Wondering what Occupy Wall Street is about?

Here is some background for anyone who may be wondering what OWS is all about:

Who lobbied Congress to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, thus allowing banks and financial institutions to merge? Wall Street

Who created the "derivatives" that made the real estate crash a huge problem for Wall Street? Wall Street

Who invested in all those 95%-100% sub-prime mortgages? Wall Street.

Who created and participated in all the reinsurance deals that caused the failure of AIG? Wall Street.

Who got a $700B bailout loan from the taxpayers? Wall Street

What is the first thing Wall Street did with their bailout loans? Paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to the very people responsible for the above. If you borrowed money from WS to bail out your failing business and proceeded to pay out huge bonuses to your executives and managers, they would probably call the loan. Yet they defended it when they did exactly that.

How many WS execs have been charged (in a civil or criminal suit) for any of the above? Few, if any.

They've lied, cheated, changed the rules, and manipulated the system, while the majority of the country (and much of the world) has paid the price. Yet they have not been held accountable for any of it.

We the People are pissed off about being pissed on!

These are not the only issues driving the Occupy movement, but they're some of the major ones behind OWS specifically. Here are some of my posts on related issues of "corporatism":
Corporations Are Not People
The Paradox of Free Markets.

A NY Times op-ed piece about some of the deals.

And a Washington Post blog about the growing income disparity of the top 1% in the US and other countries.

An Interview with Jeff Greene, a billionaire who has begun to see the nature of the problem.