Is the American Occupy Wall Street Movement an Assault on Free Markets?

Are we witnessing an effort to undermine America's economic order?

The free market economy in America is under assault. The signs indicate that we are witnessing a battle between socialist and free market forces for control of the United States economic order.

P>KNOXVILLE, TN (Catholic Online) - In the wake of the government bailouts of banks, big bonuses on Wall Street, high unemployment, a volatile stock market, and a threatening double-dip recession, the free market economy in America is under assault like never before in my lifetime. The assault is coming from various quarters: government and business leaders, social and political activists, the Occupy Wall Street protesters, and others. For all practical purposes, the assault began when President Obama announced his tax deficit package, which singled out the wealthy.

As part of a 10-year, $3 trillion deficit reduction package in mid-September, President Obama proposed a $1.5 trillion tax increase. Then he asked Congress to implement the "Buffett Rule," which is named after Warren Buffett, the billionaire who confessed to having a lower tax rate than his secretary. The rule says, "People making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay." I agree; however, this situation is said to be extremely rare. Yet it has set the tone for much of the discourse this past month.

For instance, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blamed the budget deficit on the rich and the Bush tax cuts, which is a real stretch. The obvious explanation for the budget deficit is that it is the direct result of government spending. Reid said that "More than anyone else, these millionaires and billionaires benefitted from Bush tax cuts and contributed $3 trillion to our deficit, to help plunge this nation into a financial hole." Therefore, "A balanced approach to reduce our deficit means those who have benefitted the most from policies that created our deficit should also help solve our deficit." By the way, Reid voted in favor of extending these same tax cuts not all that long ago.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also weighed in on the matter. Her comments were outright ridiculous. She said that the rich won't pay their fair share of taxes. Even though she is a multimillionaire herself, she said that the rich are amassing too much money, that they want prestige and immortality at the expense of our democracy, the middle class, public safety, public education, clean air, fairness, and food safety. She also accused the rich of keeping the minimum wage low and the banks of charging fees, which she claims is a plot by the rich and the banks to weigh people down with debt and keep them subservient. This kind of talk is irrational and irresponsible.

Then there was Senator Dick Durbin. He actually used his power as a senator to undermine the customer base of a U.S. bank over debit-card fees, which the bank instituted in response to legislation that he co-authored. Speaking directly to the bank's customers Durbin said, "Bank of America customers, vote with your feet, get the heck out of that bank. Find yourself a bank or credit union that won't gouge you for $5 a month and still will give you a debit card that you can use every single day. What Bank of America has done is an outrage." I have my own reasons for believing that their business practices are outrageous and that they deserve to lose business, but what Senator Durbin did on the floor of the Senate is a greater outrage. Let me explain.

In the final weeks of my mother's life, Bank of America allowed a thief to steal money from her line of credit after I had frozen the account. Then this incompetent bank charged us interest on the stolen money, and they never reimbursed us for the interest charge. I found it impossible to do business with them and closed out our accounts. Consequently, I believe Bank of America deserves to lose business. On the other hand, their $5.00 charge against debit cards may be infuriating, but it is not illegal. As a senator, Durbin can propose legislation to make it illegal, but his attack on the bank's customer base is a gross abuse of power which threatens the free exercise of business for the banks and all of us in this country. This is the greater outrage.

Now Vice President Biden is essentially telling a class of fourth grade students in York City, Pennsylvania that if the jobs bill is not passed, they will be deprived of the necessary care and attention by their school teachers. Biden actually told them that in order to rehire teachers who had lost their jobs we just need to tax wealthy individuals at a higher rate than they are currently taxed, that we need to take about $500 in additional taxes from someone who makes a million dollars and those jobs will come right back. "They can pay for all the teachers and all the police and all the firemen to come back," he said. I have no interest in defending the wealthiest Americans in our country, but I do have an interest in our children being indoctrinated into class warfare by the Vice President of the United States. He has no business talking to our children in this manner. It is shameful.

While our political leaders have been attempting to divide Americans against each other, protests have started springing up around the country. The Occupy Wall Street protests began at the same time that President Obama started pushing his deficit reduction plan in mid-September, and their message appears similar to the President's message and that of his minions. For the most part, the Occupy Wall Street protestors seem to be focused on a few main complaints.

Their first complaint is that they seem to resent the growing gap between the rich and the middle class, and they believe that the top 1% wealthiest Americans became wealthy because they are greedy or because they stole it from us poor victims in the bottom 99%. However, there are other valid reasons for this growing gap. For instance, we are living in a time of tremendous technological change, and this is creating equally tremendous business opportunities for many people. There are also huge business opportunities due to the growing world economy and the emergence of new markets around the world. Nevertheless, greed is also a serious problem.

Our businesses, government and other institutions are now being run by many people who subscribe to a pragmatic, atheistic, materialistic philosophy which rejects the reality of objective, moral truth. Clearly, people (whether rich or poor, working on Wall Street or protesting on Wall Street) who subscribe to such views will generally act in ways that are self-serving and immoral. We are living in the age of anti-reason and gross immorality. The degree of immorality at all levels of our society threatens our way of life. But the solution is not to criminalize greed, which is impossible and will undermine the free market; the solution is to enact efficient and moral laws and to hold lawbreakers accountable. Greed is a sin, not a crime.

We also hear the protestors blame the "greedy, thieving rich" for the economic downturn. No doubt, greed has played a role in the economic downturn, but not just the greed of the wealthy. Greed is not just an attribute of the rich. We also have to consider the greedy who are stealing from businesses, which raises costs for the rest of us. Then there are those who are steeling taxpayer money for their personal use or to use to fund the activities of certain social and political groups and organizations. We could also blame the downturn on rampant corruption and incompetence in government.

The protestors are also blaming the economic downturn on Wall Street and the banks. Their complaints are only partially true, for government is also to blame. The finance and banking industries are highly regulated by government; and as I understand it, the economic downturn was precipitated by the housing crisis, which resulted when the government forced banks to relax their rules on mortgage lending. The whole endeavor was a house of cards that turned into a money-making frenzy. This fiasco also sheds light on another problem.

It is always a danger when too much power is concentrated in the hands of too few. Government and business, while they must cooperate, must also keep a healthy distance from each other. But in recent years, their interests have merged in many ways, and they have grown too close. Thus, government has failed to a serious degree to oversee big business. Keep in mind, government control of business, which we are seeing today is not the same thing as government oversight. This helps explain why some of the big car companies, financial companies and banks returned most or all of the TARP funds so quickly. Through the TARP program, the government became large shareholders in these companies, and as shareholders, they tried to influence or control these companies. This is not the proper role of government. It occurs in fascist, communist, and socialist societies, but not free societies.

This raises another point. Although there are efforts to paint the Occupy Wall Street protests as a grassroots effort like the Tea Party and representative of general sentiment throughout the country, this view is almost certainly false. There are strong indications that the Occupy Wall Street protests have been planned and are being orchestrated in unison with the President's tax deficit package and his jobs proposal. Of course, this does not mean that all the protestors are aware of it or of the same mind. But it presumably informs us what the core or essence of Occupy Wall Street is and who the main beneficiaries will be if it is successful.

First of all, it appears that the current administration thinks they will benefit from the chaos. Instead of calling for calm, some of our political leaders are encouraging the protestors. President Obama said, "The American people understand that not everybody's been following the rules, that Wall Street is an example of that." Vice President Biden said, "The . . . bargain is not on the level anymore. In the minds of the vast majority of the American [people] -- the middle class is being screwed." And when asked about the protests, Nancy Pelosi said, "I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen."

So who is  behind the Occupy Wall Street protests? Although there are numerous sources, The Blaze has a concise and detailed report. It is also easy to follow, and it contains some very informative photos and videos. It shows a breakdown of the connections between the Working Family Party, SEIU, ACORN, the New Party, the DNC, Democratic Socialists of America, George Soros, the Tides Foundation, and the Obama administration." This report also shows the connections between these people and groups and the planning and organization of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Reuters published an article by Mike Egan and Michelle Nichols, "Who's behind the Wall St. protests?". Their answer is George Soros. The article caused such an uproar that Reuters apparently pulled it. However, you can read an excerpt of it on Ken Berwitz's blog. Although the evidence is circumstantial and does not prove that Soros is directly funding Occupy Wall Street, it is tight; and it links Soros with "Adbusters, [the] anti-capitalist group in Canada which started the protests with an inventive marketing campaign aimed at sparking an Arab Spring type uprising against Wall Street." At the very least it indicates that "Soros and the protesters share some ideological ground." Furthermore, moveon.org is supporting the protests, and Soros is one of it s major contributors.
 
If there is still any confusion about what Occupy Wall Street is and who is behind it, then we might wonder why the Chinese communists and Hugo Chavez, the fascist-socialist president of Venezuela, have publicly supported it. Moreover, it seems that Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei also supports it. He reportedly said that it "will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West." This is serious business. Given the information being reported, it appears that the Occupy Wall Street protests are part of an overall effort by President Obama and his supporters to undermine the free market in this country and replace it with socialism.

Under the circumstances, Catholics need to know the position of the Church on socialism and the free market. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church opposes any "system that 'subordinates the basic rights of individuals and groups to the collective organization of production'" (2424), and "The Church has rejected the totalitarian and atheistic ideologies associated in modern times with 'communism' or 'socialism'" (2425).

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church offers us a clear statement of the Church's position of the free market. "There are good reasons to hold that, in many circumstances, 'the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs'" (347), and ". . . When it functions ethically, the free market is a service to the common good and integral human development" (348). "However, the free market needs to be regulated by government, but it must be regulated based on the principle of subsidiarity, which supports the free exercise of economic activity, and inspired by the principle of solidarity"(cf 349 & 351).

It would seem, then, that we are witnessing a battle between socialist and free market forces for control of our country. This battle reminds us that it is extremely important for our leaders to be truly qualified and to be the kind of people who will protect the moral foundations of our country and inspire us to be the best that we can be. And it should strengthen our resolve to ensure that we have the right kind of leaders.
 
 
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Michael Terheyden was born into a Catholic family, but that is not why he is a Catholic. He is a Catholic because he believes that truth is real, that it is beautiful and good, and that the fullness of truth is in the Catholic Church. However, he knows that God's grace operating throughout his life is the main reason he is a Catholic. He is greatly blessed to share his faith and his life with his beautiful wife, Dorothy. They have four grown children and three grandchildren.

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