Paul Mason, BBC: " 'Occupy' is a response to economic permafrost"

Link to BBC web site

"... These protests are a powerful signal worldwide. Their mere existence shows that people are determined to 'think globally' about routes out of this crisis - at a time when economics is driving politicians down the route of national solutions. However marginalised they are politically - and in some countries, above all America and Greece, they have broken out of marginalisation - it is still a fact: in 1931, as the remnants of Globalisation 1.0 collapsed, there were no mass international protests against austerity. There were plenty of national, and indeed nationalist ones.

"... 'Occupy Everywhere' is the kind of movement you get when people start to believe mainstream politicians have lost their principles, or are trapped by vested interests, or are all crooked.

"That's the answer to the question 'what'. The answer to why now? Basically we are in danger of a global stagnation - it was HSBC's economics team that described it as a permafrost. It poses the question 'who pays for the banking crisis?' very acutely. And large numbers of people are now realising it is going to be them, and more painfully, their children. As in Greece, in that circumstance, for every protester camped in the freezing dawn there may be many more quietly fuming in their living rooms who feel the same way."