This morning in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a press conference during which he spoke harsh words about the protestors of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Occupy Wall Street protesters have come out in the thousands, often clashing with police officers. Cities such as Chicago and San Francisco have evolved their own version of the New York movement.
Mayor Bloomberg noted in his speech that finance is an enormous part of New York City's economy, and that the protesters are actually damaging the industry.
"If the jobs they are trying to get rid of in this city -- the people that work in finance, which is a big part of our economy-- we're not going to have any money to pay our municipal employees or clean the blocks or anything else," said Mayor Bloomberg.
This turn of events should perhaps come as no surprise given that Bloomberg is himself a billionaire and an avid capitalist with a capital-C. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., a financial information and data services company which provides a software program used by almost every major bank, hedge fund and financial institution around the world.
On September 30, Mayor Bloomberg said during a radio show, "We need the banks, if the banks don't go out and make loans we will not come out of our economy problems, we will not have jobs."
The mayor also noted that he felt the protesters were harming the tourism industry in New York by creating an unpleasant environment. He said, "They're trying to take away the tax base we have because none of this is good for tourism."
Mayor Bloomberg's assessment of the Occupy Wall Street movement is fairly bizarre, particularly his assessment that the protesters are actually trying to deliberately hurt the city's economy.
Mayor Bloomberg's opinions contrast with President Obama's. "People are frustrated and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works," the president said yesterday.
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Comments: 26
As with most political issues of the past, you and I are once again on opposit ends of the ball field.
Mr. Bloomberg, in making his press statement, was speaking for his own benefit and welfare. Inasmuch, as any negative media reports concerning Wall Street, is viewed by him as being a direct assault on his means of income. Wall Street banking and the stock exchange is his lifes blood. It's the air he breaths, the food of his daily substance, as well as his chosen religion of life.
Because Mr. Bloomberg depends on the monetary benefits he reaps from a profitable Wall Street, he must also live with the fear that the stock maket is vunerable and is subject to loose percentage points when negative issues arise. Therefore, anything which appears to be negative to Wall Street, becomes his sworn enemy. {aka} "Occupy Wall Street" is presently Enemy No. 1
RF you said: The Occupy demonstrations may represent the last chance America has to rid ourselves of the right wing politics of fear and greed that have ravaged this nation.
Seems to me that train has left the station. Overly conservative notions and greed, running wild, is destroying us from within.
How pathetic...
http://gillreport.com/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-pays-illegals-to-carry-signs-they-cant-read/
""But when a little grass roots organization of people that represent the less well off and less articulate people of this nation, they are supposed to be pilloried.""
That's not what I am saying and unions running buses of people to jam commerce is not a grass roots organization or little. They did the same thing in my state when Scott Walker busted the unions here. They find an area to be a pain in the ass (Wisconsin Capitol) and then they bus in everybody they can to try to force things upon people who don't want it. They actually rounded up the homeless and transients to lay around in the state capitol building. They were urinating in the Capitol halls and damaging the marble, antique woodwork and local business property.. The damage was in the millions but did the unions pay for that? Hell no.
Everybody knows what is going on. The unions want a second stimulus bail out and they took off their slippers, stopped their whining, and put on their marching shoes for Obama. The American people are disgusted with unions, their vagrants, the disruption, and Obama which is why he is polling in the 30s. Those are Dick Cheney numbers and destroying school trips to state capitols and vacations to New York are not going to help Obama or union causes. People are sick of you R.F.
The only unAmerican thing around here is rounding up a bunch of derelicts and telling them that the people who carry the water owe the people who drink the water more free stuff.
Everyone--including the Protesters--KNOWS that Wall Street isn't going to be eliminated.
Bloomberg KNOWS that the Protesters know Wall Street will remain; he's just trying to take advantage of the Movement's idealistic and somewhat revolutionary message, in order to treat them like children.
[I am reminded of Omar Suleiman, second-in-command to Mubarak, when he asked the protesters to return home to their parents.]
The realpolitik aim of the Movement--if it continues to go forward--will be to achieve Reform.
Otherwise, it will ultimately Fail.
And I would underscore that the Mayor has traveled beyond a pragmatic reprimand--that, in his comments, we are not simply looking at his view of protester culpability, as if it were an impedence to commerce; but also there is an implication, by Bloomberg, that, perhaps, the Movement seeks radical revolution.
By doing that, the Mayor--willfully or not--demonizes the Group and marginalizes its message......
PS.....I'll bet you're pleased that Christie finally withdrew....(from something that he never entered, in the first place).
If Capitalism in this country is so fragile that a few people waving signs will destroy it, then I think maybe it was nice but now it's time to move on to something else.
Okay, I exaggerated in that last sentence, but really- it's only okay for Americans to exercise free speech now only if they stay away from the finance industry?
That philosophy is unacceptable, but it seems to be pretty widespread. Not just Bloomberg, but also Cantor and Cain.
The American Dream is in desperate need of an infusion of hope. But, then again, Mr. Cain has declared and I paraphrase here, that if your current financial status does not fall under the category of the affluent, blame yourself. Yes, it is the fault of the individual that wages fall as the cost of living rises to unmanageable proportions as well as any aspirations one may have to start a small business unless, of course, you walk to the store and work ( if you have any ) in 6 feet of snow and sacrifice your family's health in order to save thousands upon thousands to do it on your own in accordance with Tea Party ideology.
Cantor is a nauseating disgrace to my native state of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Bloomberg resides in an elitist bubble far into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, totally detached from the surface where the 'commoners' reside.