I doubt if there are too many people out there who doesn’t
already know quite a bit about the Occupy Wall Street movement that took place
around the end of last year. It was labeled as America’s own movement compared
to that of Tahirir square in Egypt that saw the end of Hosni Mubarak’s long
hold, for good or for bad that’s yet to be determined. The question is – why? What might have caused
this sudden change of events in the great land of opportunity – the sole
superpower? The answer to this question
is not a simple one. Whether an individual decided to participate in the Occupy
movement or not, there’s little doubt that there is a general concession among
ordinary people that the disparity among classes – primarily focusing on wealth
– is getting bigger and bigger, with rich getting richer and poor getting
poorer.
The answer to that question is neither simple nor straight forward.
However, it is not difficult to figure out that in the corporate world a relatively
small group of people controls majority of the cash flow and manages most of
the tangible wealth while the rest have little choice but to become the cards
of their hands – being played as they wish.
When things look good they take credit for the success and are rewarded
with hefty bonuses, when things look bad they get to truncate workforce in
their quest to make things look profitable to the investors and again receive
hefty bonuses for making it look good. Talk about a fair deal!
Anyway, before discussing the occupy wall street it is
important to look a little back to cover two major events in the recent history
in the economy of America. In this
article I’ll briefly visit the circumstances of the two market falls – the dot
com burst starting around 1998 and the real state bubble burst starting around
2007.
In the year 2000 when dot com bubble burst was going on in
full swing I was right in the middle of it all, scared, affected, driven,
suffered and finally jabbed right into the face, eventually made my way out of
the burst into my new country Canada. At that time I wasn’t fully sure what had
hit us but later as things settled down and everybody had time to think the
truth started to become very apparent. Too many companies had mushroomed with similar
ideas and started their journey with the money borrowed from venture
capitalists and failed to bring any reasonably good product in the market
before the funding wasted away. Even the
ones that did release some working products they faced stiff competition with
other similar products. In such a situation only the best survives and most
others perish, with all its ship load of contributors, investors and workers. With
that coupled with high compensation for the high ups, offering public shares
even before any tangible product was created, and irrational expectation of
earnings – everything chipped into the downfall. At the end thousands were out of
work, many companies closed.
At this point I must elaborate on the two occasions where I
had lost my jobs. The first company was working on to create a new kind of
search engine, the novelty of which I was unable to figure out even after
working for six months. Everything looked about the same as other ones already
in the market with majority quickly disappearing in the oblivion. I wondered if an insignificant IT professional
like me could see it then why couldn’t all the talented venture capitalists. I guessed they had taken a chance, just in
case some miracle had happened. None
did. Eventually the investors figured out they weren’t about to experience any
miracle and quickly backed off and I was out looking for work – along with
everybody else, must have been a few hundred. That made it even difficult,
because too many people were looking for work in an already terrified market.
I ended up getting another position with yet another dot com
running with venture capitalist money. This one looked more prospective. I even heard they were about to get a buyer –
a really good thing, sure sign of success. Not sure how things would have gone
if not for the terrorist’s attack on the world trade center on September 11
2001 but after that already shaky market turned shakier and worst of all, our
potential buyer backed off. So much for success! The company went belly up as
they could not find anybody else to finance. The good – I bought a laptop for
fraction of the price it was selling in the market from the now defunct company.
The bad – I was out looking for a job
again and so were hundreds of others from my previous company. This time things
became really personal. Anyway, had I not been working as a foreign worker and
getting squeezed by the parent company that sponsored me and only provide a
mere percent of the gain for my services I probably wouldn’t be too sour. The
loot was all gone and I got barely any share of that. Some did get rich,
bilking the cash cows to the max.
Me and my misfortune!
I’ll continue this article to talk about the real state
bubble.
