What’s weird here is that it seems more like willful stupidity rather than just random mobs burning things due to chaos.
I think it’s some sort of availability bias. Black rock isn’t doing the thing they dislike but they are big and have an office in Paris; therefore, burn it down as an effigy of the system I dislike.
I don’t like this description. Peaceful protests are peaceful. Pretty peaceful protests aren’t peaceful.
There was a protest in my town recently where a cop car was set on fire and a bunch of windows were smashed. Maybe 200-500 people total but it was described as “mostly peaceful.” While that is true as I think only 10 people were arrested and more were violent, but that’s like 5-10% violent and the rest peaceful. I don’t think that’s earnest and truthful and I’d rather like to know if a group is peaceful or not.
But “mostly peaceful” protests are the bad kind of protests. I think they are more accurately described as light riots or something or mostly peaceful riots. Or some inflection point between a lawful, peaceful protest and a violent protest.
The police actually just kind of watched the protesters smashing and burning stuff and they certainly werent tear gassing people. But I think that they do need to do something to stop violent/mostly peaceful protests and arresting 9 out of 100-200 rioters doesn’t seem to be reducing the number of riots.
It’s like describing someone charged with domestic abuse as “mostly a loving spouse who almost never beat their spouse.” True, but disingenuous.
Blackrock is a massive player that is by some accounts, possibly the largest and most powerful hedge fund in the world, that is doing things like buying up houses to rent out, pursuing ESG initiatives extensively etc.
It's not about the pensions so much as it is an expression of outrage about the powerlessness people are feeling and directing it at what is precieved to be one of the sources of that powerlessness.
This is quite a common occurrence and even I get them confused.
Blackrock is not a hedge fund. They are an asset manager. They take your money and park it into the market for you. To the extent that they exercise any discretion over the market basically comes down to the stock blend they put into their otherwise very boring index fund options.
(BTW, BlackSTONE was the company that was buying up houses.)
> In me it seems more of an expression with a general dissatisifaction with the current massive conglomerates that seem to be ossfying into a defacto ruling class.
Okay, sure. If you want to take down global capitalism, go for it. But functional pension programs rely on bond and investment markets to function. If French politicians are looking for ways to keep their pension programs from collapsing, attacking the mechanisms that service your pension programs dilutes your message.
I've seen this reported many times even in places like nytimes but never seen actual numbers behind it. I 've read number between 3% and even as high as 20% .
My impression was it was ordinary upper income ppl like high end tech workers , retirees ect that were doing most of the buying and renting. A vast majority of my friends now own rental properties by directly buying them or turning their previous residence into a rental.
We all want one evil villain to blame but reality is much more complicated. Thats why movements like occupy wall st acoomplish nothing. Wouldn't it be easy if the problem can be solved by taking down one evil dude in his castle.
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housin...
FWIW: institutional investors buying up single-family-homes (at least in the US) never really worked out. The FHA and VA programs are such huge players in the US loan market that individual investors can still outcompete big guys on financing.
this is mis-information by incompleteness. There are records and there are lies, with a non-zero overlap. Source- investor/accountant with a US California Masters degree in Taxation
Taking out one evil dude = one less evil dude = better society.
Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Whether the demise of OWS was 100% due to their shortcomings and actions is speculative - a lot of people think the original demise and subsequent massive increase in culture war catching the media's attention (and in turn, dividing the public on yet another contentious issue) was to some degree coordinated...and I am one of those people.
An union representative. Usually complete morons. They routinely justify detaining people like execs during strikes to get what they want.
If anything, the collapse of the French public pension system would be a net benefit to their business if people start fleeing to private investments.
Sure the workers are screwed in favour of retired people but the fund is increasing with this change.
You might say the same about large quantities of public policy, written by The Experts, with little regard for public sentiment, in this so called "democracy".
Let's hope that the elites aren't too inconvenienced in their walled neighbourhoods by these non-expert's lack of expertise.
Uh... this makes no sense. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but nope, it was intentional and targeted.
> “The meaning of this action is quite simple. We went to the headquarters of BlackRock to tell them: the money of workers, for our pensions, they are taking it,” Jerome Schmitt, spokesman for French union SUD, told CNN affiliate BFM-TV.
Again, this makes absolutely no sense. The protesters aren't even aligned on why they are there. If this was about the pensions this moment would be a bit like keying your own car.