The Loneliest Number

Sometimes, folks are proud of the wrong thing.

“Those people wish they were the one percent!” said Mike Polski, 53, a sign maker from Joliet. “The one percent are billionaires.”

Seeing the Occupy Chicago protest every day for nearly two weeks, traders on break from working in the pit have had some time to reflect on the demostrations.[sic] “It’s a free country, and everyone has a right to an opinion,” said George Garza, a courier for RJ O’Brien at the CBOT, donning a kelly green trading jacket. “I don’t think the economy is as simple as 99 percent to one percent, though.”

When I informed Paul Richardson, who spent his morning in the pit for Vision Financial, about the WE ARE THE 1% signage, he chuckled. “It’s just trying to get the protesters stirred up," he said. "They’re getting a little annoying, you know what I mean? Blocking streets, sidewalks. I know they’re just trying to be heard, but I think they’re uninformed. They’re inexperienced on being educated on the economy, so they don’t have a leg to stand on in terms of their platform.”

Democracy can be so annoying. Yesterday, NPR carried a report from the BBC in which two bankers were talking about confidence in the Euro before the G20 Summit. It has not occurred to bankers that the rest of us are aware that bankers have become enough of a problem that we might have to fix it, and by extension, them. Keep your eye on Europe.