Wall Street Protest Starting to Look Like Tahrir Square, Egypt

Alexander Higgins reports:

NYPD police scanners are estimating a crowd up to 5,000 are occupying liberty square in a scene that is now starting to look more like Egypt’s Tahrir square. The protests have become so large that Fox News has set up a live stream covering the protests. Here are some screen shots from their camera.

Here are some additional photographs from a helicopter.

Who Are the Protesters?

Wall Street is trying to write all of these people off as being “hippies” who “need to get a job” (to which the protesters would respond: That’s the point – There are no jobs, because Wall Street has destroyed the economy.)

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The poor and the desperate, formerly-middle class people participating in the protests are not taking well to Wall Street’s “Let them eat cake” response.

But all types are marching, including grannies and pilots:

Marines and other military men and women.

Wealthy folks such as Russel Simmons and Alec Baldwin.

Liberals and conservatives.

On the other side of the protest line, Mayor Bloomberg is whining that the protesters are targeting bankers who “are struggling to make ends meet”. He has a point: if Wall Street is reined in so that the rest of the country has a chance, the bankers might have to cut back on their mistresses, prostitutes and solid gold toilets.



Class Warfare?

Yes, this is class warfare. But it is class warfare by the 1% against the other 99% (and see this). Specifically, it is the looting of the country by the top .1% through fraud.

As Warren Buffet – one of America’s most successful capitalists and defenders of capitalism – points out:

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war ….

Leading economists note that rampant inequality was one of the main causes of the Great Depression and of the current economic crisis.

Indeed, given that inequality in America is worse than Egypt (or Tunisia, or Yemen or most Latin American banana republics), and that social mobility is lower in America than in most European countries (and see this), we have been predicting these types of protests for years.

If Wall Street is starting to look like Tahir Square, it is because America is starting to look more and more like Egypt – with a handful of super-rich, and crumbs for everyone else.