Occupy Wall Street protesters are right: not much has changed on Wall Street since the 2008 financial collapse.
Millions are still without jobs and while the Dodd-Frank Financial Act passed, only 60 or so regulations out of the 400 proposed have actually gone into effect. All the others are in limbo points out Larry Tabb, CEO and founder of TABB Group.
Nevertheless, despite the slow state of regulatory change, there have been other shifts in banks' business practices as a result of the crisis. "The banks are sitting with much more capital, they're much more risk averse, getting loans is increasingly difficult, and you've got a much more deleveraged operation that's a lot less risky," Tabb says.
The overall issue Occupy Wall Street should be addressing isn't strictly Wall Street: it should be money and politics.
Check out our video on the Wall Street Crisis
Still, both political camps are taking the protests seriously, or at least President Obama and Mitt Romney seem to be. (They even purport to understand the 99% although they are clearly in the 1%).
The protests are still going strong, despite last weekend's first taste of a winter storm. The FDNY confiscated fuel-powered generators from the OWS camp, saying they were a fire hazard; so protesters used metallic blankets, hand warmers and layers of clothing instead.
According to reports, only one out of five protesters packed up and left Zuccotti Park; the others braced themselves and withstood the cold weather. If the protesters do make it through the winter, they will have plenty of 'metaphorical' fuel, at least, to keep them going.
News emerged today that federal regulators have discovered hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money that has gone missing from MF Global in recent days, prompting an investigation into the brokerage firm.
The fall of the bank, which filed for bankruptcy and is led by ex-Goldman Sachs boss and New Jersey governor Jon Corzine - sent shockwaves through the markets as fears grew that the damage could spread.
Most shocking, as the New York Times points out, is news that MF Global violated a tenet of Wall Street regulation: that customers' funds must be kept separate from company money.
"One of the basic duties of any brokerage firm is to keep track of customer accounts on a daily basis," the Times notes.
