“Occupy Wall Street” goes global

What began as a tentative protest on September 17 in the financial district of New York by a handful of protesters has turned into a global uprising against corporate greed and corruption.

It's about time.

Consider the current economic situation in America:

– The richest 1 percent (the One Percenters) take home almost 25percent of the national income, which represents a more unequal wealth distribution than most of the world's banana republics.

– From 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of the total increase in incomes went to the One Percenters. They now have more net worth (34percent) than the bottom 90 percent (29percent), according to figures compiled by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

– According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 14 million Americans (9.1percent) are unemployed as of September 2011. (This does not include the millions of Americans who have given up looking for jobs, particularly those over 50.) Almost as many Americans are working part-time only because they cannot find full-time jobs.

– 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty, the most in more than 50 years. Foreclosures and bankruptcies are at an all-time high. Over 50 million Americans do not have any medical insurance.

– The CEOs of the largest American companies earn an average of more than 500 times as much as the average worker.

In New York, the epicentre of the uprising, the wealth of the One Percenters derives almost entirely from a sector known exclusively for its "financial innovation." These "innovators" work in Wall Street, commercial and investment banks, hedge funds, and credit card and insurance companies. They produce nothing. Instead, they claim to create "value" by speculating with other peoples' money, be it in mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, gas and food prices, always hedging the bets so that they end up with piles of cash whether society wins (rarely) or loses (almost always). These captains of the industry monopolise profit but socialise risk. It's the same story in Chicago, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Sydney, Shanghai, Delhi and other cities.

In today's America, the One Percenters control the rest of the population, the Ninetynine Percenters, through economic and political hegemony. The country is run by a government of the One Percenters, by the One Percenters, and for the One Percenters, a far cry from what Abraham Lincoln had in mind.

President Obama has been profoundly disappointing. He promised to clean up the economic disaster he inherited from George Bush. Obama vowed to be an agent of change, a beacon of hope. Instead, he coddled those responsible for the meltdown — bankers, hedge fund operators, reckless speculators and other assorted wealthy sociopaths and charlatans — and bailed them out with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, while turning a blind eye to their uninterrupted multi-million dollar quarterly bonuses.

But the masses have stirred at long last. Their message is clear: A system in which the market is expected to correct itself while financial predators feast on vulnerable consumers is immoral and destructive. It is a system that decimates the middle-class and breaks the backbone of a society. It must be set right or anarchy will ensue.

The Wall Street protesters who derived their inspiration from the Arab Spring (Tunis, Cairo, Tripoli, Damascus) are demanding that two steps be immediately taken.

First, the government must put in place a stricter system of checks and balances that reduces the economic distances between the One Percenters and the Ninetynine Percenters and that puts of millions of unemployed people back to work through incentives and retraining.

Second, the financial "masters of the universe" must be held more accountable for their thievery than in the past. It used to be that desperate people robbed banks in yesteryears. Now it's the banks that are robbing desperate people. Yet the CEOs of major American banks, the new Al Capones who believe that their comfort rests upon an abundance of the poor, are still throwing million-dollar bashes and indulging in unearned opulent lifestyles while thousands of Americans are losing their homes to these very banks.

The decade of 9/11 is now giving way to the decade of the 99/1. The global grassroots movements sparked by the Wall Street Occupiers have charged the national and international discourse with timeless ideas of equity, accountability, fairness and justice. People are no longer afraid of taking on the most powerful economic and political forces of the world. They are demanding accountability from the few who have become super-rich through the plunder of public wealth and the exploitation of natural resources around the world. They are demanding a fairer distribution of income.

"The arc of the moral universe is long," said Martin Luther King, "but it bends towards justice." However, this arc does not bend on its own. It requires a movement like "Occupy Wall Street" to bend it in the direction of justice. No wonder it has struck a chord in the hearts of millions.

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Hasan Zillur Rahim is a technologist and educator working in Silicon Valley, California.