John Paulson Told Off The Occupy Wall Street Crowd- The 1% Actually Is Paying A Lot  for the Other 99%

John Paulson commented on the Occupy Wall Street protests today.

Paulson's message for the protesters: "Don't vilify our most successful businesses."

As the movement spreads, many on Wall Street are starting to speak out against the protesters. Some argue they've accomplished nothing. A poignant moment occurred when a trader in Chicago said that the protesters are arguing for the same things that got us into this mess in the first place, while some men dressed like Robin Hood protested nearby. Traders in Chicago proudly put a sign in their windows saying, "We are the 1%."

Finally, someone big on Wall Street said what many are thinking.

The full statement from Paulson & Co:

“The top 1% of New Yorkers pay over 40% of all income taxes, providing huge benefits to everyone in our city and state. Paulson & Co. and its employees have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in New York City and New York State taxes in recent years and have created over 100 high paying jobs in New York City since its formation.

New York currently has the highest income taxes of any state in the country and thousands of businesses have fled New York to states with no income taxes such as Florida, Texas and Nevada, or moved offshore.

Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City and continue to grow.”

UPDATE: It looks like the protesters have responded. The protesters are on a tour of "Wall Street" homes in New York City right now and they just marched to John Paulson's house, where (if it's actually his) Paulson had a police barricade waiting for them. The protesters left him a present, a novelty tax cut check for $5 billion.


A WSJ Reporter's Observation Of Robin Hoods At The Wall Street Protests Crystallizes The Movement In 30-Seconds


The legendary tale of Robin Hood is being re-created at the Occupy Wall Street protests.

To steal from the rich to give to the poor** is, at least in part, the goal that protesters hope to further as they proclaim to the U.S. government, the media, banks, and anyone walking past them, that "Banks Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out." Many protesters argue that taxpayers sacrificed for the rich, represented by "Wall Street," in 2008, and now it's their turn to pay.

Though one of the organizers told us that he supports the Millionaire's Tax and eliminating tax deductions, the protesters have no concrete goals. However if the movement could be crystallized in one 30-second exchange, let it be what happened in Chicago yesterday, according to a WSJ reporter --

Twelve Occupy Wall Street protesters dressed up as Robin Hood's Merry Men chanted "We are the 99%," in Chicago as the movement continues to spread to big cities around the country. As they chanted, a nearby event for the Futures Industry Association hosted a group of traders, who took pictures of the protesters with cell phones and waved. Jay Brown, an independent trader from Chicago attending the expo, told the WSJ, "They're protesting for the things that got us into this mess in the first place. They want free handouts, unions."

The presence of Robin Hood's Merry Men does suggest that the protesters want free handouts, but it resonates with the message -- whatever it is -- that everyone is starting to decipher from the growing protests. Robin Hood stands for an unjust level of wealth inequality, as well as for kindness and giving back to the poor.*

The trader who says that free handouts got us into this has a point too. Many on Wall Street cite the cause of the subprime crisis not as evil speculation or tricky Wall Street finagling, but as the government's push in the early 90s to provide affordable housing to low-income households. Federal lawsuits aimed at firms that did not provide affordable home loans to low-income borrowers provided an incentive for lenders to provide loans to people with lower credit scores. The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to devote a percentage of their lending to support affordable housing.

They argue that predatory lending grew out of that federal requirement, which required that banks lend to people that historically didn't pay off their loans. Public banks had to make a profit for their shareholders. An angrier Wall Streeter might say, blame the crisis on the people who didn't pay off their loans.

One bank employee we spoke to was bewildered to learn that the protesters are being compared to the Tea Party movement, which accomplished much more, in dozens of national elections for example, than the Occupiers have so far.

But while it's cited as an example of what might be their biggest problem, which is not government policies that favor the rich, but laziness, the protesters flaunt their lack of a coherent goal, and their message resonates. Everyone is blaming the media for giving the movement more attention than it deserves, but maybe they get heard by millions, and they get credit for doing more than they have because it's something that resonates with anyone who has a sense that the taxpayer bailout stole from the poor to give to the rich, and that the poor are the worse off for it. Witnesses to the movement might be willing to listen and give them credit for doing nothing because they get the sense that even a proactive pity parade can change something, even if it's just a intangible, like country's moral compass.



*Robin Hood is also the name of one of the most prominent charity funds in the U.S., the Robin Hood Foundation, founded by one of the richest hedge fund managers, Paul Tudor Jones.

**A few commenters have pointed out that this is not what Robin Hood stood for. Regardless, it's what pop culture remembers about him. This paragraph from a very enlightening Wikipedia page about Robin Hood which pulls some of its words from JC Holt explains further:

The political and social assumptions underlying the early Robin Hood ballads have long been controversial. It has been influentially argued by J. C. Holt that the Robin Hood legend was cultivated in the households of the gentry, and that it would be mistaken to see in him a figure of peasant revolt. He is not a peasant but a yeoman, and his tales make no mention of the complaints of the peasants, such as oppressive taxes. He appears not so much as a revolt against societal standards as an embodiment of them, being generous, pious, and courteous, opposed to stingy, worldly, and churlish foes. Other scholars have by contrast stressed the subversive aspects of the legend, and see in the medieval Robin Hood ballads a plebeian literature hostile to the feudal order.