"Occupy the Regulatory System!" (Good read from WaPo!) [View all]

Occupy the regulatory system!
Posted by Suzy Khimm at 09:45 PM ET, 04/27/2012

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It may sound like technical gobbledygook to an outsider, and, indeed, a few newcomers to Occupy the SEC seem befuddled by the group’s headlong dive into the finer distinctions between proprietary trading and market-making. But the meeting is a glimpse into one of the most surprising iterations of the free-wheeling, anarchic movement: fighting the man through the tedious and Byzantine regulatory process.

In its heyday, the tea party turned to elections to enact change, rallying supporters to primary incumbents and helping the GOP retake the House. Occupy Wall Street, by contrast, has largely eschewed the traditional political process. Instead, as protesters have moved off the streets, a small minority of Occupiers has waded deep into the weeds of the federal regulations, legal decisions and banking practices that make up the actual architecture of Wall Street. And they’re drawing on the technical expertise of the financial industry’s own refugees, exiles and dissidents to do so.

Many of the Occupy wonks once worked on Wall Street, and some of them still do. They’re former derivatives traders, risk analysts, compliance officers and hedge fund quants. They hail from Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Bear Stearns, D.E. Shaw, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase — and at least one is a former Securities and Exchange Commission regulator. They’re more likely to use a flowchart than protest signs to fight big banks. But they identify with the movement’s animating belief that America’s financial heavyweights wield too much power, and that its political leaders are too eager to do their bidding.

As the more visible signs of the movement fade, with their encampments all but cleared from the country’s public spaces, the Occupy wonks have doubled down on their policy work behind the scenes. They’re slowly gaining attention for their efforts — not just from the news media, but also from the some of the financial rulemakers and gatekeepers they’re hoping to influence.

Most of the wonks in New York jumped into the movement like everyone else: They showed up at Zuccotti Park last fall, curious about the gathering, sympathetic to its cause and uncertain what would happen next. But as Occupy Wall Street evolved and branched off in different directions, they found themselves gravitating to the “working groups” that aimed to reform big finance from the inside out. And some saw an opportunity to make change in a very unlikely place: the regulatory process.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/occupy-the-regulatory-system/2012/04/27/gIQAjo21lT_blog.html