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Michael Lewis: How Occupy Can Win

Interesting remark from the financial journo Michael Lewis on what Occupy Wall Street should do for its next trick: The big complaint about the movement is that it doesn’t know what it wants. If someone put you in charge of the movement, what would you have it do? I’m not certain that they’re wrong to […]

Interesting remark from the financial journo Michael Lewis on what Occupy Wall Street should do for its next trick:

The big complaint about the movement is that it doesn’t know what it wants. If someone put you in charge of the movement, what would you have it do?

I’m not certain that they’re wrong to be as woolly-minded about their goals as they seem to be. By not being too explicit about what they want, they attract anyone who is upset about anything. But if I were in charge I would probably reorganize the movement around a single, achievable goal: a financial boycott of the six “ too big to fail ” Wall Street firms: Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo. We would encourage people who had deposits in these firms to withdraw them, and put them in smaller, not “too big to fail” banks. We would stigmatize anyone who invested, in any way, in any of these banks. I’d try to organize college students to protest on campuses. Their first goal would be to force the university endowments to divest themselves of shares in these banks.

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