Arab Spring-style protests are apparently being planned in the United States as the richest country in the world teeters on the edge of a 'lesser depression'.
Things are so bad in the U.S. that disenchanted, non-partisan citizens are planning to occupy Wall Street reportedly on September 17, according to media reports and vent their fury at Wall Street banks and policymakers.
The "U.S. Day Of Rage" echoes the massive protests undertaken by citizens in various Middle East countries to demonstrate against despots, dictators and cronyism in the Arab world.
Similar to many Arab Spring movements, the organisers are leveraging social media website to gain some traction. Nearly 4,800 people 'like' the main US Day Of Rage Facebook page and it has nearly 6,000 Twitter followers. According to its social media feeds, it is planning peaceful civil disobedience across many American cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Idaho, Oklahoma and Hawai, among others.
"Special influence corrupts our political parties, our elections, and the institutions of government," says the About Us section of the website usdayofrage.com.
"Bought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful special interests have usurped our nation's civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and our national security. We have had enough."
One of its mantras is 'one citizen. One dollar. One vote,' and it demands integrity be restored to American elections by putting in place a legitimate government.
"Legitimate government is born of the self-interest and will of the people expressed by its citizens in free and fair elections. It does not spring from a tyranny of special interests, patronage, or a system or ideology that runs counter to the aims of life," the movement emphasises on its website.
Lesser Depression
While the movement may well fizzle out, it does point to an extreme reaction to the complete and utter disappointment of American citizens with their governments especially as they watched in horror the debt debacle, the subsequent Standard & Poor's downgrade and the 'correction' in American stock markets wiping out trillions of dollars in a matter of weeks.
U.S. President Barack Obama's approval ratings have fallen to an average of 43% (including a personal low of 39% in one survey) while Congress's collective approval rating slumped to an average of 17% (dipping to 13% in one Gallup poll, a record low).
"We came into this crisis with a pretty good understanding of what was at stake and pretty good analysis of the policy options -- yet policy makers and, I'm sorry to say, many economists just chose to ignore all that and go with their prejudices instead," Paul Krugman, one of American's foremost economists.
"And the worst of it is that the people who got this so wrong have not and probably won't admit to their awesome wrongness; on the contrary, they'll dig in. And the Lesser Depression will go on and on and on."
Rage against Wall Street cats and those at Capitol Hill is fuelled further when a former Moody's analyst sent an 80-page letter to federal regulators says analysts at the ratings agency were moulded to be 'pliable corporate citizens.'
"Moody's incentivized an analyst to accede to all items demanded by an external paymaster and to work to the paymaster's schedule," wrote William J. Harrington in the letter. "The goal of management is to mold analysts into pliable corporate citizens who cast their committee votes in line with the unchanging corporate credo of maximizing earnings of the largely captive franchise."
Moody's has denied the allegations. "We cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance Moody's places on the quality of our ratings and the integrity of our ratings process," spokesman Michael N. Adler said in a statement.
Unrest in the U.K., although for the most part opportunists, also suggest a breakdown in society where have-nots thought it proper to steal from the haves, as rich and poor gap divide widens.
Demonstrations in Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal - the so-called periphery EU states - are already common place, as financial austerity measures appears to break the social contract between governments and citizens.
Citibank expects worse to come: "Growing recognition that the irreducible quantum of risk is larger than previously thought amounts to an endogenous tightening of financial conditions and should contribute to a slowdown in economic activity in the G7 during the next few years.
"In addition, the austerity programmes required to restore fiscal sustainability in most G7 countries will have to be much more front-loaded than would have been possible (and desirable) if too many of the G7 fiscal policymakers had not taken as their leitmotif St. Augustine's prayer "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet". The result will likely be a further weakening of effective demand and employment."
Morgan Stanley has already placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of European and American leaders that have pushed the world 'dangerously close to recession'.
And Merrill Lynch notes that the OECD lawmakers are fast running out of ideas to stem the rot: "The Federal Reserve significantly downgraded its outlook for the US economy. Aware of the fragility of market sentiment, the Fed inched closer to Scandinavian practice and issued explicit forward guidance on interest rates. And by suggesting further easing, the FOMC helped to limit the early week downward spiral.
"Likewise, the ECB decision to buy Italian and Spanish sovereign debt reversed the trajectory of rising yields. But compared to how extreme these policy decisions were - to the point of generating dissent within the respective committees - the market reaction was disappointing. Are the world's systemic central banks running out of ammo?"
Why Worry?
This is hardly a time for Middle East policy makers to bask in schadenfreude. Watching Western countries face the wrath of their citizens must be a sobering thought that only real reforms - not cosmetic improvements - can bring the kind of large-scale prosperity that citizens expect from their governments.
The U.S. Day of Rage movement may fail to make waves, but it does highlight that grassroots movement against ineffectual government are gathering momentum across the world.
© alifarabia.com 2011
