TL DR; The people will make demands, the politicians will make empty promises and threats, and nothing will change what is probably going to happen anyway. History is a bitch.
What has Occupy Wall Street really accomplished besides blocking downtown traffic? All their 1% rhetoric is Wal-Mart grade jingoism. Nobody does class warfare jingoism better then Marxists, who are noticeably absent from the political debate. This inspite of how hard government officials around the world are trying to prove them right. Marxists ranging from left wing intellectuals to the Soviet Czars predicted that capitalism would implode because the political landscape could not be united under one economic policy during a time of extreme economic crisis. This prediction is the most accurate when applied to the Europeon Union.
Far from matching that level of sophistication the Occupiers are just as ignorant as everybody else on what is happening. The concrete measures and reforms they have embraced are far from the cure-all they've proclaimed the Glass-Steagall Act (It's called the “Volcker Rule” nowadays) would be. In the Lehman aftermath there was a huge bank run on the money markets. Which is primarily a source for short-term bank credit. Even if commercial banking activities were separate from investment banking any crisis that seriously harmed one would threaten the solvency of the other. This is the dilemma our fearless leaders face.
I don't think the Occupiers deserve a lot of credit for waking Americans up to the fact they're getting screwed either. They just want their uninterrupted economic prosperity back. A sentiment I don't have a lot of sympathy for anymore. Seeing as practically nobody had a problem with the economic bubble while it was being blown in the first place. It was only when it started to threaten their slice of the American dream did the masses of people start to care about excessive Wall Street banker bonuses. What OWS basically boils down to is a lot of unproductive street theater. Which other activist causes tried and succeeded at co-opting. (Which is why Occupy Portland really cares about the fluoridation of Portland's water.) It lacks the clarity, organization, and inspired leadership other mass movements like the civil rights movement possessed. Despite all that it's given politically discontent and economically dispossessed people a banner to rally under. Which is why the political elite seem to be so scared of and are quickly passing all sorts of laws against public protesting.
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