Forum Post: A view of OWS from The Economist
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 31, 2011, 11:02 a.m. EST by Minding
(1)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Here's an opinion piece from The Economist and what Schumpeter thinks should be done.
Nice view from the ivory tower, Schumpeter?
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What should Wall Street do?
The finance industry needs a better response to the protest movement attacking it
Oct 29th 2011
“AS THOUSANDS have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests,” wrote Lloyd Blankfein, the boss of Goldman Sachs, in a recent letter to investors. “And we have asked ourselves this question: ‘How can we make money off them?’ The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund.” This will invest in firms likely to benefit from social unrest, such as window repairers and makers of police batons. As Mr Blankfein explained: “At Goldman, we recognise that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain—but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.”
The letter is a spoof, penned by Andy Borowitz, a comedian. Goldman Sachs and its peers would of course be failing in their duty to investors if they did not find opportunities in the current global turmoil. But they should also be thinking much harder about the risk posed to their business by the protests.
Overall a supportive article. It's written as what Wall Street should do for damage control rather than owning that greed has replaced moral responsibility as a variable. Protesters with nose rings? Hardly indicative of the socioeconomic strata I've seen in SoCal. But what would we expect from a magazine called the Economist?