"We need to deal with the banks, we need to deal with home foreclosures, and we need to deal with wealth disparity."
…………………………….Occupy Atlanta organizer Latron Price, November 6 2011
OK. Let’s do it then…lets deal with these issues.
1. We need to deal with the banks.
What exactly do you want to do with them? Do you want them to provide their services for free? Do you want them to lend money at zero interest to people who have no intention of repaying the loans? What is it exactly that you want the banks to do?
2. We need to deal with home foreclosures.
It seems to me that anybody who borrowed money to buy a home, and then reneged on that contract by not making the payments, is not entitled to the home. So what, sir, do you want to deal with? Do you want people who are not making their payments to keep their homes? My sympathy is with those who for many reasons can no longer afford to keep their homes….but that is the key. They can no longer afford to keep them. There is NOTHING to deal with…foreclosures are going to happen, in good economic times and bad. There are always going to be people who bought more house than they can afford, people who could afford the house they bought but then lost their jobs and could no longer afford it, and people who simply never planned to make their payments and just got a place to live in for a few months.
I presume you want the banks to just let these people have the homes they are NOT paying for?
3. We need to deal with wealth disparity.
Why?
Why is it wrong for one person to own more, have more or earn more than another person? What is it that you are trying to deal with here?
Three significant claims of the OWS idiots…and not one can be substantiated.
Not one.
Not only do these idiots not explain what it is they want to deal with, they cannot even articulate an argument for their positions.
The best they can do is some stupid bleating about fairness and Wall Street screwing them.
Well…I am going to show you exactly why the world NEEDS the 1%.
Let me introduce you to Peter Panda. Peter was just a B student struggling through his first year at college when he discovered a way to transmit ones thoughts direct to a friend’s smart phone without need for a keyboard or any transmission device. All that was needed was a smart phone and a simple app download and he could messages to anyone who wanted them just by thinking it.
He took this invention to a VC firm in the hopes that they would fund its development. His passion for his invention and the cleverly written business plan were intriguing enough to the VC that he invested $10 million on the spot. (Now, the VC has obtained that $10 million cash from investors made up largely of pension funds and a couple of wealthy entrepreneurs who had already made many millions of dollars and were looking to support a new business idea.)
Peter Panda took that money and employed a couple of business people to start building a sales channel, and a whole lot of technical types (programmers, engineers etc) – 17 to be exact – who would build the application for download.
As word got out about Peter’s new invention, pandamonium broke out and people were literally falling over themselves to buy this application.
In just a few years, Peter Panda had made several hundred million dollars when he IPO’s his company.
The VC investors were very happy…they received back in excess of $200 million which was split between them and their investors. Meanwhile, Peter was sitting on a cash hoard of $300 million!!
His Company was still selling Pandamonium products, and earning money hand over fist. He employed several thousand programmers now and they all had jobs because of his initial idea.
But what was he going to do with the $300 million in cash? Not knowing what to do he decided to just leave it in the bank, earning a lousy .5% interest per year. Of course the tax man was going to want a big chunk of that….in fact close to $100 million was set aside to send to Uncle Sam, leaving him with $200 million to call his own. But in the meantime, all $300 million was in the bank.
The bank manager was rubbing his hands together in glee. He took Peter’s $300 million and lent it out to three people:-
1. A building contractor who was building a low rent housing project for low income residents. The cost of this enterprise was $100 million. He employed a total of 3000 people building this complex which eventually went on to house some 286 families in brand new efficiency apartments that they could afford. He sold the apartments to an investor group 3 years later for a total of $150 million, paying the bank $130 million for the loan (including interest at 10% per annum), and made a profit of $20 million which he put in the bank while looking for the next project.
2. A small aerospace company was ready to expand its manufacturing operations and borrowed $100 million to build new premises and fit it out with the latest technology. The company was able to add over 700 jobs as a resulted of its expanded production facilities. The high technology equipment financed by the bank allowed it to reduce costs and become even more competitive in the marketplace, getting even more work. As a result, the company grew faster than expected and soon had to put on a second and then a third shift simply to keep up with demand. Within 3 years of getting the loan, the company was now employing over 2,000 people who would not otherwise have had work.
3. $100 million was set aside for local community projects. The bank encouraged small entrepreneurs to start their own businesses, to expand existing business. They provided loans of up to $250,000 for solid businesses with solid plans and good history for expansion. These loans were at interest rates of 10 -12% and amortized over ten years. Nearly 500 local small businesses were able to take advantage of these loans, and as a result were able to create over 1000 new jobs.
It came time for Peter Panda to pay his tax bill of $90 million, so he simply wrote a check knowing that the bank would have the money. HE didn’t know what the bank had done with his money….like most people he was a little unsure of how the whole finance industry worked. He assumed that the bank had big vaults full of cash….he had no idea that by just leaving his money in the bank he could have facilitated the creation of over 6,000 jobs, and provided housing for 286 families! And this doesn’t count the several thousand people employed by Pandamonium Inc!
A couple of years later, Peter decided that he really needed to help a new entrepreneur get the start he got so he invested a few million with the VC that gave Peter his start. A few days later, that VC was approached by Hector Gonzales who had invented a device that could sense motion over vast distances and photograph whatever was moving. He saw the market in space applications, but the VC new their were some potential military applications. Hector was given $20 million to develop his idea, and it was soon acquired by the military for an unknown sum, but enough to make Hector and the VC very wealthy. Hector put his hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank….and the story starts all over again.
Peter and Hector are clearly in the 1%...and these are the people you want to take from?
The bank clearly helped a lot of people get jobs…and these are the institutions you want to tear down?
Wall Street was behind the initial investments in Peter’s and Hectors businesses…and these are the institutions you blame for the state of our economy?
Oh…I forgot to talk about Latron Price…I know nothing about this guy but I suspect that he is a bright student who struggled through a couple of years of college with a 3.0GPA and a penchant for drugs and long drawn out philosophical discussions in the early hours. He heard about this Occupy Wall Street thing…and knew that it had to be the answer to all the economic crisis the world was facing. If only the movement could deal with the banks and the foreclosures and the wealth disparity….if only all this injustice would just go away…then the world would be a better place.
Listen up Latron…if that happened, Peter would never have created Pandamonium Inc…and over 8,000 jobs would never have been created. Hector Gonzales would never have started his company and created who knows how many jobs. The cycle of economic growth, invention and increasing the standard of living for everybody would never have happened.
In fact, Latron, if you succeed with your movement, there will be NO jobs, no capital and no future. You wouldn’t even have a tent to sleep in, or a pipe to smoke your drug of choice.
On a secondary note….how many jobs do you think Latron created? He may have kept his dealer in a few bucks for a while, but that is about it.
Yep, I am gonna listen to you Latron…your need to deal with these institutions is clearly the ramblings of an undereducated, drug addled mental midget.
Stupid is as stupid says.
…..devereaux
