Occupy the SEC has filed suit in the Eastern District of New York over the failure of the relevant financial regulators to issue a Final Rulemaking as stipulated in Dodd Frank.

If you read the claim below, you’ll see that the various regulators were given specific dates as to when to complete the rulekmaking. Not only are the out of compliance, they appear to have no intent of finalizing the Volcker Rule.

Occupy the SEC Volcker Rule Lawsuit 2/26/13 by

It is easy to dismiss this sort of undertaking as quixotic or agitprop, but that misses the point. If you look at effective opposition movements in other countries, such as Otpor in Serbia, they used stunts and humor to, as the BBC put it,

…dispel fear among those who want to show their opposition to the government. And for long periods of time, while the rest of the opposition was in a state of slumber, Otpor demonstrated that there was a group of people who were prepared to overcome an all-pervasive apathy and demonstrate against the regime. Whatever the methods used, Otpor has always given proof of a seriousness of purpose.

In the US, the challenge is somewhat different. While the issue of widespread apathy is the same, one critical difference is that much of the public still fails to understand the degree to which the ruling classes no longer represent their interests. Oh, they may resent the banks, and they may also hate Congress, but most people deeply need to believe they live in a system that is fair and where business and political leaders (some if not all) still deserve respect and admiration. So efforts like this suit, which in a few short pages sets forth regulators have simply refused to do their job, whether out of intellectual laziness or due to their indulgence of bank stymieing tactics, puts another chink in the official defenses of cronyism.