Spot on.
From his OpEd in today’s Isvestia New York Times:
What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.
A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate — and, yes, I myself have sometimes succumbed. In the process, it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. So, in case you’ve forgotten, it was a play in three acts.
In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.
It’s more than an indictment of Wall Street. It’s a movement. It is the decent in America beginning to speak about the indecent. It is a movement away from Democrats and Republicans who have betrayed the electorate. It is a new search for improvement in the human condition. It is a search for reform.
The Wall Street debacle is but a symptom of America’s woes. The cause is selfishness though some call it greed. America wants people to succeed. America does not want the successful to block the success of others. Yet for some the mantra is “it is not enough to win, others must fail.’ These are the people (and their thinking) that must be countered.