When Occupy Wall Street began in New York City a few weeks ago, my first reaction was "What took them so long?"

The democracy of the USA is threatened by corporate greed. It's long past time for the 99 percent to protest. This began at the theoretical heart of American-style capitalism, but the protest needs to become a real nationwide movement. Hearteningly, "occupations" have already begun in other cities.

Even as the worst of the economic crisis of 2008 played itself out, the leaders of the big financial firms that had recklessly set up this scenario had one thing on their minds: how soon can we go back to giving our staff million dollar bonuses, so that we can justify giving ourselves bonuses of hundreds of millions of dollars? Corporate greed and short-sightedness has only got worse since then. One rational (and long overdue) response to this insanity is to get loud.

Where have these protesters been for these last few years? We've seen protests against universal health care insurance by old curmudgeons secure in the knowledge that they're covered by Medicare. There have been protests against deficit spending that would help to pay for infrastructure projects, by people who...More >>