Paul Rosenberg

The first high-profile article to offer a sensible explanation of Occupy Wall Street came from anthropologist David Graeber, author of the recently-published book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. In his op-ed, "Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination", he wrote:
"We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt... Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down.

"But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008.

"There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible. Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie...

"It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an 'economy' is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before."