…[T]he Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.
The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies.
The push to liquidity by the Federal Reserve (courtesy of Basel II) early in this century coupled with a half century of failed Federal Government socially engineered housing and housing finance policy resulted in the 2007 Capital Market Crisis, the Financial Crisis of 2008, and the ensuing Great Recession with its subsequent spike in unemployment. Underlying the inception of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the subsequent economic stagnation and accompanying unemployment which has created the very economic injustice and disparity that the Occupiers suggest they so detest.
Peter J Wallison, a prominent attorney and member of the Financial Reform Task Force and Financial Crisis Inquiry Commissions in 2009 recently suggested that the Occupiers were demonstrating in the wrong venue.
“Their anger should be directed at those who developed and supported the federal government’s housing policies that were responsible for the financial crisis,” Wallison wrote. “Beginning in 1992, the government required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to direct a substantial portion of their mortgage financing to borrowers who were at or below the median income in their communities. The original legislative quota was 30 percent. But the Department of Housing and Urban Development was given authority to adjust it, and through the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, HUD raised the quota to 50 percent by 2000 and 55 percent by 2007.”
Wallison noted that over 70% of subprime loans were “held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie or some other government agency or government-regulated institution.” While acknowledging that the “private financial sector must certainly share some blame for the financial crisis,” he said that it was not the primary source of the crisis.”
Financial crises, he said, give countries an opportunity to “use a crisis to do things better” but requires the political will to make policy changes.”
Washington DC has perpetuated the very economic malaise and economic injustice that seem to be the focus of the Occupiers.
As the WSJ suggests of Occupy Wall Street, “their cause would be better served in Washington, D.C.” The WSJ went on to state, “Three years into the current Administration, most Americans are getting wise to the source of their economic woes. It’s a couple hundred miles south of Wall Street.”
Perhaps it’s time for the Occupy Wall Street crowd to wise up!
