Occupy in the Financial Times
Lisa Pollack just wrote about Occupy yesterday in this article entitled “Occupy is Increasingly Well-informed”.
It was mostly about Alternative Banking‘s sister working group in London, Occupy Economics, and their recent event this past Monday at which Andy Haldane, Executive Director of Financial Stability at the Bank of England spoke and at which Lisa Pollack chaired the discussion. For more on that event see Lisa’s article here.
Lisa interviewed me yesterday for the article, and asked me (over the screaming of my three sons who haven’t had school in what feels like months), if I had a genie and one try, what would I wish for with respect to Occupy and Alt Banking. I decided that my wish would be that there’s no reason to meet anymore, that the regulators, politicians, economists, lobbyists and bank CEO’s, so the stewards or our financial system and the economy, all got together and decided to do their jobs (and the lobbyists just found other jobs).
Does that count as one wish?
I’m digging these events where Occupiers get to talk one-on-one with those rare regulators and insiders who know how the system works, understand that the system is rigged, and are courageous enough to be honest about it. Alternative Banking met with Sheila Bar a couple of months ago and we’ve got more very exciting meetings coming up as well.
mathbabe 
My comment to the Editorial in Financial Times, 31 Oct 2012:
“Occupy was wrong to assert that inequality is an inevitable consequence of free-market capitalism, for instance. The too-big-to-fail institutions that populated pre-crisis banking were the opposite of what free markets should beget.”
“SHOULD beget?” TBTF institutions are a direct and inevitable result of the form of “free market” that now dominates all major markets : unfettered crony banksterism that assumes economies best prosper under an Elite that has the knowledge and tools that supercede an Adam Smith world of the “invisible hand” of multitudes (not 400 billionaires) of market participants at an individual, human level (PEOPLE not institutions, small entities under truly individual decision-making, not corporate pathology of short-term profit at any cost to human beings).
FT is in serious denial of reality, just as severe as the denial of global warming (in the face of massive evidence and consensus of scientific method) among the self-interested sociopathic TBTF institutions and their ignorant wannabe minions. FT has a unique set of talent and open thinking. Wake up and see the future, however remote, and stop parroting the elitist pap that is fighting the inevitable progress toward individual rights against the blindness of institutionalised greed.
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Cathy, got a timetable for the possibly forthcoming handbook mentioned in the FT piece?
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From Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism, 4:48 am 31 Oct 2012 :
“Haldane’s comment on analytical ground probably refers to (among other things) the Occupy the SEC Volcker Rule comment letter and its Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual. When Sheila Bair met with the Alternative Banking Group, she said that the Volcker Rule comment letter galvanized the SEC, that too often the staff wants to take a position opposed to the generally sloppily made lobbyist comments, and gets little sympathy from the top brass if there are no comments from public groups on the other side. OWS has established a brand that regulators will listen to, and I hope it continues it its efforts to make use of its bully pulpit.”
Kudos to the Alternative Banking Group!
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The lobbyist wish is a familiar one but I think totally unrealistic. People get to have viewpoints and express them, period.
And it’s always going to be true that industry veterans know more about their area than politicians do. Elected representatives aren’t superhuman.
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The Handbooks mentioned in Lisa’s article sound intriguing – where are they available?
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I blogged about the Debt Resistor’s Operations Manuel here:
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