Occupy!

I'm glad to see that there are scads of peeps marching on Wall Street in these three-week old occupy rallies. Glad to see it.

Take note that the tea party, which immediately chooses to distance itself from the occupy movement, was founded because of profound public resistance to the passing of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 (among other things). Tea partiers recognized that taxpayers were going to foot the immense losses incurred by the financial industry.

But the right wing has the objectives of the occupy movement all wrong, in my opinion. They ask the ridiculous question to the protesters: "what do you want to replace capitalism with?" to which occupiers "respond with a deer in the headlights silence." They have no answer, conservative pundits suggest.

Wrong. It's an expression of the deep disconnect between government and the people, how influence by moneyed interests have enriched those at the very top. From Bruce Maiman this week:

In 1999, then-Texas Sen. Phil Gramm was chairing committee meetings on a bill to further deregulate investment and hedge fund banking. The bill contained language he didn't like and he couldn't get committee members to agree with him. Furious, he left the meeting, walked over to lobbyists waiting in the hall (a common practice in Congress), demanding they get Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill to tell Bill Clinton to call these committee members to get on board or "I'll kill the bill. You have one hour."

Sure enough, the calls were made, all was glossed over to the satisfaction of Gramm, the bill went forward and ultimately, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the legislation that repealed Glass-Steagall and opened a door that allowed rigging of home loans through derivatives and CDOs by investment banking institutions, was passed.

Tell me that any of us can wall into the halls of congress to so much as voice our opinions with such influence others have.

It's not about destroying capitalism, it's about making it accessible to the majority.

In my opinion they are only protesting the symptom -- bankers -- while the real change must come from Washington eventually, such as forcing mark-to-market accounting standards. I'd bet that a large swath of European bonds are now only worth 40% of their face value but the face value stands and we continue to prop up banks that argue their assets are still at 100%. I'd protest that we don't give one more nickel to banks and let them fall on their own, which is something they might be doing soon, provided something like a Greek default occurs.

Banks have destroyed the living arrangements for Icelanders, Grecians, 2.3 million Chinese laborers and about 16% of the US working population. I'd argue that most of the "growth" of the last decade was hallucinated, yes, but if we never had a bubble we would never have had such a meltdown.

There are protests daily in Lisbon, in Madrid, in Athens, in New York -- all with the theme that the bailing out of financial institutions by politicians represents an utterly destructive system perpetuated. It harms many and benefits few.

They don't have a clear, organized message? This sign says it all:

$70,000 college debt
$12, 000 medical debt
I'm 22. Where's my bailout?

Just a loafer? Someone who doesn't want to work and wants to be supported by the system ad infinitium? Hardly. I'd march if I were there and I'm quite a producer. Most want to, too -- and I argue that the financial services industry essential produces nothing -- its role is to service those who do. As we will have fewer and fewer non-college jobs going forward as we fucker away our manufacturing base while the cost of college is rising at double digit rates, the only way to earn enough will be to service, to effectively take a larger and larger percentage from those who might still continue to produce.