Letters to the Editor: New York—Missoula! It’s about time!

Missoula is finally responding to what Wall Street did to the economy, asking for a democracy that works for "Main Street" and not only for a super-wealthy elite's pleasure and convenience. Like the 1929 crisis (albeit less tragic--so far), the 2008 crisis spread like a wild forest-fire, sucking the oxygen out of whole economies, driving people from their jobs. The speculative bubble burst, sending pensions, stocks, and savings up in skyrocketing smoke. Approximately seventy trillion virtual dollars disappeared world-wide. The crisis could not have come at a worse time. It added its destruction to the devastation already effectuated by the postmodern capitalist logic of outsourcing entire American industries (maximizing profits/minimizing expenses), the gradual rolling-back of the socio-political gains painfully acquired by Americans since the 60s, and the shift from an investment-based economy to a speculative debt-based economy. No wonder the crisis acquired a never-before witnessed amplitude. Like standing dominoes, the illusions fell one after the other, leaving behind unemployment, precarious/menial jobs, declining infrastructure, deteriorating schools… which in return nurtured depression, apathy, anger, or incomprehension. Our moral decay became rooted in our economic woes. Without massive transfer of federal/public funds, the whole system would have collapsed.

For the past twenty years we let the economy be deregulated as if we'd found a miraculous answer to all social, political and economic problems. We let a lawless market destroy all public domains/interests/services/spaces… Everything had to be privatized. By the same token, increasingly huge dollar amounts were diverted from the directly productive economy to the new ‘laissez-faire, laissez-passer' type of speculative economy. Invented by neo-cons, Wall-Street traders gone wild, and greedy bankers, this artificial economy went into over-drive, with nobody at the wheel. Even Adam Smith's famous artificial hand, supposedly regulating the ‘free-market,' became powerless. In the mean time China, India, and others manufactured what consumers needed. To minimize risks, mathematical models were used, giving to futures, derivatives, and pyramid schemes, an appearance of certainty (win-all situations), while the financing of government and personal debts, like American house-mortgages, were sold to banks all around the world. To make things look good on paper, notations agency's CEOs became embedded with speculative investment companies' CEOs. Economists like Roubini blew the whistle; but to no avail. We now know where this (lack of) politics drove us. Deregulated privatization does not necessarily mean democratization or better/cheaper services. Great wealth concentrated in a few hands means plutocracy, not democracy.

It is as if the "banksters" (postmodern version of the Gilded Age's Robber Barons--except that the latter paid taxes and invested in universities, museums, and parks) had started a sort of class-warfare against the American middle-class and working-class--those who built America's incomparable power and strength. The results? Between 1973 and 2000, the average yearly income of the bottom 90%, after inflation adjustment, dropped by 7%, while those of the top 1% (making $337,000 plus) rose by 148%. The top tenth of the top 1% saw their incomes rise 343%. In1942, President Roosevelt said on the radio that "no American citizen ought to have a net income, after… taxes, of more than $25,000 a year." This limit corresponds today to $300,000. In 1943, the richest 2,500 Americans, after exploiting all loopholes paid 78% of their incomes in tax. Today, our richest Americans, no loop-holes barred, pay 17.5% of their incomes in federal tax.

Tea-partyers are right to accuse Washington of being anti-democratic--except that it is not Government as such which is guilty, but those politicians who sold out to corporate interests, curbing down taxation on wealth and corporations, following a politics defavoring 99% of the population and letting the whole social/public sphere decay. The "Occupy Wall-Street movement" is a spontaneous gathering of good, hard-working Americans tired that:

*America has gone from a creditor to a debtor nation; from an exporter to an importer nation;

* $1 of every $5 will soon be spent on health care (causing 1/2 of all bankruptcies);

*Wages stagnate and workloads increase while 10% plus are unemployed.

* The economic elite and the super-rich have plundered the national treasury.

*America's military expenditures top all other countries' combined (800 US bases worldwide).

*Two ongoing wars are bankrupting the country.

It is now time to act. Talking is good but not good enough. The "Occupy Wall-Street" expression is loaded with promise. It has historical potential. However, grass-roots democracy must go beyond sit-ins in the grass. Like any movement, it can get hijacked, subverted or simply made to fail, causing apathy to return with a vengeance. People have to go downtown to protest and start discussing the real issues while deciding what to do concretely in order to be sure that elected officials/politicos listen and change course. Democracy has been high-jacked by private interests, lobbyists, and corporate cronies. Democracy has to be returned to the people by the people. Missoula, keep up the good work!

Michel Valentin

UM French professor