Bankers Can't Duck the Spotlight

Wall Street’s reactions to the protesters outside its door has evolved from contemptuous dismissal to hurt sense of being misunderstood. “Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?” they ask. They do, Paul Krugman writes in the New York Times, and that’s why they are protesting. Bankers say financial products are the last thing America does well and chide politicians for not understanding who their “constituencies” are. In other words, they want lawmakers to stop listening to their real constituencies—the 16 out of 17 non-finance workers who live in New York, for example—and listen to the money. Occupy Wall Street is forcing attention away from the finance industry’s needs: “No wonder Wall Street is whining.”