It was good to see my former colleague John Gapper devoting his FT New York column to a measured, but ultimately supportive piece about the Occupy Wall Street protest. Good too on the FT’s intrepid editor Lionel Barber for giving him the space.
To those not familiar with the pink-un, it might come as something of a surprise that this international business paper, which looks to the world’s major corporations for some handy subscriptions and advertising, should have a piece praising the protest movement’s “popular democracy”, even while criticising its policies for either being “crazy”- closing the Federal Reserve- or of having little chance of gaining wider support- socialised medicine and bank nationalisation.
“…There is something powerful in their idealism, “ writes Gapper, “We must live with Wall Street and the banks on which economies rely to finance growth, but they express an undeniable truth.” He added: “There is something wrong when a fresh round of bail-outs looms in Europe while citizens on both sides of the Atlantic remain alienated by the last one.”
I guess more than one Wall Street banker would have choken on his corn flakes this morning just reading this alone.
Of course Gapper is not arguing for the overthrow of capitalism. The FT is not the Morning Star. But he is saying that the world financial system needs to come up with some pretty radical ideas if it is to survive and that involves politicians listening more carefully to the protests outside the skyscrapers and not buckling to the complaints of the financial industry.
Gapper’s piece is a reminder of just why the FT cannot just be a good newspaper but a courageous one. The same cannot be said for its propagandist pro-Cameron editorial today in praise of the pm’s vacuous speech to the Tory party conference. Of a speech that had nothing on substance on how the government plans to restore growth, and ignored any allusion to the ‘big society’ as if the voluntary sector had ceased to exist, the FT leader writer concluded that Cameron’s determination to stick to its economic plan was just what investors wanted to hear.Plus ca change.
