It's ten minutes to ten on a monday morning. I just crossed the street to come back from the Holy Oak, a hipster cafe near my place. The coffee I hold is damn good. This is a day to start with damn good coffee.
The Occupy protests are spreading successfully throughout the western world. Speaking out against corporate greed, hordes of young people are taking to the streets to have their voices heard. What can one hear from these voices? Many well-intentioned wishes to lower university tuition, some environmental concerns and a demonization of anyone working in the financial industry. The occupy protests have received a great deal of criticism for not being focused or not clear enough in their goals. I can understand this. It seems that if there were a specific way to calm this crowd the government would be more apt to try. More on this later.
The one thing I particularly don't like about Wall Street is that most of the jobs there do not need to exist. Certainly there needs to be a few heads there, they are taking care of their country's books and monies. But in that job you only need to do so much and the Wall Street monkey is doing far more than it needs to. It is a self-serving, endlessly reproducing entity that needs to take money from other markets in order to fuel itself. The purpose of banking regulation is to keep this monkey in chains where it belongs. The more freedom it has, the more room it is going to demand for itself and that means less money for more ligitimate and productive industries.
My coffee is delicious, but it is gone now. I may go out and get another one. I wish that anyone reading this could also share in my coffee experience. It truly is amazing.
The Occupy protests seem to be catching the attention of only like minded people. There are pictures of wealthy bankers sipping champagne while protesters below them get arrested. Bill O'Reiley certainly isn't taking them seriously, not that that's any surprise. It's a common theme in partisan politics that whichever side of the fence you're on you simply won't be heard by the other side. Those protesting are young, left-wing and poor. The ones with the money, influence and power to change things are old, right-wing and rich. Without action from them there will be no effective change on Wall-Street. They simply need to be convinced that our goals are their goals.
If the occupy protests wanted to become more serious, there are a certain few things that can be done to move things along towards that glorious road of goal-accomplishment. First, gratitude. Recognize where things went right. I feel that is more our responsibility as Canadians because we came out clean. We did things right. The Honorable Jim Flaherty, Canada's Minister of Finance, has been credited with keeping our economy regulated and safe from the sinkholes of 2008. Drawing attention to and praising people like this would be sending an appropriate message, namely that we're aware that these problems have solutions. Another thing the Occupy protesters can do: get mideval. Demand blood. Watching a documentary like "Inside Job" can provide you with enough names to start screaming for street justice. Four names that always stick out for me are Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson.
A quick rundown; Greenspan is an oldschool crook economist straight out of a saturday morning cartoon, Summers a high-school bully that leaves a stream of deregulation in his wake, Bernanke the bailout puppetmaster and Paulson a bumbling idiot, too successful for his own good. These four were there when the tower started collapsing and even today they keep pulling bricks from the base of the economy to place on the top (I'm creating a new school of economic thought known as 'Jenganomics'). Time Magazine has a list of more names that were instrumental in the financial meltdown of 2008. These are the people responsible and they have not been brought to justice.
Besides unemployment, imending high-interest rates, inflation and a slew of other financial disasters, accountability the one big thread left untied since 2008. Those responsible have avoided justice under the guise that they are essential peices to this shattered puzzle. Now the people are angry. Now we make history.
Or not. We are fucked, after all.
