The Call

Change for the Better

or

Loose Change

Movements don't write legislation. They force open a line of questions that makes it possible for people to imagine new policies. That's always the first step."~ Nina Eliasoph, University of Southern California sociologist.

The Occupy Wall Street protests have gone national and even international now. I will venture that the specific provocations are not the same for all people or all nationalities but they have a central theme. It is that the economic system has run rampant without effective regulation and has dragged down the economies of the world. While the rest of the world can't blame all of its ills on Wall Street we can place a great deal of the blame for our own there. I have to interject here that those Wall Street Banks did not accomplish this feat on their own. They used their highly paid lobbyists to buy legislation that made their strategies legal. In addition the investment banks came up with some very inventive ways to create securities that had never been seen before and for which there existed no regulation. Of course, the mantra then was that markets are self correcting as Alan Greenspan so famously expounded. He later said he was surprised and was going to have to rethink his entire economic philosophy. Too late.

The problem is that consumers and banks were enormously over-leveraged which simply means that they did not have enough assets to cover the losses when the market went South. Several trillion dollars of paper wealth disappeared overnight into the vapor from which it was created but the debt did not. Part of the solution is to make some of the debt go where the wealth did but the people holding the paper do not like that ideal.

So, all of a sudden people don't have any money because the engine for the economy was so heavily vested in construction and we found ourselves just way overbuilt. Those “toxic assets” as they are euphemistically named, have to work their way through the system until someone buys them before our economy will pick up again. Unless something else takes the place of construction. Without money, demand falls off a cliff and all of a sudden there is no need to make new stuff. Hence, no jobs.

State governments have cut to the bone as have municipal governments which has only exacerbated the jobs problem. No money=no demand=no jobs. People are smart enough to realize who got the short end of the stick and they are mad. For the past couple of years the Tea Party has been mad but their solutions were to allow those who created the mess to make a bigger one. Occupy Wall Street brings the focus onto the malefactors who drove us into the ditch. The protesters call themselves the “Ninety Niners” because of the inordinate amount of the nations wealth that is owned by 1% of the population and they feel like they deserve a larger piece of the pie. As do I. Herman Cain says they can work for it and it seems that most of them are more than willing to do just that but, remember, no jobs. Loopholes and tax structures have been created that favor the wealthy and puts the bulk of the load on the middle class which is in trouble. Yes, the same middle class that astounded the world and made America the powerhouse that it is.

Now Occupy Wall Street is demanding that the very structure of our economic system be changed so that the middle class and the working poor are not at a disadvantage. They say that it will not be enough to slap a few band aids on the system and continue as is. The system must be altered so that the wealthy and corporations are not able to buy favorable legislation. The system must be changed so that banks and investment houses are not able to take excessive risk that can damage the entire economic system. The system must be changed so that when people are thrown out of work, opportunity for retraining will be available. The system must be changed so that college students do not graduate owing $35,000 in student loans. The system must be changed so that our country is investing in industry of the future to employ those entering the work force. The system must be changed so that American industry is looking to the future and on the cutting edge of new technology. The system must be changed so that we can begin to move to new forms of energy production while winding down the use of fossil fuels. The system must be changed so that we can have the ability to make decisions without being faced with inept governance. The system must be changed so that we can perform maintenance on and improvements to our critical infrastructure. We don't need government to get out of the way. We need government to help!

My take on what Occupy Wall Street is about. What are your ideas for solutions?