At Zuccotti Park on a recent weekday lunch hour, visitors, onlookers and simple passersby outnumbered participants in the ballyhooed Occupy Wall Street protest by a sizable margin. That may be utterly beside the point, however, because the protest’s staying power seems to exist as much online as on the ground. Wall Streeters themselves seem to think the protest has some significance, judging from their evident skittishness about coming near the thing. On II’s visit the only person in the area who admitted to working on Wall Street was a protester in a pinstriped suit who enumerated his complaints about the financial system to any and all members of the press — but wouldn’t disclose his last name, occupation or employer. Asked if his views contradicted his interests, the apparent banker said no. “It’s not good for me, and it’s not good for my parents, to see the economy collapse,” the protester said. He blamed the banks, along with the derivatives market, for bringing the economy to that point in 2008 and said that nothing substantive had been done to prevent the same thing from happening again.
