The protests go by a variety of names: "Occupy Wall Street," "American Autumn," "The 99 Percent." And the lack of a unified message is matched by a lack of centralized control. But the protests share a common spark: a disillusioned Canadian adman. The Occupy protests seemed to come out of nowhere. But the early participants, like John Garcia in downtown Seattle, point to a very specific catalyst. "I get Adbusters, so that's how I heard about it," he says. Adbusters is an anti-consumerism magazine based in Vancouver, British Columbia. This summer, it proposed a Sept. 17 "occupation" of Wall Street, and the idea caught fire. – PBS
Dominant Social Theme: The people involved with the current protests are just everyday folks that have had enough … Nothing special about 'em.
Free-Market Analysis: Over at the Economic Policy Journal, we find an interesting article, "The Economists of 'Occupy Wall Street'," that shows us once again that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a specific left-wing agenda. It is actually part of a larger dominant social theme, as we have long pointed out, having to do with the creation of populist resentment against the "rich" and Wall Street.
Such sentiments are easy to whip up and tend to hide the larger manipulations of society's real elites – in this case, the larger Anglosphere power elite that wants to distract attention from central banking, with its price fixing of the price and volume of money. It is the printing of money-from-nothing that drives the engine of one-world government.
The article states what we have reported on numerous times, that Occupy Wall Street "was launched by the anti-consumer products organization known as Adbusters." We've also reported on apparent participation by the State Department via the AYM program.
Adbusters, as the article points out, "is an anti-consumerism magazine based in Vancouver, British Columbia. This summer, it proposed a September 17 'occupation' of Wall Street, and the idea caught fire." The article also reminds us of the "circumstantial links" between George Soros and Adbusters. What is just as interesting is that Adbusters has focused Internet visits on an affiliated website called KickItOver.
The article quotes the site, as follows: "We invite economics students around the world – especially PhD students – to join the fight to revamp Econ 101 curriculums and challenge the endemic myopia of their tenured neoclassical profs." We then learn about economists associated with the site. They are listed in a section called Meet the Mavericks:
Lourdes Benería
Lourdes Benería is a professor of gender and economic development at Cornell University and the author of Gender, Development and Globalization: Economics as if People Mattered. Her research centers on feminist economics, labor markets, women's work and globalization, with a special focus on Latin America. She spoke with ecological economist Tom Green.
Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz has served as both vice president and chief economist for the World Bank. Stiglitz also chairs at the Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz, along with George Akerlof and Michael Spence, won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001. His latest book is The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Ecological economist Tom Green talked to Stiglitz about the shortcomings of contemporary economics..
Herman Daly
Herman Daly is one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of ecological economics. Formerly a senior economist for the World Bank, he moved to the University of Maryland, College Park in 1994. He received the Right Livelihood Award (the "Alternative Nobel Prize") in 1996 for his work in developing ecological economics, incorporating "the key elements of ethics, quality of life, environment and community." The following excerpts are from his interview with ecological economist Tom Green.
George Akerlof
George Akerlof is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics (shared with Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz) for his paper "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism." Akerlof has worked to incorporate human psychology into economic models since 1970. His recent publications include Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, Explorations in Pragmatic Economics and Thoughts on Global Warming. He spoke with ecological economist Tom Green about what's missing from mainstream economics.
The article goes on to deconstruct the left-wing ideas of these people (which one can guess at from their backgrounds) but what is more important is the article's conclusion: "Adbusters has tapped into legitimate frustration and anger against the crony capitalist system and appears to be directing it in a far left direction that will also benefit crony capitalists. Rage against the machine is turning into an advocacy of expansion of the machine."
This is the point we've been making regularly. Occupy Wall Street isn't really about making things "better" for the average person. It's about channeling people's rage into a weapon to be turned against Wall Street to prosecute Wall Street tycoons in support of more government regulations.
This is what happened in the 1930s when the US government first developed the regulatory structure that now governs Wall Street. The SEC, CFTC, NASD and a host of other regulatory institutions were created, unconstitutionally. They did basically nothing to change the nature of Wall Street, but did further centralize the power structure via regulatory capture. Wall Street has been centralizing ever since.
Big government and its engine, central banking, are what got the West (and the world) into the current economic crisis to begin with. The leaders of Occupy Wall Street are not the rank-and-file. The leaders seem to be manipulated by a larger vision of a regulatory state. For them, every ill can be cured by more incarceration and more laws.
It is the power elite itself that wants to create a surge of populism in our view. This populism will be focused on Wall Street and directed at Wall Street tycoons. The rage will leave the central banking system (which is the point of this larger exercise) unscathed. It happened this way in the 1930s and the same playbook is being used … again.
