I have been unsure, from the start, what the Occupy movement was all about, although I did suspect that it was just fatuous, anti-enterprise, left-wingery.
However, an evaluation by the new Exeter section of Occupy, helped me to see that the movement is not merely and simplistically anti-capitalist, and made me prick up my ears.
Nevertheless, it seems even more the case to me, that Occupy – in looking to besiege the stock exchange – has chosen the wrong target.
The banking collapse was caused, more than anything, by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation, rather than by greed: even if mighty politico-commercial influences pushed governments into doing what they did, that is another matter – a way of manipulating markets rather than participating properly in them – and was not the fault of the stock exchange.
It is the Financial Services Authority, and its plethora of EU regulatory agencies, that has failed; not the many, generally well-run firms making up the UK's financial services industry.
The main targets for Occupy should be the EU Central Bank and the EU commission, which have not only blundered economically, but are now prepared to destroy democracy itself in order to remain in control.
When an Occupy demo in the centre of Frankfurt makes world news, I shall hurry to join in.