No, no, no - this isn't some tongue-in-cheek diary meant to give you a good laugh during the last week of the presidential campaign. This is NOT a joke. A banker actually said this.
Check it out:
While America was focused on the rather enormous storm which was bearing down on it, a senior official with the Bank of England was praising the Occupy Movement for speaking with a "loud and persuasive" voice and was right in "a moral sense" and in its pointing out of a “deep and rising inequality” in the banking and financial system.
Some BANKER said this. (Forgive me, I almost typed "wanker" but this guy isn't one.)
Andrew Haldane is the Bank of England’s Executive Director for Financial Stability and is a member of the bank’s Financial Policy Committee, so this isn't some loan officer or branch manager. Mr. Haldane was speaking at an event organized by Occupy London (AKA Occupy London Stock Exchange or OccupyLSX as their web address indicates) which was attended by about 500 people including Occupiers, students, and financial industry-types in London on Monday evening.
And now, for some of that "fair use" beauty . . .
From The Financial Times:
“Occupy has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason; they are right,” he said.
Picking up on the movement’s slogan of “we are the 99 per cent”, Mr Haldane said: “Occupy have touched a moral nerve in pointing to the growing inequities in the allocation of wealth and incomes globally. The 99 per cent certainly agrees." He added that Occupy had played a role in bringing about the “most radical agenda of financial reform for 80 years.”
“If I am right and a new leaf is being turned, then Occupy will have played a key role in this fledgling financial reformation,” he said. “You have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policy makers, like me, will need your continuing support in delivering that radical change.”
Nice stuff, huh?
You can read more and read more details of this event at the link I provided above.
You can also read more about this at:
The Guardian
United Press International (UPI)
Bloomberg Business Week (who's headline is a bit off)
and at a very good news source which has become one of my favorites, Reuters.
When Mr. Haldane said said that ". . . policy makers, like me, will need your continuing support in delivering that radical change” I believe he was using a very wordy sentence to say what so many of us old DFH-types used to say to each other back in the day so many years ago:
"Keep on keepin' on, brother!"