Has there been any evidence that the accusations of rape were paid off, or are you just speculating?

Have you moved your savings out of the big banks? Do you think it would do anything if that catches on?

Do you have a lot of optimism for this movement in general? When I heard about Congress declaring pizza a vegetable, it kind of made me think they aren’t listening at all, and will continue siding with corporations over people. If the police brutality continues I think it’s only a matter of time before there’s a riot. Violence has often followed peaceful protests that accomplished anything.

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response: In the IMF case there was indeed claims of payment, though I don’t know of any with the Wikileaks guy. The Srauss-Kahn rape victim was described with this in the Daily Mail:

Two official sources said the unnamed woman spoke on the telephone to an imprisoned alleged drug dealer within a day of her encounter with Strauss-Kahn.

In the conversation, which was recorded, she reportedly discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against Strauss-Kahn.

Investigators also say they learnt that the man on the other end of the phone, who is accused of possessing 400lb of marijuana, is among several people who put cash deposits amounting to more than £62,000 into the maid’s bank account over the past two years.

I don’t have a single cent in any of the big banks…but I didn’t before the crisis hit either. My wife has some and I keep pushing her to close those accounts, but she hasn’t so far.

Yes I do think if people took their money out aggressively in a short period of time it would eventually cause the collapse of some of the banks. Those big banks still have “mark to fraud” accounting in place right now & are only worth like 1/2 to 1/3 of their alleged book value. If their balance sheets were honest & trustworthy they would trade at over 100% of their book value.

I am somewhat hopeful in the movement, but where it ends up is anyone’s guess. Such movements are volatile. The typical outcomes are either violence (that will be swiftly shut down) or the formation of a new political party. There won’t likely be broad-based violence increases until the free government cheese is forced to stop…if/when that happens we will fall into a depression. The only thing that will prevent a depression from being recognized is massive inflation…but if inflation goes too high it not only hurts the poor but screws the banks too.

Frank Luntz is out trying to reshape language around OWS issues & blame the banker’s fraud on the government, however if the fraudulent bankers have bought off the government (which they have) then the corruption in governance is only a reflection of the corruption in the banks.

iTulip is a great site for up to date economics information & Market-ticker.org does a great job of discussing the day to day fraud.