[Vision2020] Nobel Economist Krugman on Occupy Wall Street: "Confronting the Malefactors"

[Ted Moffett]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html

Confronting the Malefactors
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 6, 2011

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t 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.

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.

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.

What can we say about the protests? First things first: The
protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force,
economically and politically, is completely right.

A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has
taken over much of our political debate — 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’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.

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 — but bankers
were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached,
even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the
bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude
by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support —
and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind
politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the
mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

Given this history, how can you not applaud the protesters for finally
taking a stand?

Now, it’s 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.

Bear in mind, too, that experience has made it painfully clear that
men in suits not only don’t 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.

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’t make too much of the lack of specifics. It’s clear what
kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s
really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the
details.

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’ll second that, because such relief, in
addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the
economy recover. I’d suggest that protesters also demand
infrastructure investment — not more tax cuts — 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.

And there are real political opportunities here. Not, of course, for
today’s Republicans, who instinctively side with those Theodore
Roosevelt-dubbed “malefactors of great wealth.” Mitt Romney, for
example — who, by the way, probably pays less of his income in taxes
than many middle-class Americans — was quick to condemn the protests
as “class warfare.”

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’s 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.

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.

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.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett