The Real Economy Chooses Reform Over Resentment

In America, things perhaps reached the boiling point in March 2009. That was when the Obama administration bailed out AIG with over $150 billion and the company then proceeded to award its top executives with $165 million in retention bonuses and treated them to a $440,000 spa retreat at the prestigious St. Regis resort. Citizens, who were losing their jobs in record numbers and watching their life savings reduced to nothing, were so angered that a number of them traveled by bus to the estates of the AIG executives to speak their minds – kind of like the present Occupy Wall Street movement. The executives were forced to hire private security guards to protect themselves.Politically the resentments of that crucial time manifested themselves by protesters punishing those politicians who appeared to be in the back pockets of the financial industry. Significant political careers ended in the election shortly thereafter.But it didn’t end there. The anger spilled over into the areas of trade and immigration. In both the US and Canada, strings of free trade deals were either put on hold or were passed against strong opposition. It was as if things were just going back to business as usual, only this time a number of citizens decided to draw a line. Yet despite these actual developments pundits and observers continue to castigate those citizens who are saying enough is enough. This can be a truly ignorant and unfeeling world. Or as Chuck Baldwin noted: “Along with their compatriots in the propaganda press corps, they know that no matter how loudly we scream, how much we protest, or how angry we become, the system is rigged to protect them.”One aspect of the lunacy of those critical to the Wall Street protest movement has been the tendency to see the various marches as a knee-jerk reaction, when in reality is has been building for two decades. It would be more accurate to report that despite not having been listened to for a lengthy period of time, the protest movement has, in fact, carried out their protestations in ways that are peaceful, thoughtful, and not without a certain dignity in difference. I could see last week that there were certain “professional” anarchists attempting to infiltrate the protests, but they couldn’t find purchase because the demonstrators weren’t there to cause violence but to press for change. Their future success will depend on their ability to fend of the permanent vigilantes from both the demonstrations and digital venues like Facebook pages.There is an ancient Russian fable about a peasant who has suffered for many years but whose neighbour was rich and living more and more comfortably each year. Eventually the rich neighbour bought himself an expensive cow – something they peasant could never afford in a lifetime. The peasant prays to God for help, and when God asks in return what the peasant would like done, he receives the answer, “Kill the cow.”There is nothing in the Wall Street protests that comes close to resembling such sentiment. They are angry, to be sure. Frustrated? Absolutely. But they have effectively made the point that those growing frustrations have been angling toward financial reform, not revenge. In doing so they are allying themselves with what a real economy would pursue: an unbiased and critical review of mistakes made and how best to get economies back on the right track. Returning to the same-old, same-old is hardly an effective prescription for future economic health and prosperity. This is the key point of the present protests – instead of attempting to violently overthrow the current financial order, they are asking that it reform itself and construct a model of solid fiscal practice that would once again begin to build prosperity throughout all society instead of being channelled to just a few.We are in a difficult time of transition, where we are unsure how it will end. The unfeeling critics are banking on the belief that it will all fade (all this while they profess the collective desire to see the Arab Spring succeed). In that blind obduracy these critics only succeed in fuelling the fires of discontent. They take the position they do because of two clear realities: 1) the don’t comprehend what it’s all about; and 2) they must do all they can to protect the status quo. In other words, the real economy is hardly an issue to them but a false one that continues to build on the sands of systemic failure.These protesters deserve our support because they behave responsibly and they successfully remind us that the purpose of the Occupy Wall Street movement is not to exact revenge but to elicit from the powers that be the kind of restructuring that treats wealth as an investment in society and not an enticement to seclusion. There's a certain élan to how they are acting. They know what the “real” economy is and they’re trying to get to it as peacefully and reverentially as they can. It’s unfortunate that such a respect doesn’t run both ways. But then again, there was nothing “real” about the old order the critics are trying to preserve anyway.