Yes.

But Wall Street was “oc­cu­pied” any­way. Tourists, lo­cals, and Stock Ex­change em­ploy­ees were herded by po­lice and bar­ri­cades into tiny fun­nels of foot traf­fic. They shuf­fled down Wall Street and New Street and Broad Street as slowly as pris­on­ers bound by ankle chains.

Wall Street is oc­cu­pied … by fear – of the pub­lic and of its anger.

Cat­tle call

If we were herded like cat­tle, there was a cer­tain rough po­etry to that. Wall Street has never needed less from or­di­nary peo­ple to gen­er­ate its wealth, which is why cor­po­rate prof­its are so high dur­ing a pe­riod of mas­sive un­em­ploy­ment and a de­cay­ing mid­dle class.     

But it still needs us a lit­tle. Our labors and debts are still the raw ma­te­r­ial that Wall Street slices, lay­ers, bun­dles, and sells for its fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments.

Our house­hold fi­nances are to Wall Street de­riv­a­tives what cows are to ham­burg­ers.

Twist of Fear

The mar­ket had con­ducted one of its usual plunges the day be­fore, after the Fed­eral Re­serve an­nounced a minis­cule pro­gram called “Op­er­a­tion Twist” that will do lit­tle for our bro­ken and bleed­ing econ­omy. The mar­ket may not be all-know­ing. But it knows when a pro­gram is too weak to change our cur­rent pic­ture of on­go­ing eco­nomic mis­ery for mil­lions, or to hold off the in­creas­ing prob­a­bil­ity of an­other se­vere eco­nomic shock.

That’s why we saw a sharp down­turn after John Boehner and Barack Obama agreed on their aus­ter­ity pro­gram a few months ago. The mar­ket knew that wouldn’t stop the on­go­ing pain of a stag­nat­ing econ­omy and mas­sive un­em­ploy­ment.

Wall Street is oc­cu­pied … by doubt.

Ad­dicted

But the heads of our largest banks can’t stop pay­ing their ser­vant-class of Wash­ing­ton politi­cians to kill any pro­grams that might rekin­dle the econ­omy. They know what’s needed, but they can’t stop them­selves from keep­ing their own taxes as low as pos­si­ble for as long as pos­si­ble. That forces them to fight gov­ern­ment spend­ing when it’s most ur­gently needed.

And it dri­ves them to fight against the reg­u­la­tions that could pre­vent them from cre­at­ing an­other dis­as­ter. (Have you heard of ETFs yet? You will. Re­mem­ber, there was a time when you hadn’t heard of credit de­fault swaps, ei­ther.)

They won’t lend money to peo­ple to buy homes or start busi­nesses, be­cause these new and com­plex fi­nan­cial in­stru­ments are so much more lu­cra­tive. Bank­ing isn’t lu­cra­tive enough to in­ter­est bankers any­more. It’s not clever enough. From William Blake:

“… the water wheel that raises water into cis­terns (was) bro­ken & burned with fire …

You know why oth­er­wise smart hedge fund man­agers say crazy things, why they call them­selves “a per­se­cuted mi­nor­ity” or react to the sug­ges­tion that they pay the same tax rates as a fire­fighter by com­par­ing it to the in­va­sion of Poland?

Be­cause they’re ad­dicts. Junkies, even the smart ones, say crazy things to get their next fix. Es­pe­cially the smart ones.

Wall Street is oc­cu­pied by … ad­dic­tion.

A rights-free zone

The fear could be seen in the bar­ri­cades across Wall Street. And the greed could be seen in a bar­gain-hun­gry mar­ket that came roar­ing back that day, hop­ing to find gems among Thurs­day’s ruins.

But where were the demon­stra­tors? They want to cre­ate an Amer­i­can Tahrir Square, but when it comes to pub­lic demon­stra­tions Michael Bloomberg isn’t as de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cally in­clined as Hosni Mubarak. He proved that dur­ing the 2004 Re­pub­li­can con­ven­tion, when his po­lice force en­gaged in mas­sive vi­o­la­tions of civil lib­er­ties.

Mass ar­rests of demon­stra­tors and “in­no­cent by­standers” alike (aren’t they all in­no­cent until proven guilty?), spy­ing on non­profit groups, il­le­gal de­ten­tions … Mayor Bloomberg’s an­ti­de­mo­c­ra­tic skills were honed be­fore #Oc­cu­py­Wall­Street came along.

“Peo­ple have a right to protest,” said the Mayor, “and if they want to protest, we’ll be happy to make sure they have lo­ca­tions to do it.” The city found a lo­ca­tion — well away from Wall Street and the Stock Ex­change. That’s straight out of the George W. Bush play­book, where “free speech zones” were set up –where the demon­stra­tors couldn’t be seen.

Think about it: We cher­ish the rights of Tea Party demon­stra­tors so much that they’re al­lowed to bring guns into a Pres­i­den­tial rally. But these demon­stra­tors, whose cri­tique of Wall Street speaks for a vast ma­jor­ity of the pub­lic, must be herded away from our ti­tans of fi­nance and their del­i­cate senses.

Here’s some­thing Mr. Bloomberg should know: We al­ready have a “free speech zone.” It’s called “the United States of Amer­ica.”

The politi­cians don’t know, but the IMF un­der­stands …

Along comes the In­ter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, the IMF. For decades the IMF has been seen, usu­ally cor­rectly, as the en­forcer of the de­vel­oped na­tions’ bank­ing in­ter­ests in Third World coun­tries. I’ve seen it in ac­tion my­self, in dozens of na­tions.

The IMF may be many things, but it is not ad­dicted – and it’s not fear­ful. It can see what Wall Street bankers can’t see, and it can say what Wall Street bankers can’t say: The aus­ter­ity eco­nom­ics which it pro­moted for so long has gone too far. Aus­ter­ity is no longer just abus­ing the pop­u­la­tions that give fi­nance its raw ma­te­ri­als. It’s de­stroy­ing them. it’s not thin­ning the herd any­more. It’s slaugh­ter­ing it.

When Chris­tine La­garde be­came the IMF’s Pres­i­dent there was wide­spread fear that she would end the some­what more pro­gres­sive poli­cies of her ac­cused pre­de­ces­sor, Do­minique Strauss-Kahn. But she’s in­tel­li­gent and ar­tic­u­late and un­able to avoid stat­ing the clear and ob­vi­ous, even if she needed to cloud it in in­di­rect lan­guage.

Here’s what she told a meet­ing of the G20, the IMF, and the World Bank while I was among the pedes­tri­ans being herded like cat­tle down Wall Street: “Very quickly the United States must re­duce its fis­cal deficit, par­tic­u­larly for the medium and the long term. It must deal ur­gently with un­em­ploy­ment and it must re­lieve pres­sure on overly in­debted house­holds.” (Reuters)

The Peo­ple’s IMF

Sev­eral weeks ago she was con­sid­er­ably more spe­cific. She said that “fu­ture con­sol­i­da­tion” (deficit re­duc­tion) first re­quired “poli­cies that sup­port growth and jobs today … growth is nec­es­sary for fis­cal cred­i­bil­ity.” She added, “Who will be­lieve that com­mit­ments to cut spend­ing can sur­vive a lengthy stag­na­tion with pro­longed high un­em­ploy­ment and so­cial dis­sat­is­fac­tion?”

In other words, we need jobs now, or we might have British-style riots and so­cial un­rest later. La­garde went on to sug­gest “more ag­gres­sive prin­ci­pal re­duc­tion pro­grams for home­own­ers, stronger in­ter­ven­tion by the gov­ern­ment hous­ing fi­nance agen­cies, or steps to help home­own­ers take ad­van­tage of the low in­ter­est rate en­vi­ron­ment.” (via Matt Ygle­sias)

Chris­tine La­garde isn’t a rad­i­cal pop­ulist. She’s say­ing we must be res­cued for the sake of the en­tire fi­nan­cial sys­tem. That’s the same rea­son they helped Wall Street. But they won’t do it for us.

Ironic, isn’t it? The leader of this of­ten-un­de­mo­c­ra­tic in­sti­tu­tion is call­ing for poli­cies that are widely pop­u­lar among De­moc­rats, Re­pub­li­cans, and in­de­pen­dents, but which are con­sid­ered “un­re­al­is­tic” by the lead­ers and opin­ion mak­ers in our “de­mo­c­ra­tic” sys­tem.

Some­thing’s bro­ken.

Look­ing for Lib­erty

Mean­while, back in lower Man­hat­tan, I was try­ing to find a place I’d never heard of in all my years of work­ing there: Zuc­cotti Park. That was where the demon­stra­tors had been penned in by po­lice, where they weren’t vis­i­ble to of­fend the del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties of Wall Street’s most ef­fec­tive preda­tors.

Some quick Googling told me why I’d never heard of it. It was called “Lib­erty Plaza Park” when I worked here, but pri­vate in­vestors re­built it after 9/11 under the lead­er­ship of ex­ec­u­tive Robert Zuc­cotti.

The name “lib­erty” had been re­placed by the name of an in­vestor. Per­fect.

Wheels in Mo­tion

The #Oc­cu­py­Wall­Street demon­stra­tors are ex­press­ing the frus­tra­tions of the ma­jor­ity, hop­ing to chan­nel them into Arab Spring-style change. That’s the work of our time. It’s the same work we’ll be dis­cussing at next week’s Take Back the Amer­i­can Dream con­fer­ence.

The work is ur­gent and the time is now. Un­em­ploy­ment is still high. In­come in­equal­ity is higher in this coun­try than it is in Egypt. For those lucky enough to have a job, wages are stag­nated and op­por­tu­ni­ties for ad­vance­ment are few. Those wheels of William Blake’s con­tinue to spin, bind­ing the youth of the coun­try to:

“grind & pol­ish brass and iron, hour after hour, la­bo­ri­ous task, kept ig­no­rant of its use; that they might spend the days of wis­dom in sor­row­ful drudgery to ob­tain a scanty pit­tance of bread”

As for Mayor Bloomberg, and the men of women of Wall Street, and those who pass by with­out see­ing the demon­stra­tors a few blocks away, they’re des­tined to

“view a small por­tion & think that All, and call it Demon­stra­tion, blind to all the sim­ple rules of life.”

And to stay that way, un­aware of the changes hap­pen­ing all around them. They’ll find out some­day, hope­fully be­fore it’s too late.

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