FT and NYT back Occupy Wall Street

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The Financial Times published an editorial three days ago supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. The rightwing media including the Daily Mail have also been sympathetic.

The FT says:

So far the protests in the US have been largely peaceful. They may be diffuse and inchoate. But the fundamental call for a fairer distribution of wealth cannot be ignored. What is at stake is the future of the American dream. The bargain has always been that all who work hard should have an opportunity for prosperity. That dream has been shattered by a crisis brought about by financial excess and political cynicism. The consequence has been growing in­equality, rising poverty and sacrifice by those least able to bear it – all of which are failing to deliver economic growth.

The frustration of protesters railing against the global financial system, and of the 54 per cent of Americans who polls suggest support their calls, is legitimate. The wonder is why it has taken so long for citizens to come out in popular protest across political boundaries. For the last three years, the country has been paralysed by a political gridlock that has put its future on the line.
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Politicians in both camps have failed to spot and channel the righteous anger of those who have seen government spend billions on bailing out banks, while bickering over how to create jobs or educate children. One opportunity after another has been squandered – most recently in the failure promptly to pass a proper jobs bill.

It ends by saying that this “cry for change” must be “heeded”.

Last week the New York Times also published an editorial supporting the OWS movement.

The protests, though, are more than a youth uprising. The protesters’ own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.

The initial outrage has been compounded by bailouts and by elected officials’ hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer.

Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.

When the protesters say they represent 99 percent of Americans, they are referring to the concentration of income in today’s deeply unequal society. Before the recession, the share of income held by those in the top 1 percent of households was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than double the 10 percent level of the late 1970s.

That share declined slightly as financial markets tanked in 2008, and updated data is not yet available, but inequality has almost certainly resurged. In the last few years, for instance, corporate profits (which flow largely to the wealthy) have reached their highest level as a share of the economy since 1950, while worker pay as a share of the economy is at its lowest point since the mid-1950s.

The NYT is missing the elephant in the room which is asset ownership - in this the top 1% own the same as the bottom 50%. Does this mean that the intellectuals of the US capitalist class, and the likes of Buffet and Soros, realise something must be done or the protests could begin to threaten the system? Or is it that they don't threaten the system and there is a desire to keep these protests cuddly. In the crisis of 1979-81, the most severe postwar crisis before now, there were strikes and riots too. The occupy movement is new, it is more middle class than traditional strikes or the riots, perhaps as impoverishment hits the new graduate classes of the 21st century. Perhaps that's why politicians and the media are less quick to condemn it. Michael Moore got a respectful hearing on Newsnight on Wednesday - Paxo just listened rather than barking at him for being a lefty. Strange, unfamiliar territory...