Could social unrest break out if the US government doesn't pay attention to Occupy Wall Street and visibly start doing something about mass unemployment? Hard to know. OWS is non-violent. But what will the environment be like a year from now if nothing has changed? If one reads the media, some are getting nervous.
A small unscientific collection of apocrypha from recent big media pieces watching the plutocrats
A few even feel personally attacked, and say the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have been in Zuccotti Park for weeks are just bitter about their own economic fate and looking for an easy target. If anything, they say, people should show some gratitude ...
Generally, bankers dismiss the protesters as gullible and unsophisticated. Not many are willing to say this out loud, for fear of drawing public ire -- or the masses to their doorsteps. "Anybody who dismisses them publicly is putting a bull's-eye on their back," the hedge fund manager said. -- the New York Times
More broadly, there's a growing sense that lopsided outcomes are a result of tycoons' manipulating the system, lobbying for loopholes and getting away with murder. -- Nick Kristof, the NYT
[Wall Street financier John Phelan] said he's worried about "social unrest."
"My taxes are going up," he said. "Everybody hates me. I have two friends who bought land in New Zealand. They're trying to convince me to go." -- Bloomberg
The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies - now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" - are a direct threat to national security. -- Rolling Stone
Research that took place in the US - no comment on why the US would be interested in studying unrest - used millions of articles as a feed for a computer and found that if you gave it enough information about unrest it could tell you that there was unrest.
In this case the analysis was carried out retrospectively, but according to those involved it could also be used to spot upcoming problems, which in the context of US backed research starts to sound a little bit sinister.
This post was originally published at Dick Destiny blog.
