That’s not centrist — this is more or less a classic definition of libertarian. That being said, Bob’s argument of erosion of middle class jobs as main reason behind wiping out of middle class makes more sense to me than low rates on top of excess liquidity. With a qualification that these were mostly blue-collar jobs but once they went, the white-collar jobs that were supported by them went as well.

This is Dmitry from the old Barclays SDAPS gang. I suppose you still remember be and it’s good to hear from you and have you on this board.

As a matter of fact, Katya and I are ‘virtually’ sparring pretty much every other day on these issues. So it’s great to have another player .

I myself have always considered myself a centrist – I support lower taxes, limited government, free uncorrupted markets, individual freedom, gay marriage, stem cell research and my position on religion has always been very dismissive.

I have read, watched and debated quite a lot on the whole OWS issue. I do share a lot of the viewpoints you’ve expressed, and without trying to politicize the debate true partisan prism as it is very often done today, I’d like to briefly touch on the fundamentals of that great asset bubble that had caused current recession, massive unemployment thus spurring such movement as OWS. I see this as 4 main points:

1) Congress and government push for cheap housing for low income people, thus de-balancing the supply and demand equilibrium.

2) Poor financial terms’ knowledge by American consumers who nevertheless had no second thoughts getting themselves entangled into ones.

3) Inadequate policy by Federal Reserve post 9/11 recession by keeping the rates low on top of already excess liquidity.

4) Securituzation of assets by sell-side investment institutions using faulty guidelines.

For the sake of the argument I place 25% weight on each of those four items, although I suspect that, in spite that we would probably never know for sure, the real devil hides in point 3), that being the Fed’s and Alan Greenspan Ayn Randian oversimplification of societal trends within various historical contexts.

It is my firm belief that not one of OWS-er’s, even the most smart and sensible ones, have got the grasp on the situation in the manner I just described. Their slogans and rhetoric that have been displayed in public, in my opinion signify just that. They seem to extract the items that serve their specified agenda of today, in a similar manner as Tea Partiers utilize certain teachings of Ayn Rand, cherry picking the ones that go with their flow, but completely ignoring others (like, for instance, Rand’s total rejection of any religious beliefs).

As they use to say, ignorance is a bliss. Anything else comes as a package deal…

To your response I would have to say this: I certainly don’t expect anyone to have to get a PhD to be successful. As I’ve said before those are the most overrated 3 letters in the English language IMHO.

People now assume that job opportunities will remain very limited for the rest of their lives based on the past few years. The fact is that would have happened anyway, with or without the recession or the financial crisis. The amout of debt to GDP that we have accumulated over the past two administrations would have forced the issue. Yes, I do lay some of the blame on Bush for running huge deficits but the spending under the Obama congress has grown exponentially even from those levels. Its amazing that we can’t look at the problems in Europe caused by out of control social spending and see that is the same path we are going down. Obama seems to want to run down that path at breakneck speed. He’s an idiot.

Your argument that many qualified, worthy people won’t be able to have the same standard of living that they did in the 50′s or 60′s is an argument that just doesnt hold water. I don’t think you appreciate what the real standard of living was during that time. Sure, there are always people that don’t get what they deserve based on effort or intelligence. ALways has been that way and always will but that is a few percent, not the bottom 50% or 20%. Look at the number of people below the poverty line that seem to believe that a cell phone, computer and flat screen TV’s are basic necesities of life. I’m not talking about those living in slums. I mean just very average, typical people that can’t get good jobs.

Why is that? MOST of the jobs in this country that those people would have held in the 50′s or 60′s have been exported. Think of all the manufacturing plants, textile plants etc that used to make goods that we exported. Now, we have exported the jobs to the lowest cost producer. The OWS crowd and their ilk will blame those nasty corporations. However, if politicians on both sides of the isle make it more profitable to produce goods here and have their income taxed HERE instead of abroad then those lower level jobs would come back, and come back quickly. America switched from a manufacturing economy in the 20′s-70′s to a service economy in the 80′s. Then, we made it easy to transport the service jobs to India and Asia. Really dumb policies and they were supported by BOTH political parties.

Now everyone wonders why they can’t continue to have the same benefits and standard of living when our debt burden to pay for it has exploded. Sounds just like the pensioner in Greece wondering why he can’t retire at 45.