{"id":15328,"date":"2011-10-31T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=15328"},"modified":"2011-10-28T20:08:38","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T19:08:38","slug":"confronting-the-malefactors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/10\/confronting-the-malefactors\/","title":{"rendered":"Confronting the Malefactors"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something happening here. What it is ain\u2019t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.<\/em><\/p>\n

When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests, National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever.<\/p>\n

It is, therefore, a testament to the passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too big to ignore. With unions and a growing number of Democrats now expressing at least qualified support for the protesters, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.<\/p>\n

What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters\u2019 indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.<\/p>\n

A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate \u2014 and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. So, in case you\u2019ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.<\/p>\n

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst \u2014 but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers\u2019 sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support \u2014 and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts \u2014 behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.<\/p>\n

Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally taking a stand?<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.<\/p>\n

Bear in mind, too, that experience has made it painfully clear that men in suits not only don\u2019t have any monopoly on wisdom, they have very little wisdom to offer. When talking heads on, say, CNBC mock the protesters as unserious, remember how many serious people assured us that there was no housing bubble, that Alan Greenspan was an oracle and that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring.<\/p>\n

A better critique of the protests is the absence of specific policy demands. It would probably be helpful if protesters could agree on at least a few main policy changes they would like to see enacted. But we shouldn\u2019t make too much of the lack of specifics. It\u2019s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it\u2019s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details.<\/p>\n

Rich Yeselson, a veteran organizer and historian of social movements, has suggested that debt relief for working Americans become a central plank of the protests. I\u2019ll second that, because such relief, in addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the economy recover. I\u2019d suggest that protesters also demand infrastructure investment \u2014 not more tax cuts \u2014 to help create jobs. Neither proposal is going to become law in the current political climate, but the whole point of the protests is to change that political climate.<\/p>\n

And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for today\u2019s Republicans, who instinctively side with those Theodore Roosevelt-dubbed \u201cmalefactors of great wealth.\u201d Mitt Romney, for example \u2014 who, by the way, probably pays less of his income in taxes than many middle-class Americans \u2014 was quick to condemn the protests as \u201cclass warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Democrats are being given what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies that failed to deliver economic recovery even as bankers repaid the favor by turning on the president. Now, however, Mr. Obama\u2019s party has a chance for a do-over. All it has to do is take these protests as seriously as they deserve to be taken.<\/p>\n

And if the protests goad some politicians into doing what they should have been doing all along, Occupy Wall Street will have been a smashing success.<\/p>\n

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 7, 2011, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Confronting the Malefactors.<\/em><\/h6>\n
_____________________<\/em><\/h6>\n

Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal. On October 13, 2008, it was announced that Mr. Krugman would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something happening here. What it is ain\u2019t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}