To me this is what the protest is about, not any of this strawman bullshit the right wing are claiming.

I think a lot of the anger is rooted in this change for the worse over the last three decades. The corporations have slowly whittled away the worker's benefits to further profits and keep Wall Street happy. What workers were given instead was "free market" solutions (401ks) instead of pensions that guaranteed the worker something at the end. Now they want to get rid of social security and Medicare here in America. They won't do it overnight, but they've already convinced enough people that it's a "ponzi scheme" and they will whittle that away over the next few decades too. They'll get it too I'd imagine, one day it will be 86'd.

It was Wall Street that took these risks that crashed the market, not the everyday people who invested in their 401ks trying to save for retirement. Millions of Americans could not retire once it crashed.

You can't short your retirement portfolio, but the hedge firms certainly can; in other words they win either way. The average American is taught to dollar cost average over time, ride the dips and the peaks and you'll come out ahead. That's a tough line to buy after the last decade. In a normal market yea sure, but in one that is allowed to run riot (do to lax regulation provided by our government which is bought off by WS), then how does the average guy stand a chance at coming out ahead? What I saw is a group of firms who had trillions of dollars (pensions, 401s, retirement funds), financed by middle America and was shamelessly reckless with it. After they burned everything to the ground, they asked for money from the tax payers to keep them afloat. The sad reality is that while I hated (and still hate) the thought of socializing loss, it was necessary to stop everything from going down the toilet. Seeing the DOW get cut in half is one thing, seeing it lose 90% of value is quite another.

The subprime loans that went to shit were financed and then resold by WS. These weren't traditional banks in the way we think of them. They were "home lending" firms set up exclusively by Wall Street, who had no interest in servicing loans, only selling them. Shit loans bundled and sold as premium investments (my segue to point 2.)

Second problem that didn't protect the American workers (and their investments) was the failed ratings system. Moodys etc who gave AAA ratings to these shit investments (bundled sub prime notes.) We never would have gotten off the ground if they had been rated properly. I'd say this is the least talked about issue, and IMO one of the biggest culprits of our economic demise. Again, Goldman Sachs knew they were dogshit, even so much as to short them. So how is that fair to the American public? Surely they knew that the day would come where the house of cards would fall, but why worry? They make money either way. American investors assumed what they thought was normal market risk, not that crazy shit. As America watched it's portfolios burn, Sachs got billions in bailout money. Did anybody from GS go to jail for this shit? Nope. It's hardly a surprise why this would chap people's collective asses.

BOA same thing. Taking bailout money and then (as a way of saying thanks) charging people excessive fees, not working with them on home loan modifications etc. That's fucked up.

Firms today, running lean and mean....and not hiring. They are sitting on record profits, a surplus of cash in the trillions. But no hiring? Do they have to? No they are not obligated to hire anybody. But again, it's not difficult to see why people are pissed.

My father worked for GE for 30 years (or so) and then retired. That was common for a man of his generation. He was able to buy company stock over those three decades at a discount, as well as get a pension when he retired. He had job security up until the last five years, when they were constantly offering him packages to retire early. He was one of the only full time employees with benefits in his office by the time he left. This simply does not happen today for Middle America. Benefits are slashed, your job security is poor, and for retirement you get to give your money to WS and pray it doesn't vanish overnight. All of this is directly related to firms who are beholden to Wall Street; short term profit snuffing out any long term gain for the Middle Class. Of course by the time you hit your prime earning age, 50's, you have a high chance of getting laid off so some kid can replace you for half the salary. Good luck getting a job in your 50's when that happens too.

That's just SOME of the reasons people are pissed.