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Occupy Wall Street vs. Jobs by Michael D. Tanner This article appeared on National Review (Online) on October 12, 2011. PRINT PAGE CITE THIS   Sans Serif   Serif Share with your friends: ShareThis The last week brought us a striking contrast that tells us much about the current debate over the direction of this country. On one hand were the perpetually aggrieved protestors of Occupy Wall Street. While much of the media, desperate to find a liberal counterpart to the Tea Party (remember coverage of the state-house takeover in Wisconsin?), tried to pretend that this was an organic and leaderless uprising by middle America, the reality was that most of the demonstrators were the same motley crew that regularly shows up to demonstrate against the World Bank or G8 meetings, their ranks bolstered by union activists, MoveOn.org, and the Obama front group Organizing for America - not to mention the usual collection of filthy-rich movie stars who flew in on private jets and then climbed into waiting limousines to show up to denounce the filthy rich. But while Roseanne Barr was suggesting that the rich should be beheaded and demonstrators were making such reasonable demands as the forgiveness of all debt, much of the rest of the world was mourning the death of Steve Jobs, the filthy-rich businessman who was responsible for all those iPhones and iPads that the iPod-sporting protestors used to organize their demonstrations. [W]hat government jobs program has created as many net new jobs as Jobs? Jobs certainly was rich. Estimates suggest he was worth more than $7 billion. But it's important to realize that he didn't start out that way. Jobs's story was a quintessential American one. Born poor (and out of wedlock), he achieved success through hard work and brilliance. Along the way he failed sometimes. But when he did, he didn't beg Washington for a bailout. Instead he frequently put his own capital at risk, taking chances, because entrepreneurship truly i

The Crisis and The Way Out Of It: What We Can Learn From Occupy Wall Street Posted on October 8, 2011 The Occupy Wall Street movement more effectively addresses the cause of the financial crisis than economists and discussions in the mainstream press. Further, this movement embodies democratic solutions for a way beyond the crisis. This essay focuses on Occupy Wall Street's facilitating of political action from disparate, heterogeneous partisans; increasing of transparency and participation in decision-making; and relying upon both human-scaled and participatory technologies. Through these processes, the Occupy Wall Street micro-community embodies a vision for a pluralistic, direct democratic society and demonstrates it through practice. Three years into an economic recession that rivals the Great Depression, economists are scrambling for explanations of its origins and the steps to take. Congressperson Darrel Issa (R-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, blames unaffordable housing and political kickbacks from the banking industry. He stresses the need to "return to fiscal discipline and prudent, responsible   housing policies"(Issa, 2011, p. 419). Gary B. Gorton of the Yale School of Management traces an added cause to the "parallel" banking system and a banking panic that began in August 2007 (2010, p. 2). Former economist at Freddie Mac and the Federal Reserve and current Cato Institute adjunct, Arnold Kling, blames capital regulations and "cognitive failures" of executives in financial institutions. It may not be surprising to the reader that this employee of a libertarian think-tank advocates for deregulation and expects the public to "not be deceived into believing that regulatory foresight can be as keen as regulatory hindsight" (Kling, 2011, p. 517). Ten-year veteran CEO and President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and current Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute blames "a failu