I’ve been wanting to write about Occupy Wall Street (OWS) for a long time. First I wanted to do enough research that I wouldn’t end up writing something totally ignorant. But so many factors got us to the point of nationwide protests that there’s no way I could understand all of it. Despite my best efforts, this post may still be ignorant, but I promise you it’s not based on false assumptions.
I must first express my supreme disappointment that the occupation of Wall Street was not some spontaneous assembly of outraged Americans, but a gathering spurred by the Estonian-Canadian Kalle Lasn, editor of the subversive bi-monthly Adbusters, using this image:
This is what I meant in my last post about the power of visual art. This image is impossible to ignore. This, and a tactical email sent to Adbusters subscribers on July 13, got 1,000 people to Wall Street on Sept. 17. No essay, no matter how well-reasoned, could do that.
After a few weeks of reading and watching, I think I know why OWS hasn’t come out with any official demands, despite politicians’ demands that they come up with some. One, obviously, is the movement’s philosophical opposition to vertical organization, which disqualifies anyone from speaking for everyone. But also, there simply isn’t a way to communicate the political situation in America that would carry more weight than the unadorned truth. The facts about who holds power in our country – in practice, not theory – and how they use it is so outrageous that attempts to write or speak about it almost always dilute the message in needless words.
Without further ado, here is my dilution.
When OWS began, my first thought was that much of the rage seemed misdirected. Wall Street, I thought, should not be held responsible for the crash; its members were operating rationally within a system set up legally by the government.
The sheer greed that brought down the economy is off-putting, sure, but greed is a normal sentiment and I can forgive it. I can’t, however, forgive the creation of a system that rewards the greed of bankers, of investment managers, of credit raters, and of the politicians themselves. That the people we elected to represent us, whom we were supposed to be able to trust, built such a self-serving system is an injustice that should have us all in the streets.
The people who allowed this system to take form should be the targets of our rage.
The New York occupation of Zuccotti Park lasted two months before Mayor Bloomberg shut it down, stating that the situation at the park had become “intolerable” with respect to sanitation and safety. In response to the protesters who invoked their constitutional rights to assemble and protest, Bloomberg said, “The First Amendment protects speech. It does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space.”
So. What we have is a First Amendment that does NOT protect the use of makeshift shelters to take over a public space, but DOES protect the use of money to make a democracy into a plutocracy. (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, holla!)
Who acts within the law can be objectively determined. But who acts within the bounds of moral righteousness is a tougher topic to tackle. At UC-Davis last Friday, police were filmed pepper-spraying a group of students who were seated on the cement. I can imagine how it escalated: the students were protesting, the police told them to leave, the students sat down in further protest, the police warned them that if they didn’t leave that force would be used, and when the students didn’t move, the police used force.
Within a legal framework, the police were right and the protesters were wrong. But what about a moral one? When enough politicians are so hypocritical that they have discredited the entire representative-democratic system, and we aren’t allowed to physically demonstrate our dissatisfaction with the outcome, what is the next option? How can we legally achieve justice when these are our laws?
The movement may be called Occupy Wall Street, but it’s not all about Wall Street. The blame, like the risk, needs to be distributed much wider. Here are some entities that have proved themselves either worthless, incompetent, or corrupt:
Presidents: President Richard Nixon, for removing the gold standard; President Ronald Reagan, for glorifying deregulation and appointing people to carry out the deregulatory agenda; President Bill Clinton, for approving the Financial Services Modernization Act (which allows companies to become too big to fail) and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (which deregulated complex newfangled financial instruments); President Barack Obama, for not demanding criminal prosecution of the leaders of the firms that were committing obvious securities fraud, and for not making Elizabeth Warren head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Congress: for being so easily seduced by lobbyists; for acting as if what they owe to constituents is proportional to the amount of money they donate.
The Federal Reserve: for a lot of things, but particularly for unnecessarily giving AIG’s counterparties 100 cents on the dollar in the bailout of AIG. (Auto companies, mainly GM, were bailed out as well, but for much less than 100 percent of their debts, and with conditions about overhauling management and business practices.)
Many Americans: for borrowing too much money. No explanation needed.
Banks: Investment banks, for reasons I won’t get into but which you can learn all about from a number of sources, some of which I will list at the end of this. But also regular consumer banks, for allowing people to lie about their credit on loan applications just so they could get another application on the books.
Credit rating agencies (Standard & Poor’s, Fitch, Moody’s): Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still had AAA ratings within days of their takeover by the government; AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns were still rated AA within days of their collapse. These firms were literally out of cash long before then. But in the meantime, the credit rating agencies had taken away the very meaning of a AAA rating by issuing AAAs in excess (a 60% increase between 2000 and 2006); and by deliberately issuing fraudulent ratings, often in response to financial incentives. The ratings agencies took in profits as if they did something important and then, when confronted about their job performance, acted like they were dispensable. “[Credit ratings] do not speak to the market value of a security, the volatility of its price, or its suitability as an investment,” said Deven Sharma of Standard & Poor’s in a congressional hearing. So what did they give the world in exchange for all that money? Short-term profits for a few people, and long-term losses for the whole country. In short, socialized debt. Thanks, guys.
Securities & Exchange Commission: for not doing its job, which is to make sure that publicly traded companies act transparently.
A person goes to jail if he robs a bank. But he’s free and clear if he robs people in a way that can’t be easily explained, and is barely understood, and is done collectively, and is technically legal. He might even be allowed to resign with a 161-million-dollar severance package in tow. That happened. And that’s one of hundreds of small facts that, when taken together, make the protesters’ case for them. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that our government and body of law do not protect us like they used to. For some 30 years big businesses created Congresses to create legislation to create a country where money is power (just ask the CEOs and lobbyists) and power is money (just ask Congress). And the situation has grown intolerable. Just ask the 99 percent.
Learn more:
The Real AIG Scandal by Eliot Spitzer
Inside Job by Charles Ferguson
Goldman Sachs..100 Cents on the Dollar by Shahien Nasiripour
The Woman Who Knew Too Much by Suzanna Andrews
Moody’s Analyst Breaks Silence by Henry Blodget
The SEC’s Next Challenge: Fixing the Ratings Agencies by Barbara Kiviat
American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips
Congress: Trading stock on inside information? by Steve Kroft
Mortgage Mess CEOs Defend Pay by David Ellis
Bank Lobby Plans Attack on Occupy Movement by Ben Johnson
