Occupy!

What most people are saying about the Occupy Wall St / the City demonstrations (I hope to deal with the Italian ones, where there has been serious violence, later on) is that they lack focus. Some of the demonstrators don’t seem to like this policy, some don’t like that one. I think it is fairly universal that they believe that some people are doing quite well and some (a considerably larger number) are doing very badly, but that is hardly news. There seems no credible leitmotif to the protests.

Some are saying there should be another tax on bankers’ bonuses, something I disagree with, and some say there should be a Robin Hood tax (which I also disagree with), although these are viable (if wrong) positions to take. But most people have just turned up there with a grumble.

In fact I rather tend  to agree with the unfocussed majority. It is the job of governments to create the conditions where people can find work and prosper, and in that at the moment they can’t, there would seem to be an outright failure of, if not the political system, at least of the last few people in charge of it. My view is not that you personally have a right to a job, but that we have a right that there should be jobs on offer.

If I were to focus my rage, I should take into account that many countries did not feel the recession of 2008 (Australian and Canada spring to mind, but there were others) but some, by contrast, felt it a lot more than the rest. The guilty men? This has probably been done too often but I give you:

Bill Clinton, who insisted that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the mortgage reinsurance arms of the Federal Government, both symbols of the 1950s and quite unnecessary now, reinsure mortgages for anyone who wanted one: there were unemployed people in the South taking out mortgages with no hope whatsoever of repaying them, and these became part of packages which were rated Triple-A but which had no chance of being either serviced or repaid and caused the collapse. Another is Gordon Brown of the UK who, in the words of a more apt commentator than I, ‘mistook a credit bubble for his own genius.’ Perhaps we should include Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy whose indecisiveness has ensured that a large part of the 400-odd million people they lead are scarcely solvent.

In Italy, where the riots have been more serious, it has to be remembered that Berlusconi and his mates have been in power from 2001-2006 and from May 2008 until the present day. Even less has been done in Italy to address the country’s problems than in any other country (I suppose we must exclude N.Korea and Zimbabwe). This is not, however, a justification of the violence: it seems clear that a minority have used the demonstrations for an anarchistic crack at ‘The System’. Again, perhaps, it symbolises the unfocussed nature of the complaints, but violence isn’t necessary or forgivable. In fact it gives political leaders the chance to dismiss all the grievances as coming from thugs, without addressing the unviolent majority, as they should.

In a way, I should like these complaints to be focussed (not around the Tobin Tax, please, it’s just what my grandmother would have called cutting off your nose to spite your face), because the people really do have a grievance. But really, I regard it as just part of the economic cycle. A regrettable one. Let’s hope it gets better next year.