Global Spring indeed!
Oct 17, 2011
Last week I predicted that the protest movement "Occupy Wall Street" could grow in to what I referred to as a Global Spring. Indeed it did. The protest movement spread to major cities around the world: Rome, Barcelona, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Zurich, and many more locations. The newly created website: "United for Global Change" included a claim of 1,039 protest events in 87 countries. This is a movement that is indicative of the growing network of tech-savy people, typically young adults, who are unified in their despair at capitalist' overreach. And while these protests are being led by the young people, the world is witnessing the inclusion of all people irrespective of age, education, financial status, creed, race, or political party. Capitalism is not a substitute for good governance. Capitalism does not substitute for good public policy. Capitalism without proper regulation leads to imbalances within the global economic structure. Exactly where did we get terms like: toxic assets, zombie banks, or exotic derivatives? These ridiculous terms describe economic monkey-business, instead of good business practices. Greed and mental rationalization allow those who can best manipulate the tools of the trade the advantage of the froth. But what is left for the public, is the bill. Markets must function, but not at the expense of the public sector. Politicians who lack the leadership and good judgement to properly regulate financial systems are naive. Capitalism must have a structure that allows it to effectively grease a strong economy without stripping the people of a fair shake. Capitalism is to be at the service of the people, not the other way around. In a time when jobs are a driving force of the protest movement, political leaders cannot exempt themselves from the responsibility to work with financial regulators to ensure that the imbalances underlying the Great Recession are indeed corrected. The young people today have too much information through the internet to allow the status quo to continue. Capitalism on steroids is not the future the young people want to see. They are turning to a time-honored form of democracy, that of public protest. Their message is clear, we need to put some democracy back in to capitalism.
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