Equality?
Australia's journal of conservatism, misused power,influence, the Australian,this morning compares wall street protesters with??
Tea Party!
And the Tea Party come out on top.
Face it, WE ARE PAWNS in some one Else's game.
We left right center will continue hurling our selves at one another.
While the real football scores yet again behind us.
What is so wrong with saying no more Enrons, 50 more names can be added to that list.
And why do tax payer bail out banks in America and Europe But Republicans fight so hard to stop the very rich?
Paying justly their share of ? tax.
More power to the protesters.
But be aware while wall street is being white washed it is paint of a different color protesters must watch for.

TRTL
My response is probably less optimistic than grasping at a glimmer of light. :)

But some reaction is well overdue. Will it have any effect on the decision-makers. Probably not much, but change is a slow process and it has to start somewhere. Let's face it the angst is not really about 'change' per se but a reversal ie. bringing government back to the smallest common denominator, the individuals that make up the other 98%.

Diminishing it to 'equal rights for gay whales' understates the sentiment IMHO.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/the-top-1-executives-doctors-and-bankers/

Sounds like the protestors might have to move their demo sites
to outside American hospitals. According to the NY Times blog,
there are more rich doctors then rich bankers in America

I don't have as many issue with doctors taking home large salaries - after all, they have to invest quite a lot in their education, spend many years becoming doctors and generally work long hours.

Plus, their work generally has a tangible benefit for society. Bankers tend to shuffle money around.

---

On the 'equal pay for gay whales' note, I have been pretty discouraged by the demands posted thus far. I've already had one argument that "ending wars of foreign aggression" and "ending the war on drugs" where bloody stupid requests to make as they're unrealistic and make it easy for the other side to paint you as an uncoordinated bunch of yahoos.

This would be a far better place to start:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/my-advice-to-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-20111012

The five key points there would go a long way to resolving problems in the financial sector.

Excellent article TRTL

Deserves excerpt here:

" 1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year..."

Cont'd

Contd

" 5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant. "