| May. 22nd, 2013

Bloomberg to Occupy Wall Street: Bankers Are "Struggling To Make Ends Meet"

Politics

By Exception Staff | September 30, 2011

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is speaking out against the Occupy Wall Street protesters. The multi-billionaire believes that the protesters have picked the wrong target because bankers are "struggling to make ends meet." Here is what he said to local radio host John Gambling on his show:

GAMBLING: Mr. Mayor, let’s talk about Zuccoti Park and the protesters. How do you end that thing?

BLOOMBERG: The protesters are protesting against people who make $40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line. Those are the people that work on Wall Street or on the finance sector. [...] People in this day and age need support for their employers. We need the banks, if the banks don’t go out and make loans we will not come out of our economy problems, we will not have jobs. And so anything we can do to responsibly help the banks do that, encourage them to do that is waht we need. I think we spend much too much time worrying about how we got into problems as to how we go forward. [...] Also we always tend to blame the wrong people. We blame the banks. They were part of it, but so were Freddie Mac and Frannie Mae and Congress.

The mayor and his PR team clearly have not actually visited the Occupy Wall Street website, because it explicitly positions the movement as the 99 percent who are tired of the richest 1 percent with most of the money and power in America. Someone who makes $50,000 per year is not even close to the top 1 percent and is therefore not a target of this movement. The top 1 percent control over 40 percent of the nation's wealth and is comprised of a very small group, including Bloomberg himself.

Hat tip to Think Progress for the Bloomberg quote.