WaPo reports on Occupy the regulatory system!
“….In its heyday, the tea party turned to elections to enact
change, rallying supporters to primary incumbents and helping the GOP retake
the House. Occupy Wall Street, by contrast, has largely eschewed the
traditional political process. Instead, as protesters have moved off the
streets, a small minority of Occupiers has waded deep into the weeds of the
federal regulations, legal decisions and banking practices that make up the
actual architecture of Wall Street. And they’re drawing on the technical
expertise of the financial industry’s own refugees, exiles and dissidents to do
so.
Many of the Occupy wonks once worked on Wall Street, and
some of them still do. They’re former derivatives traders, risk analysts,
compliance officers and hedge fund quants. They hail from Morgan Stanley,
Deutsche Bank, Bear Stearns, D.E. Shaw, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase — and
at least one is a former Securities and Exchange Commission regulator. They’re
more likely to use a flowchart than protest signs to fight big banks. But they
identify with the movement’s animating belief that America’s financial
heavyweights wield too much power, and that its political leaders are too eager
to do their bidding.
As the more visible signs of the movement fade, with their
encampments all but cleared from the country’s public spaces, the Occupy wonks
have doubled down on their policy work behind the scenes. They’re slowly
gaining attention for their efforts — not just from the news media, but also
from the some of the financial rulemakers and gatekeepers they’re hoping to
influence….”
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