STOCK MARKET WATCH, Tuesday, December 13, 2011

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14. Meet the Financial Wizards Working With Occupy Wall Street

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/ows-alternative-banking

High up in a Manhattan conference room on Sunday, a group of investment gurus discussed Occupy Wall Street. Should they support a set of tough-sounding financial reforms just proposed on the campaign trail by presidential candidate Jon Huntsman? Or was it reasonable to demand even deeper reforms? "This isn't enough," argued Cathy O'Neil, a former hedge fund quant who organizes the group, a branch of Occupy Wall Street known as the Alternative Banking Group. She proposed that the gathering of financial experts come up with improvements to Huntsman's plan and present them to Occupy Wall Street's General Assembly. Another OWS supporter, whose day job involves consulting for private equity firms, looked up from his laptop and smiled. "That's an excellent idea!"

As unlikely as it may have seemed when protesters first descended on New York's financial center this fall, an increasing number of Wall Street insiders are now returning the favor, you might say, by occupying Occupy Wall Street. Sympathetic to the movement's critiques of the banking system, they've been quietly lending their expertise to Occupy efforts to develop real ideas for revamping the industry.

"What I want is to influence the conversation," says O'Neil, who worked for two years under Lawrence Summers, now the US Treasury Secretary, at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. "It's about education and outreach and just the message that the financial system is too complicated—that you are not dreaming this."

Founded in early October by former British diplomat Carne Ross, the 60-person Alternative Banking Group has become a repository for OWS-friendly financial insiders. It includes current and former investment bankers, traders, and lawyers for the securities industry, but also many laymen—including housewives, people who used to sleep in Zuccotti Park, and guys with piercings who wear Che Guevara T-shirts. The group has shared Occupy Wall Street's website, its non-hierarchical structure, and its distaste for partisan politics. "I'd say the one thing that everybody agrees on is that the system isn't working," O'Neil says. "And there is nothing about being a Republican or a Democrat in that statement."