, that obviously makes no sense. Nobody is dumb enough to believe that only bad people get machine-gunned.
edit: HSBC is 100% literally a criminal enterprise.
Reading fail on my part. Yeah, I know about the HSBC stuff. I meant illegal activities specifically surrounding the financial crisis.
I mentioned a few pages back that "live with your parents until you're 30" is a viable way for a non-1% to get their feet under them financially, one that just won't fly for the majority of North Americans due to social factors. Unions fall under the same category. For a large portion of North Americans, unions are considered bad for everyone. Even people involved in unions often take a "my union is OK, the others are all terrible" or "I wish that I didn't have to be in a union, and deal with all this bullshit." For most people, their only knowing interactions with unions on a day to day basis are negative - school teachers going on strike, transit workers going on strike, etc. For parents making $7.50 an hour, that school teachers want 45k a year to start and a pension (and won't be there to take care of their kids while the parent is at work), that doesn't go over well at all. If Walmart employees strike, they're more likely to piss off the people who just want a super pack of Pampers and a couple bottles of Coke for a cheap price than they are to realize any support from their fellow low-earners. People calling their phone company's customer service who need to wait thirty minutes because one site is on strike are going to be less than pleased at the striking people. And people on the left who support unions even when the unions are being ridiculous don't do the left or unions in general any good service, they just do more long term harm to the concept of unions.
You can name a lot of things that would help the people in the 99% who are struggling, but many of them will be actively resisted by the 99% themselves. Unions fall under that category.
A)The moderation of the unions in the 50s and 60s into just being specific trade unions (AKA the AFL-CIO focused primarily on industrial workers, so if you weren't making cars then you likely weren't interacting with the AFL-CIO much)
B)The lack of new unionization efforts for the new industries (the service industry, IT, etc)
And that lack of unionization in new sectors has given us this weird idea that our middle class is deteriorating completely because of the lack of manufacturing jobs, as if steelworking or lugging shipping goods from one boat to another was an inherently middle class job. The thing is that, yeah, it's likely that old-school manufacturing is out (though not entirely, my friend works for Citibike and a lot of his job is literally manufacturing bikes), and if you look from the 50s on it's easy to say "manufacturing jobs supported our middle class, manufacturing is declining due to things out of our control, hence the decline of the middle class is out of our control"
What needs to be said is that if you look back another century, there was nothing inherently middle class about the textile or steel industries. Put simply: without unions, manufacturing would not be a middle class job. It was unionization efforts that led to people being able to live off of a 40 hour a week bluecollar job. And with that said, there's nothing to say that the service industry couldn't be unionized by a similar process.
Which needs to change. Unions need to get their good reputation back and expand their support in the poor and middle classes. How quickly the public forgets that without unions they'd have less power in their own jobs, less safety for dangerous professions and union workers are human beings who deserve proper compensation for their work. How do they expect teachers to teach their kids when they can't pay the bills and their classes are filled with so many kids that its hard to make sure each student gets the education they need to prosper?
A major part of the problem is unions have been confined to lower skill jobs or blue-collar jobs and thus many of todays workers have become convinced they are white-collar and thus above needing a union. After all, they are salaried so it's no big deal or something.
It's also a good example of how vile "both sides are the same, so sticking with status quo" is as well. Just so god damn grating, when people point out the crooked things that have happened with unions in the past, while ignoring all the dirty shit the self-proclaimed "job creators" have, are currently and planning to do in the future.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Also the Jacobin had this great article about how the "do what you love" idea has made a lot of people think "hey, I'm doing something that I'm passionate about, who cares if I'm working 80 hours a week with no overtime?"
Seriously the more stuff I've heard about how ridiculously screwed over devs get in the game industry I'm surprised there hasn't been a movement for more workers rights in SF.
It's not perfect, but I am 100% certain that without a union we would not be paid.
I know because of the GS union I'm a part of TA/RA'ships etc have most of their tuition paid for, a stipend that is more than $fuckyou, a big discount on the health insurance policy (which I don't need because of the ACA), and free dental/eye care insurance.
There's also an adjunct/contingent faculty union that may have sprung up around the same time that offers a similar array but with more money involved; basically despite the fact that the university is still using such faculty to "save on costs" (i/e pay administrators more and build facilities only used by a fraction of the student population) at least they're not treated as virtual slave labor as many adjuncts face across the country.
Be grateful you had the option. As a grad student, I did get paid ($1086 a month, plus taking off part of my tuition), but anything beyond talking about organization was decidedly a risk, assuming you wanted to teach again next semester.
So, in other words, like most organized labor in Georgia.