Forum Post: My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Hit Bankers Where It Hurts by Matt Taibbi

Published on Thursday, October 13, 2011 by Rolling Stone

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/13-4?print

... for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.

Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.

That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV....

1. repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and ...

3. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby...

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. ... an immediate repeal of the preposterous carried-interest tax break ...

5. new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later.