Bankers' storm in the Tea Party cup

"Bring us the heads of the Wall Street bankers."

As revolutionary slogans go it lacks gravitas, but it could work for the Occupy Wall Street crowd. It's the banks, those engines of commerce that were supposed to help us maintain our standard of living, that are at the heart of the protests.

But over the past few days, that message seems to be getting lost in the wave of protest sweeping the globe.

Occupy Wall Street isn't the Arab Spring with its anger against tyranny. It isn't the European protests, where protesters seem to be upset they may actually have to return to an economy that requires them to work for a living. It isn't the Japanese protest, angry over their government's failure to clear up the nuclear mess.

Occupy Wall Street is an American thing, and the anger is directed at bankers, who sold us out.

In their quest to make money, they deviated from established banking norms and began putting profits above all. Goldman-Sachs, one of the top American banks, was even caught packaging sub-prime loans together and selling those packages as good loans to other people.

When the housing markets collapsed and took banks and equity markets with them, some bankers made money by selling stocks short, in essence transferring their losses to people who were less able to avoid the damage. When Wall Street was burning, the bankers were fiddling.

When the banks began collapsing, they turned to the US government putting forth the old argument that if they weren't bailed out at taxpayers' expense, the whole financial system would collapse.

The government paid, and the bankers gave themselves bonuses. They then proceeded to turn on the very people who saved them by tightening lending, increasing fees, and repossessing houses at a rate not seen since the Great Depression.

Now, greed is not exclusively American, but we're certainly no strangers to it. We even expect it to a certain degree, but the greed that was allowed to run rampant in US banks has now turned one of our greatest beliefs — go to college and you'll be guaranteed a well paying job - into a lie.

For decades this was a cherished belief of the middle class, but now a generation of Americans is being told that — even though they are some of the most educated people in the history of their country — they will not be able to live as well as their parents.

Recurring recessions

The generations that followed the Baby Boomers are saddled with student loans in an economy beset with recurring recessions and, currently, little signs of growth.

Generation X, those of us born in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, have faced three recessions. Many new graduates today may not even be able to get jobs, let alone well-paying ones.

People 25-34 are moving back home with their parents at a rate not seen since the '50s.

In a situation like that, you would think blame, or at least anger, would be easy to allocate. But instead of bankers being punished for their excesses, we got the Tea Party, who instead of blaming banks said the culpability for the Great Recession lies with excessive government spending. They demanded governments slash spending, including unemployment insurance, and bust the unions.

The Occupy Wall Street is many ways a backlash against that type of thinking, and in response the politicians, such as prominent Tea Party politicians Eric Cantor and Ron Paul, and pundits have labelled the protests "pointless" and called the protesters "mobs".

Not surprising

It's not surprising; the Tea Party represents the kind of selfish, let-me-make-money and damn the consequences that let the banks run rampant in the first place. The top-brass are prominent members of the one per cent that control 40 per cent of American wealth, according to the maths of Nobel-laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

But pointless?

Few protesters — at least the kind of protest that lack torches and pitchforks — have ever had the goal of doing much except letting the world know they're angry.

Shutting down the banks isn't viewed as a serious option for anyone who stops to think about it. Banks are still critical to a free economy, but that doesn't mean that there aren't mechanisms to punish them from their hubris and preventing them from doing it again.

Regulations that include jail time for anyone caught engaged in the Three Card Monty-esque dealing that banks played would be a start but the most important role though will just be their presence during the next election, when the Tea Party tries to unseat President Barack Obama.

The Occupy Wall Street movement may never get to take the heads of any Wall Street banker, but the protests may make American voters decide its time to unseat the Tea Party that has protected the bankers.