If you want to gauge the strength of a movement you have to see how its devotees perform in either bad weather or after its protest has been violently broken up by the police.
Judging by a quick pass through Zuccotti Park, the site of the Occupy Wall Street movement two years ago, there was not much passion to behold. Instead of large protesting masses that once choked sidewalks and traffic and filed the air with whistles and drums, this morning was perhaps two dozen of the usual suspects. Most of those present were twenty-somethings dressed in Hot Topic protest gear with a sprinkling of older gray-haired protesters awaiting the hippie rapture. The signs protesting Wall Street, capitalism, corporate America and the bailout had to compete with signs urging the US to not drop bombs on Syria.
One pair of white youths struggled to keep an upside down American flag with anti-war sentiments spray-pained on the stars and stripes from flying away in the blustery September winds. One passerby wearing a crisp white shirt and tie and sporting a crew cut yelled at the protesters, “Respect the flag, that’s a distress call!”
The protesters shot back with, “We are in distress!”
Across the street at the headquarters for old line Wall Street firm Brown Brothers Harriman – founded by an ancestor of the Bush family – another crowd was prepping their march down Broadway. This line-up boasted a few children in strollers, older folks, some pierced youths, and a drummer and trombonist with some high school-level music skills. “When the Saints Go Marching In” never sounded so wan.
The roughly three dozen protesters held aloft signs that appeared to be topic tags from a web site or talking points aimed at the banks and corporations in general – disregard our human dignity, ecological irresponsibility, suppression of dissent, etc.
Has the Occupy Wall Street Movement lost its steam? It appears so. And this can have a big impact on trading firms and their traders.
If the protesters no longer have the juice to raise irate crowds and gain the attention of lawmakers, regulators and the media, then the drive to expand capital market rules beyond 2010’s Dodd-Frank Act might have shriveled like last week’s fresh produce.
Perhaps protest fatigue could lead to new regulation fatigue.
