Rex Murphy: Forget Wall Street, Occupy Hollywood
You hear it in every little encampment in every city that has a franchise in the current “Occupy” protests: The righteous tent-and-yurt people are against “greed.”
They see greed as the demonic dynamo of a rapacious capitalism (and its maidservant, “income inequality”). And what represents greed better than mega-payoffs, dazzling bonuses and stock options, for very little actual work, and sometimes even when performance is far below par? It is only to be expected that the high-flying brokers, bankers and CEOs that cluster like flies around the honey pots of Wall Street, who waltz off with payoffs that would shame a Croesus, are the occupiers’ main targets.
I suggest, however, that by limiting their wrath to the sharks and swine of Wall Street, they are, if I may say, shortchanging themselves. There are many venues and theatres of greed other than the stock market. And they are tenanted by agents of ferocity and appetite equal to any gold-lusting shill at an investment bank. Greed has many McMansions, and they are all worth the “occupying.”
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Rex Murphy: Forget Wall Street, Occupy Hollywood | Full Comment | National Post
