TOP TEN UNLIKELY OCCUPY WALL STREET SUPPORTERS
(click through for links to the source of each quote)
10) Henry Blodget: Disgraced Wall Street analyst turned online media mogul empathizes with the mob. Provides handy charts to back up case.
9) Suze Orman: Schoolmarmish personal-finance maven says banks deserve to be criticized. Grades OWS as “approved.”
8) Deepak Chopra: New Age guru leads protesters in a group meditation. Tells them to go to place of “compassion, centered equanimity, and creativity.”
7) Larry Fink: Head of world’s biggest asset-management firm says demonstrators “are not lazy people sitting around looking for something to do.” (Not to be confused with the photographer Larry Fink, who also supports the protests.)
6) Bill Gross: Manager of world’s biggest bond fund says it’s no surprise the 99% is fighting back “after 30 years of being shot at.”
5) Charles Moore: Tory sage and official biographer of Mrs. Thatcher says he is starting to think the left “might actually be right.”
4) Alec Baldwin: Actor and Capital One front man tweets support and advice to protesters. (Not clear if he’s donated the fees from his ads to OWS, though.)
3) Jeffrey Sachs: Columbia economist and former godfather of free-market shock therapy visits Zuccotti Square and tells protesters they are on right track.
2) Vikram Pandit: Citigroup chairman says “trust has been broken” between Wall Street and Main Street. Offers to meet with demonstrators.
1) Ben Bernanke: Republican-appointed Fed chairman says he “can’t blame” protesters for taking to the streets.
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Monday, October 17, 2011
To the Barricades!
New Yorker economics correspondent John Cassidy blogs:
It seems that nobody wants to be Mubarak 8-)
ReplyDeleteWhere do Wall Street's revenues come from? Roughly speaking, 1) pools of capital that are looking for management, and 2) transaction fees for big money deals (e.g. IPOs, bond placements, etc). If the protestors really wanted to put a hurt on Wall Street, they should be going after the customers. How much of hedge funder income comes from CalPERS, NYSTRS, etc? Maybe they could get together to use their market power for lower fees, or simply invest in asset classes with less management. It might be a reach for OWS types to make that kind of connection though. Meanwhile, the underlying logic - that it only takes a few guys to manage 250 billion - remains.
ReplyDeleteWake me up when they occupy Greenwich CT.
ReplyDelete