Why they "occupy"

An article right now at Reuters explains it: Growing wealth divide puts globalization at risk (Reuters) - A backlash against rising inequality - evident from the Occupy movement to the Arab Spring - risks derailing the advance of globalization and represents a threat to economies worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum. Severe income disparity and precarious government finances rank as the biggest economic threats facing the world, according to the group's 2012 Global Risks report released on Wednesday. The 60-page analysis of 50 risks over the next decade precedes the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual meeting in two weeks' time in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, and paints a bleak picture of an increasingly uncertain world. THAT'S why. A gross imbalance between the uber-wealthy and a very large group of "has nots" is not healthy for political and financial systems and structures. That should be obvious. It's dangerous. It makes for instability of the first order. It's how and why political systems are overthrown down through history. Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/11/us-davos-risks-idUSTRE80A0KK20120111

Quote of the day--on today's Capitalism

From and by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in his opening speech given at the 40th World Economic Forum January 27, 2010 in Davos, Switzerland, in which he spanks America and Capitalism as we now practice it:

"To my mind, one of the most striking characteristics of this capitalism which we have allowed to emerge, is that the present was all that mattered and the future no longer counted for anything. Everything for the present immediately, no longer anything for the future. Indeed we saw depreciation of the future in the absolutely exorbitant demand for high yields. Those yields, boosted by speculation and leverage, were the discount rate applied to future revenues: the higher they rose, the lower the importance attached to the future fell. Everything, right away."