Category Archives: Occupy Wall Street

Obama plans to hijack Occupy Wall Street

The Washington Post reports: President Obama and his team have decided to turn public anger at Wall Street into a central tenet of their reelection strategy.

The move comes as the Occupy Wall Street protests gain momentum across the country and as polls show deep public distrust of the nation’s major financial institutions.

And it sets up what strategists see as a potent line of attack against Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, a former investment executive whom Obama aides plan to portray as a wealthy Wall Street sympathizer.

Many Democrats consider Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, the greatest threat to Obama when it comes to wooing centrist independents next year, and Romney this week has begun to present himself as a champion of middle-income Americans.

Obama aides point to recent surveys that show anger at Wall Street spanning ideologies, including a new Washington Post-ABC News poll in which 68 percent of independents and 60 percent of Republicans say they have unfavorable impressions of the big financial institutions.

But the strategy of channeling anti-Wall Street anger carries risks. Many of Obama’s senior advisers have ties to the financial industry — a point that makes Occupy protesters wary of the president and his party.

In recent days, Obama has ramped up his rhetoric. He took the unusual step of targeting an individual company when he attacked Bank of America for its new $5 monthly debit-card fee, calling it “exactly the sort of stuff that folks are frustrated by.” And his campaign and the White House have distributed messages blasting GOP candidates and lawmakers for wanting to repeal Wall Street regulations pushed by Obama and opposing the confirmation of a leader for the consumer protection bureau created as part of the overhaul.

“We intend to make it one of the central elements of the campaign next year,” Obama senior adviser David Plouffe said in an interview. “One of the main elements of the contrast will be that the president passed Wall Street reform and our opponent and the other party want to repeal it.”

“I’m pretty confident 12 months from now, as people make the decision about who to go vote for, the gut check is going to be about, ‘Who would make decisions more about helping my life than Wall Street?’ ” Plouffe added.

Romney, no doubt anticipating the White House’s new attack line, sought to show solidarity with the demonstrators during this week’s GOP candidates debate.

“The reason you’re seeing protests . . . is middle-income Americans are having a hard time making ends meet,” he said.

GOP leaders say the Wall Street law is government overreach, and Romney’s economic plan calls for replacing it with a “streamlined regulatory framework.”

Obama has tried this line of attack before, railing in 2009 against “fat-cat bankers” who he accused of taking excessive bonuses in the wake of the financial meltdown. But after complaints from Democrats on Wall Street and business leaders, the president has spent much of the past year courting companies — even hiring a new chief of staff, William Daley, from the banking industry.

And many on the left have attacked Obama and his administration for its ties to Wall Street, arguing that the financial regulatory overhaul fell far short of an industry makeover that many critics believed necessary.

Much of his top economic team has roots in the financial services industry, and in recent months Daley and top campaign aides have devoted much of their time improving the relationship with big-dollar donors on Wall Street.

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A manifesto for regime change on behalf of all humanity

Ana Sofia Suarez and Shimri Zameret write: The following manifesto was produced over four months through consultation among groups, activists and people’s assemblies in countries such as Britain, Egypt, Tunisia, Germany, Spain, the US, Palestine, Israel, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, India and Australia. We got comments, suggestions, support, and wrote and rewrote it again and again. The text has been supported by Canadian-based Naomi Klein, Indian-based Vandana Shiva, the US-based Michael Hardt and Noam Chomsky, as well as Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano.

United for #GlobalDemocracy

On 15 October 2011, united in our diversity, united for global change, we demand global democracy: global governance by the people, for the people. Inspired by our sisters and brothers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, New York, Palestine-Israel, Spain and Greece, we too call for a regime change: a global regime change.

In the words of Vandana Shiva, the Indian activist, today we demand replacing the G8 with the whole of humanity – the G7,000,000,000.

Undemocratic international institutions are our global Mubarak, our global Assad, our global Gaddafi. These include: the IMF, the WTO, global markets, multinational banks, the G8/G20, the European Central Bank and the UN security council. Like Mubarak and Assad, these institutions must not be allowed to run people’s lives without their consent. We are all born equal, rich or poor, woman or man. Every African and Asian is equal to every European and American. Our global institutions must reflect this, or be overturned.

Today, more than ever before, global forces shape people’s lives. Our jobs, health, housing, education and pensions are controlled by global banks, markets, tax-havens, corporations and financial crises. Our environment is being destroyed by pollution in other continents. Our safety is determined by international wars and international trade in arms, drugs and natural resources. We are losing control over our lives. This must stop. This will stop. The citizens of the world must get control over the decisions that influence them in all levels – from global to local. That is global democracy. That is what we demand today.

Today, like the Mexican Zapatistas, we say “¡Ya basta! Aquí el pueblo manda y el gobierno obedece&#8221: “Enough! Here the people command and global institutions obey!” Like the Spanish Tomalaplaza we say “Democracia Real Ya&#8221: “True global democracy now!” Today we call the citizens of the world: let us globalise Tahrir Square! Let us globalise Puerta del Sol!

This manifesto is not endorsed by all the people that participate in the worldwide protests on Saturday, of course. With social movements, you can never have everyone writing the text together or endorsing it. But to the extent that we could – we tried to create a process of writing that was truly participatory as possible, worldwide. We feel the text is legitimate as a manifesto coming from the protests, supported by many involved, such as Democracia Real Ya International, the main assembly in Madrid, the main assembly in Boston, in Buenos Aires and Sao Paolo. We hope it is the beginning of a movement.

We decided to call international institutions such as the IMF, the UN Security Council, global markets and international banks our “global Mubarak, our global Assad”. These words were debated vigorously. We decided to keep them. Hard words for hard times. We didn’t define what democratic global institutions are because not everyone completely agrees on a definition.

We prefer to leave it as a principle, and know that there are many suggestions on how to give people control over the global decisions that shape our lives. When French activists demanded national democracy for the first time, no one believed it was possible. Today no one believes global people’s control is possible. Future generations will judge things differently. Today we start building a movement for global democracy. .

• Discuss this on Twitter with the hashtag #globaldemocracy, and #globalchange

• Follow the movement on Facebook

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Occupy Wall Street goes global

The New York Times reports: In dozens of cities around the world on Saturday, people took to the streets, clutching placards and chanting slogans as part of a planned day of protests against the financial system.

In Rome, a protest thick with tension spread over several miles. Protesters set fire to at least one building and clashed violently with the police, who responded with water cannons and tear gas.

In other European cities, including Berlin and London, the demonstrations were largely peaceful, with thousands of people marching past ancient monuments and many gathering in front of capitalist symbols like the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Elsewhere, the turnout was more modest, but rallies of a few hundred people were held in several cities, including Sydney, Australia, Tokyo and Hong Kong. Protests were also held in New York and several other cities in the United States and Canada.

But just as the rallies in New York have represented a variety of messages — signs have been held in opposition to President Obama yards away from signs in support — so Saturday’s protests contained a grab bag of messages, opposing nuclear power, political corruption and the privatization of water.

Despite the difference in language, landscape and scale, the protests were united in frustration with the widening gap between the rich and the poor.

Occupy Wall Street from David Sauvage on Vimeo.

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Wall Street tells senators: We pay you to represent us

The New York Times reports: Publicly, bankers say they understand the anger at Wall Street — but believe they are misunderstood by the protesters camped on their doorstep.

But when they speak privately, it is often a different story.

“Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” said one top hedge fund manager.

“It’s not a middle-class uprising,” adds another veteran bank executive. “It’s fringe groups. It’s people who have the time to do this.”

As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have grown and spread to other cities, an open question is: Do the bankers get it? Their different worldview speaks volumes about the wide chasms that have opened over who is to blame for the continuing economic malaise and what is best for the country.

Some on Wall Street viewed the protesters with disdain, and a degree of caution, as hundreds marched through the financial district on Friday. Others say they feel their pain, but are befuddled about what they are supposed to do to ease it. A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude.

“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”

He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.

CNBC reports: Several employees of Goldman Sachs have said that they have been told to stay away from the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park.

Goldman headquarters is at 200 West Street in New York City is just about 1,000 yards from the park where protesters have been encamped since Sept. 17. Until recently, it was possible to see the square from some offices in Goldman’s headquarters. Recent construction has blocked the view.

“I was going to come down to say hello yesterday,” one of my Goldman sources wrote to me on Wednesday. He was told by his employer that he should not go to the square for any reason.

At least five others have related similar stories. Supervisors and co-workers have said that they should stay out of the park. The reasons vary. Some say it is unsafe — although there are plenty of people who look like they work in Wall Street jobs around the protest every day. Others say that it could “endanger your career.”

None of the people I spoke with knew whether their was an official policy against going to the park.

“It feels officially unofficial,” one person said.

A spokesman for Goldman declined to comment.

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Occupy Wall Street not Palestine!

Occupy Wall Street not Palestine!
We are part of the world’s 99% yearning for freedom, justice and equal rights!

If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call.
And their night will then begin to fade, and their chains break and fall.
– Abou-Al-kacem El-Chebbi (Tunisia)

Occupied Palestine, October 13 — The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian civil society coalition struggling for Palestinian rights, is proud to stand in solidarity with the movements struggling for a new world based on democracy, human rights and economic justice. From New York to Athens, from Madrid to Santiago, from Bahrain to Rome, these huge mobilisations provide a much needed reminder of something that Palestinians have always known – that another world, a dignifying one, is possible and ordinary people can create it.

Our aspirations overlap; our struggles converge. Our oppressors, whether greedy corporations or military occupations, are united in profiting from wars, pillage, environmental destruction, repression and impoverishment. We must unite in our common quest for freedoms, equal rights, social and economic justice, environmental sanity, and world peace. We can no longer afford to be splintered and divided; we can no longer ignore our obligations to join hands in the struggle against wars and corporate exploitation and for a human-friendly world community not a profit-maximizing jungle.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and its counterparts across the US, Europe, Latin America and elsewhere are — at least partially — inspired by the Arab Spring for democracy and social justice. Leaders of the Arab popular revolts tell us that they, in turn, were largely inspired by our own, decades-old struggle against Israel’s occupation of our land, its system of discrimination that matches the UN’s definition of apartheid, and its denial of the right of Palestinian refugees to return home.

The rapidly emerging movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law is a key and effective part of the Palestinian struggle. Anchored in universal principles of human rights and struggling for freedom, justice and equality, the BDS movement, established in 2005, is deeply rooted in decades of Palestinian peaceful resistance to colonial oppression and is inspired by the South African struggle against apartheid as well as the civil rights movement in the US. It is adopted by a near consensus among Palestinians everywhere, with all the main political parties, trade unions, professional syndicates, women’s unions, student groups, NGO networks and refugee advocacy networks represented in the BNC, the reference for this growing movement to end Israeli impunity.

The Palestinian-led BDS movement is a global effort of groups, from South Africa to Britain, from Canada to India, and within Israel itself, all committed to ending Israel’s denial of basic Palestinian rights. It is endorsed by towering moral leaders of the calibre of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Holocaust survivor and co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Stephane Hessel. It is supported by world renowned cultural and intellectual figures such as Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, Roger Waters, Judith Butler, Sarah Schulman, John Berger, Ken Loach, John Greyson, and Adrienne Rich. Massive trade union federations such as COSATU (South Africa), CUT (Brazil), TUC (UK), ICTU (Ireland), among many others, have also adopted BDS.

The movement has scored in the last two years some spectacular achievements when internationally renowned artists and music groups heeded the cultural boycott of Israel and refused to perform there or cancelled scheduled appearances. These have included the Pixies, Elvis Costello, Snoop Dogg, Meg Ryan, Vanessa Paradis, Gil Scott-Heron, among many others. The Norwegian state pension fund, among others, major European banks and some corporations have all been convinced to divest from businesses implicated in Israel’s violations of international law. Increasingly, BDS is recognized as a civic movement capable of ending Israeli impunity and, crucially, contributing to the global struggle against the war-mongering, racist agenda which Israel has persistently played a key role in.

So as you break your own chains and build your own effective resistance against corporate tyranny, we ask you to demand a just peace for all the peoples in the Middle East, based on international law and equal human rights. Palestinians, too, are part of the 99% around the world that suffer at the hands of the 1% whose greed and ruthless quest for hegemony have led to unspeakable suffering and endless war. Corporate power has not just profited from our suffering but has colluded in maintaining Israel’s occupation and apartheid to perpetuate an unjust order that profits oil and military companies and multinational financial institutions.

We call upon all the spreading social movements of the world to think critically when considering their attitude towards the Israeli ‘social justice’ protests, which have almost completely ignored the key issue at the heart of all of the problems faced by ordinary Palestinians and even Israelis: Israel’s costly system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid over the Palestinian people. Without putting an end to that multi-tiered Israeli system of oppression, our entire region will never enjoy a comprehensive and lasting peace, one that is based on justice and human rights.

Money for jobs, health and education, not for racist oppression and occupation!
Nowhere is this more important than in the United States. Despite Israel’s persistent denial of Palestinian rights, the US has provided Israel with unconditional political and military assistance that directly contributes to the denial of Palestinian rights, but also to the problems faced by ordinary US citizens. Could the $24bn of military aid provided to Israel in the period 2000-2009 not been better spent on schools, healthcare and other essential services? Did Israel not play a major role in prodding the US to launch and continue its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at immense human and material cost, mainly borne by the poorest in those countries?

But, we must remind ourselves all the time that this struggle will never be easy, and reaching our objectives never inevitable. As Martin Luther King once said:

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

The refreshing scenes of determined peaceful protest for justice from around the world tell us that we, the 99% of the world, are in the process of straightening our backs, collectively, with unwavering fortitude and boundless hope.

– BNC Secretariat

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From Argentina to Wall Street

Benjamin Dangl writes: Almost overnight in late 2001, Argentina went from having one of the strongest economies in South America to one of the weakest. During this economic crash, the financial system collapsed like a house of cards and banks shut their doors.

Faced with such immediate economic strife and unemployment, many Argentines banded together to create a new society out of the wreckage of the old. Poverty, homelessness and unemployment were countered with barter systems, factory occupations, communally-run kitchens and alternative currency.

Neighbourhood assemblies provided solidarity, support and vital spaces for discussion in communities across the country. Ongoing protests kicked out five presidents in two weeks, and the movements that emerged from this period transformed the social and political fabric of Argentina.

These activities reflect those taking place at Occupy Wall Street and in other actions around the US right now. Such events in Argentina and the US are marked by dissatisfaction with the political and economic system in the face of crisis, and involve people working together for solutions on a grassroots level. For many people in Argentina and the US, desperation pushed them toward taking matters into their own hands.

“We didn’t have any choice,” Manuel Rojas explained to me about the occupation of the ceramics factory he worked at outside the city of Mendoza, Argentina during the country’s crash.

“If we didn’t take over the factory we would all be in the streets. The need to work pushed us to action.”

This was one of hundreds of businesses that were taken over by workers facing unemployment during the Argentine crisis. After occupying these factories and businesses, many workers then ran them as cooperatives. They did so under the slogan, “Occupy, Resist, Produce”, a phrase borrowed from Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), which has settled hundreds of thousands of families on millions of acres of land through direct action.

In 2008 in Chicago, when hundreds of workers were laid off from the Republic Windows and Doors factory, they embraced similar direct action tactics used by their Argentine counterparts; they occupied the factory to demand the severance and vacation pay owed to them – and it worked.

Mark Meinster, the international representative for United Electrical Workers, the union of the Republic factory workers, told me that the strategies applied by the workers specifically drew from Argentina. In deciding on labour tactics, “We drew on the Argentine factory occupations to the extent that they show that during an economic crisis, workers’ movements are afforded a wider array of tactical options,” Meinster said.

Many groups and movements based in the US have drawn from activists in the South. Besides the 2008 occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago, movements for access to water in Detroit and Atlanta reflected strategies and struggles in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where in 2000, popular protests rejected the multinational company Bechtel’s water privatisation plan and put the water back into public hands.

The Take Back the Land movement in Florida, which organised homeless people to occupy a vacant lot and pairs homeless families with foreclosed homes, mirrors the tactics and philosophy of the landless movement in Brazil. Participatory budgeting in Brazil, which provides citizens with direct input on how city budgets are distributed, is now being implemented by communities across the US.

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Israel lobby casts itself as an enemy of Occupy Wall Street

Eli Clifton reports: The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), has joined the pack of conservative groups working to discredit the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The ECI — a Bill Kristol–Gary Bauer–Rachel Abrams-conceived organization — launched a YouTube ad this morning, seeking to paint the Wall Street protests as anti-Semitic.

The ad, which was faithfully promoted by ECI’s go-to media outlets — Politico’s Ben Smith, the Weekly Standard, and Commentary — alleges that Democratic party leaders are “turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks,” and urges President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to “stand up to the mob.” Watch it:

While the anti-Semitic signs and clips shown in the commercial are deeply offensive, the Occupy Wall Street protesters have consistently rejected the attempts of a small number of extremists to hijack the movement. In fact, on Friday, “new media activist” Daniel Sieradski organized over 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters to participate in Kol Nidre, the prayers that begin Yom Kippur.

It turns out that one of the characters being highlighted in the ECI video was honing his act as a loud mouth on the streets of New York well before Occupy Wall Street began. The man in question is Danny Cline aka “Lotion Man” and his desire to capture the interest of anyone holding a camera seems stronger than anything else. Offending people seems to be Cline’s preferred way of gaining attention. As a self-confessed petty thief, he isn’t representative of the movement he’s attempted to insert himself inside. But he turned out to be a useful performer for ECI’s purposes.

The last thing the Israel lobby would want to highlight would be scenes such as this: Jewish demonstrators celebrating Yom Kippur.

As for what an accurate representation of the incredibly diverse face of Occupy Wall Street actually looks like, here’s just one example:

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In UK, Goldman Sachs let off paying £10m interest on failed tax avoidance scheme

The Guardian reports: Britain’s tax authorities have given Goldman Sachs an unusual and generous Christmas present, leaked documents reveal. In a secret London meeting last December with the head of Revenue, the wealthy Wall Street banking firm was forgiven £10m interest on a failed tax avoidance scheme.

HM Revenue and Customs sources admit privately that the interest-free deal is “a cock-up” by officials, but refuse to say who was responsible.

Documents leaked to Private Eye magazine and published in full by the Guardian record that Britain’s top tax official, HMRC’s permanent secretary Dave Hartnett, personally shook hands on a secret settlement last December.

Hartnett is due to be questioned on Wednesday by the Commons public accounts committee. The leaked documents suggest that a previous PAC chairman, Edward Leigh, was misled when he was told it was illegal to reveal details of such cases to parliament.

Leaked legal advice from James Eadie QC, which the Guardian also publishes today, says the opposite. Hartnett has discretion to reveal such facts to the parliamentary watchdog, according to the advice.

Leigh said: “It just underlines the absurd culture of secrecy that still pervades Whitehall.”

Hartnett also refused to give the facts about Goldman Sachs to MP Jesse Norman on the Treasury committee last month, claiming disclosure would be illegal. He also refuses to brief ministers on the details.

The £10m Christmas gift for Goldman was the culmination of a prolonged attempt by the US firm to avoid paying national insurance on huge bonuses for its bankers working in London.

The sum was pocket change to Goldman, whose employees received $15.3bn (£9.5bn) in pay and bonuses last year. Its Wall Street head, Lloyd Blankfein, received $68m in 2008 and at the height of Britain’s banking crisis 100 London partners set their bonuses at £1m each. This level was considered a mark of restraint.

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Roubini: Occupy Wall Street is a symptom of the economic malaise facing the world

Foreign Policy magazine interviewed the economist Nouriel Roubini and Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia Group political-risk analysis firm.

Foreign Policy: What do you think of the Occupy Wall Street protests? Have you been down to see them?

Nouriel Roubini: I stopped by. My view of it is that it is a symptom of the economic malaise that we’re facing not just in the United States, but all over the world. It started with the Arab Spring, and of course, poverty, unemployment, corruption, inequality eventually leads to people becoming restless. But now, you have middle-class people in Israel saying we cannot afford homes; you have middle-class students in Chile saying we don’t have education; you have riots in London; people smashing Mercedes and BMWs of fat cats in Berlin and Frankfurt; you have an anti-corruption movement in India. It takes a lot of different manifestations, but we live in a world with a lot of economic insecurity, of worries about the future, of inequality, poverty, of concerns about jobs. And [Occupy Wall Street] is the manifestation in the U.S.

In 2009, [President Barack] Obama told the bankers, “I’m the only one who’s standing between you and the pitchforks.” The bankers got the bailouts; they were supposed to extend credit, extend mortgages. They did pretty much nothing, and they went back to the same actions as before: making money through trading. At this point, I think people are fed up with it. Rightly or wrongly, there’s a huge amount of anger.

FP: Ian, do you think the so-called 1 percent feels any pressure to change its practices?

Ian Bremmer: Less than you think. It’s very clear that there is rising animosity toward the financial sector. It’s true in the United States and in Europe, as well. And I do think these economic protests have legs, even though they’re very poorly organized and it’s not entirely clear what they are or what the agenda is. And I say that because we’re in an election year and there are a lot of wealthy, vested interests that are both on the Democratic and the Republican side that will try to throw money at these guys and tap into some of that anger. We’ll see where it goes.

Having said that, the United States is not Egypt. It’s not as if you have unemployment in the U.S. and as a consequence people starve. You still have a lot of political apathy in the United States. You also have a country — frankly, much like Saudi Arabia — where a lot of immigrants come in and take jobs that the average American, even an unemployed American, wouldn’t necessarily want. 9.1 percent unemployment is very, very high, and it’s an outrage in this country to have that level of sustained unemployment. Yet it appears to be something that Washington is prepared to tolerate. We don’t see an urgency in Washington to truly address the issue, certainly nothing like the urgency you see in Europe today.

So I don’t think the 1 percent is coming under the kind of pressure that would force them to take a different position.

NR: I would make the point that, however, while I agree with what Ian says, that the “official” unemployment rate is 9.1 percent — but the one that includes discouraged workers who have left the labor force or partially unemployment has gone from 16.2 percent to 16.5 percent. And if you add to it the millions of people that you have in jail in the U.S. — which is four times the amount of any civilized country as a share of population — than unemployment is probably closer to 20 percent. And that’s just among the average population. For minorities, the youth, or unskilled people that don’t have a high school degree, the number is closer to 30 percent. It’s a stressful situation.

The U.S. might not be Europe, but the U.S. is not used to having an unemployment rate so high — and staying so high. Usually, when you get a recession the monetary and fiscal stimulus leads to a recovery of jobs in short order. But this is becoming chronic and longer term. Either the United States becomes like Europe — and we’ve already extended unemployment benefits three or four times over — or otherwise you have a much bigger social welfare state and safety net. Or you’ll have people rioting in the streets. We have to do something either way. Either we’ll have a fiscal problem or a social problem.

ThinkProgress reports: The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll [PDF] shows that Americans support the Occupy Wall Street protests by a two-to-one margin (37 percent in favor, 18 percent opposed) while more Americans view the Tea Party negatively (28 percent in favor, 41 percent opposed). This means the Occupy Wall Street protests have a net favorability of +19 percent while the Tea Party has a net favorability of -13 percent, as this chart produced by ThinkProgress shows (right).

A new Time Magazine poll found an even more positive results for Occupy Wall Street, showing 54 percent held a favorable view of the movement, compared to just 27 percent with a favorable view of the Tea Party. In the Time poll, just 23 percent had an unfavorable view of Occupy Wall street, for a net rating of +31 percent. Meanwhile, 33 percent had an unfavorable view of the Tea Party, giving it a a net rating of -6 percent.

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Iran sees terror plot accusation as diversion from Occupy Wall Street

The New York Times reports: Iran’s leaders marshaled a furious formal rejection on Wednesday of the United States accusations that the Islamic republic had schemed to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, calling the case a cynical fabrication meant to vilify Iran and distract Americans from their own severe economic problems, highlighted by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Foreign Ministry of Iran issued an angry complaint to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which is responsible for monitoring United States interests in Iran since the two broke diplomatic relations 32 years ago after the Islamic Revolution. The ministry said it had summoned the Swiss ambassador to personally convey its outrage over the American charges and warn “against the repetition of such politically motivated allegations.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, went a step further. In a speech broadcast on Iran state television, he predicted what he called the demise of American capitalism and corporate favoritism. Press TV, an Iran government Web site that translated portions of the ayatollah’s speech, said he emphasized that “the corrupted capitalist system shows no mercy to any nation, including the American people.”

The ayatollah commended the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, Washington and other American cities, calling them a consequence of “the prevalence of top-level corruption, poverty and social inequality in America.” He denounced what he called “the heavy-handed treatment of the demonstrators by U.S. officials” and said that such treatment “is not seen even in underdeveloped countries with dictatorial regimes.”

“They may crack down on this movement but cannot uproot it,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “Ultimately, it will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West.”

Not that Khamenei would have any experience in heavy-handed treatment of demonstrators!

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Trust bust: Why no one believes the banks

Jesse Eisinger writes: Morgan Stanley by any measure is a safe and solid investment bank. Except for one: The amount of trust people have in the whole financial and political system. It’s just about zero.

That’s why the bank’s shares are down 42 percent this year. That’s why all the big bank stocks have double-digit dips.

True, they start their next round of quarterly reporting in a matter of days. Morgan Stanley is scheduled to report its third-quarter earnings on Oct. 19, and its earnings may calm fears temporarily.

But the essential problem will still be there, a slow burn beneath the global financial system that flares up at the worst moments. Banks don’t have faith in other banks, investors are deeply scarred and wary, and nobody believes that the governments around the world could grapple with the magnitude of the problems, even if they wanted to.

Three months ago, the Belgian bank Dexia passed the European stress tests. By that measure, it was fine. Then it collapsed.

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Financial giants put New York City cops on their payroll

Pam Martens writes: Videos are springing up across the internet showing uniformed members of the New York Police Department in white shirts (as opposed to the typical NYPD blue uniforms) pepper spraying and brutalizing peaceful, nonthreatening protestors attempting to take part in the Occupy Wall Street marches. Corporate media are reporting that these white shirts are police supervisors as opposed to rank and file. Recently discovered documents suggest something else may be at work.

If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.

The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

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