General Assembly has taken on a scruffy new meaning. It’s no longer about the widely held assemblage at the United Nations, of sharp-suited bureaucrats and top politicians. It’s been replaced with something far more pedestrian, less organised and yet more impressive at New York’s Zuccotti Park. Even so, the gathering of the so called “99 per cent”, who have lost out to the great American dream because of the economic collapse caused by Wall Street's excesses, have been widely criticised for not having a unified agenda. Nothing could be further from the truth of the leaderless, autonomous, hierarchy-free “Occupy Wall Street” assembly — its unifying theme is to protest rampant unfairness and greed.
The Occupy Wall Street protest and several such social demonstrations that seem to have gathered pace starting with the Arab Spring all stem from people being angry at being treated unfairly, while those in power seem hand-in-glove with the wrongdoers. In this case, it is about the failure of capitalism to ensure that those who work the hardest get the best rewards and that the government, through its policies, ensures that the system isolates those who disrupt it for pure personal gains.
In the years since the financial meltdown that caused the collapse of Lehman Brothers, governments on either side of the Atlantic have talked up the plan to clamp down on Wall Street only for the big bosses near Battery Park to resist the straight-jacketing fairly successfully. The result is a fairly watered down Volcker Rule, whose draft version was released on Tuesday by Federal regulators. Many academics have argued that it has so many loopholes that its attempt to restrict excessive risk taking by banks will be circumvented effortlessly. Several experts have argued that it also relies too much on self-regulation and self-reporting for it to be effective.
On the other side of the ocean, there is John Vickers trying to get banks in UK to be more careful with how they use depositor money and ring fence risk. Bankers on both sides have lobbied hard saying it will kill banking and the services sector and bring the local economy down. Truth, as we know it now, is that banking is what caused the fissure in the global economy that is refusing to get cauterised. And evidence suggests that in the last two years, banker bonuses, excessive pay and risky-trading did make a comeback, so clearly there is little remorse on Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street will mark its one-month anniversary on October 16. By then, similar protests will have been held in several American cities as well as in Dublin, London and elsewhere in Europe. Thousands of students, buried under loan repayments and the prospect of no real jobs in the near future, have every reason to feel that the one percent who occupy Wall Street deserve to be reined in. Middle-class America could well use this opportunity to launch a mass movement against the bailout of Wall Street, which beggared them, with tax-payer money.
Ben & Jerry’s is handing out free ice cream at the protest venue, no one goes hungry at Zuccotti Park where supporters send in everything from sarnies to food coupons and people have opened their premises to those who want to use bathrooms. Software that helps send messages to nearby phones has suddenly become a rage. Celebrities such as Susan Sarandon have turned up alongside war veterans, hippies and liberals to show they care for the anti-greed sit-in.
It’s time the governments stirred and did their bit — it might help them come back to power.
Anjana Menon is a Delhi-based writer
