This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If nothing else, the Occupy Wall Street protests give people a vent for their rage at an economic system that has been co-opted by financiers to the detriment of most other Americans. Thursday's Occupy Salt Lake protest gave a couple of hundred drenched Utahns a chance to voice their solidarity with the protesters in Manhattan.
Beyond that, it is impossible to say what the outcome of this protest movement might be. It might get the attention of the president and Congress, who might be prodded to call to account the crooks who created the subprime mortgage crisis, the subsequent financial meltdown and today's high unemployment.
We hope that is the outcome.
Until a few weeks ago, the American people have been strangely silent about the Great Recession and the misdeeds that caused it. Now, suddenly, there is an outward manifestation of their awakening. That's healthy.
The odd thing is that it took so long. Roughly three years, give or take. The reason lies in the nature of the crisis itself.
The subprime mortgage chicanery was not identifiable in a single, dramatic event, like a bomb exploding or planes flying into the World Trade Center. The culprits still are unknown to most Americans.
Besides that, the financial machine that created the securitized debt that rested on subprime mortgages was complex. There were multiple moving parts along the supply chain, and there were many institutional failures along the way.
The best short explanation we've seen is the documentary film "Inside Job." You can get it on Netflix and probably other places as well. It includes a flow chart that simplifies the process. If you would like a good, book-length narrative, give The Big Short by Michael Lewis a try.
Basically, there were four levels of responsibility: the mortgage lenders, such as Countrywide, that created the subprime loans; the Wall Street investment banks that securitized them; the Wall Street ratings agencies that gave toxic debt instruments their AAA seal of approval; the regulators who failed to blow the whistle, including the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
Many Americans don't know this story in detail. All they know is that their investments went south and they have lost their jobs. They know it wasn't their fault, and they also know that their government has not held a single major player who was at fault to answer criminal charges.
In fact, many of the malefactors are still filthy rich. And that's why Americans are angry.