USA Today reports that Occupy Wall Street is a middle class revolt (“Protests spotlight a stressed middle class”). Long term unemployment, slumping pay, rising health care costs are behind it. “These people are not just protesting for the hell of it,” Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics in New York, which consults for banks and hedge funds, was quoted as saying, adding: “A lot of people don’t have purple hair, but underneath, they feel what these people are saying. The middle class is under tremendous pressure.”
Meanwhile, the people who nearly destroyed the financial system are doing business as usual, spreading money around Washington, D.C. and apparently living large. “Ridiculous” is how one Occupy Wall Street protestor and social worker described news that Goldman Sachs has set aside compensation in the a mount of $10 billion or $292,000 per employee, down $79,000 from last year. CNNMoney, which ran the story “Occupy Wall Street reacts to Goldman Sachs pay”), said: “Few companies embody such excesses in the public mind more than Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs’.” The Occupiers are a diverse group. “They are clearly united, however by their concerns about growing inequality and corporate excesses,” according to the article.
Another thing that unites Occupiers is outrage over abuse of authority. On October 15, uniformed police and plainclothes security men arrested a Citibank customer who merely closed her account at Citibank at the same time the protestors were there. She was outside the bank when they dragged her back in to be arrested with the Occupiers inside the bank. While Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit was nowhere to be seen, Citibank was at least complicit in the ugly incident.
The abuse prompted an open letter to Pandit that concluded: “Mr. Pandit, America is headed in a different direction, away from big banks and towards a fair and sustainable financial system. Whether you arrest your customers or not, we will be there.”
A fair and sustainable financial system is not anti-capitalist talk. Some Occupiers may have strange appearances or unusual beliefs. That is inevitable in any large upheaval. Most of them, however, would be satisfied with a fair and sustainable financial system.
Roosevelt was hated by the bankers of his day, who said he destroyed capitalism, but most now say he saved it. Something concrete must be done to accommodate reasonable people who want reasonable changes. Otherwise, we will be dealing with the communists and anarchists.
Page Perry is an Atlanta-based law firm with over 150 years collective experience protecting investor rights and fighting Wall Street greed.