Preoccupied with Wall Street

Since September, the Occupy Wall Street movement has expanded from a humbly-sized, anti-corporate protest in Manhattan's Liberty Square to an immense, multinational one that encompasses about 1,500 cities.

Four months in and hundreds of police arrests, riots and used cans of pepper spray later, the Occupy movement lives on and exists on our own campus. Since the past four years have comprised of corporate bailouts, subprime mortgage foreclosures and taxpayer subsidies to corporations, it is completely understandable why the American public — specifically America's youth — is frustrated by the overbearing, dismal economic climate in this country.

However, although corruption may exist in some parts of the financial sector, I cannot help but ask myself, "Why push most blame on Wall Street, but not on senators, representatives and other members of the federal government who have allowed our economy to fail?"

Occupy protesters complain about how the 1 percent screwed up. Corporations on Wall Street have the majority of the wealth from taxpayers on "Main Street" but fail to protect them financially.

But who gave corporations on Wall Street tax-subsidized bailouts in the first place? What entity is responsible for trying to pick winners and losers in our so-called free enterprise economic system? Didn't members of Congress choose to loosen regulation on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the mortgage crisis in 2008?

Occupy UMD and the entire Occupy movement abhor the financial benefits of Wall Street, but according to Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen, about 49 percent of Occupy protesters thought the bank bailouts were necessary to start with. Yes, you heard me: The same bank bailouts that gave $700 billion to Wall Street investment banks were deemed necessary by almost half of Occupy protesters who were presumed to be complete critics of financial and governmental cronies.

As much as protesters critique all of the goings-on of Wall Street, the federal government has always been the corruption-enabler. The federal government has always been one of the root causes of corporations getting the upper hand, and the federal government has always been committed to rent-seeking, or having an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" demeanor with crooked CEOs of Wall Street.

In no way am I completely in defense of Wall Street itself. The Financial District is not without its own sins. There is no doubt corruption still lurks through the halls of some of the investment banks on Wall Street as well as the CEO's office at General Electric (a corporation which currently pays nothing in income taxes thanks to its CEO's appointment as chairman of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness).

Although Wall Street is not necessarily a holy ideal of what business should always look like, one should reconsider where some of the blame should be placed.

Walking through the streets of Zuccotti Park and up the steps of the Capitol, we hear Occupiers calling for the elimination of corporate handouts and backstage deals between government and the financial industry. Would it not make more sense to focus on how big and influential our federal government is, rather than focusing mainly on the corporate sector?

As members of America's youth, our financial future is dependent on the fluctuations and stability of our economy. Although some in the movement have woken up to the reality of our ever-growing, iniquitous bureaucracy, some members of our generation still believe we should live our lives wrapped in the chains of big government, a powerful Federal Reserve system and endless deals between Capitol Hill and Wall Street.

Caroline Carlson is a freshman government and politics and marketing major. She can be reached at carlson@umdbk.com.