Occupy Wall Street protests inspired by the Arab Spring what happens next?
Posted on 17 October 2011 with 1 comment from readers
The contagion of the Arab Spring protest movements seems to know no bounds with Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in many major cities across the world at the weekend with one in Rome turning violent.
This is the non-Arab rallying point for the disaffected and disenfranchised, those who are suffering from austerity cuts or feel their future badly damaged by the bad economy. These are the 99 per cent who do not own the economy unlike the one per cent who do.
Regional meetings
The leaders of the Arab League also met at the weekend to try to come up with a regional solution to the crisis in Syria. In Europe 27 finance ministers wrangled over plans to revive the eurozone economy and end the sovereign debt crisis.
Yet if the protestors feel trapped by events outside their control then they ought to at least have some sympathy for the leaders of the world. Since when did huge committees manage to do anything except talk and frustrate urgent action? Reaching a consensus in a big group to do difficult things is almost always impossible.
Events are in charge and that means financial markets in the economic world. Markets will take stock and give leaders a chance to come up with something new. If they do not then markets will move on and discount events – good or bad.
The problem is that no easy solution exists. Economies fed a diet of high debt for years have borrowed from future growth and will not perform as well as in the past. Throwing even more debt into this situation is not without clear and present dangers.
Higher inflation
High inflation is also very damaging to the poor and needy all over the world. Nobody benefits except perhaps the owners of the commodities whose price is inflating.
Ironically that leaves some hope for the Arab Spring because the oil producers will get a rather unexpected bonus as we have seen this year with the highest oil revenues in history at a time of recession and near recession for much of the global economy.
Could the protests of the Arab Spring really be moving onto the rest of the world with the amorphous Occupy Wall Street protests? Indeed, that does seem to be what is happening. If the response is emergency economic policies that create high inflation then that could actually be good news for some of the protestors of the Arab Spring.
But Occupy Wall Street protests will inevitably get bigger and bigger. The 99 per cent have not really experienced bad times just yet.
1 Comment posted by readers:
I agree that the Occupy Wall Street protests will get bigger and bigger, but they will surely get more and more violent.
I have come across the Youth Bulge Concept in which young people (mainly males) become aggressive and violent as they realise that they have been disinherited and have no future in any labour market. They see themselves as having no hope of settling down in work, in reasonable accomodation and in a stable sex life and family.
For example, what will the under-25s in Spain do on the streets in the near future? This age category is 50% unemployed!
I have read that the EU have sent in foreign police to Greece. The EU gendarmerie composed of Dutch and German men and a 6,000 force of Italian police to bolster the Greek police.
So, violence from youth without hope is met by violence from frightened authorities. Riots, revolutions and civil war have a place in human society, it seems.
If you then add, in the medium term, a middle class which has lost its savings as well as its jobs, you have a lot of lost people looking for a charismatic leader to lead them out of economic hell.