Asher Edelman, the well-known corporate raider, told CNBC Tuesday that he supported Occupy Wall Street, saying “the greed of the banks are the cause for the terrible economic situation that we have today.”
Asher Edelman speaks at Occupy Wall Street
Edelman was a corporate raider in the late 1980s, known for going after big American companies like Burlington Industries, Lucky Stores and the Fruehauf Corporation.
He also helped inspire the character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film “Wall Street.”
Edelman, who appeared at Zuccotti Park, the site of the protests in lower Manhattan, said he is trying to help the protestors get direction so it “doesn’t remain amorphous as it has been.”
“We are all rooting for them and hoping they get (President) Obama and some other people moving in the right direction for a change,” he added.
“The banking system has become a system, which is one large hedge fundsupported by the free money of the depositors and by the taxpayers whenever it loses," Edelman said. "That was not the banking system of the 1980s."
"We are on the verge of another banking crisis. The government must handle it in another way this time," he stressed. “The only way we can pull ourselves out of this mess is to combine fiscal with monetary policy. Monetary policy does not work on its own."
The Occupy Wall Street movement will take its protests today to the New York homes of super-wealthy executives as Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein canceled a talk at a college in the city.
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