"Forget about occupying Wall Street — why not just defund it?"

... While most of us have been distracted by elections and fiscal brinksmanship, the financial services industry has been waging a furious, well-funded counter-attack that has been alarmingly successful in wearing down the financial regulators. There has been hand-to-hand combat about every word in every regulation. And win or lose, every one of those regulations will be the subject of a scorched-earth legal strategy that will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Working through the Republican caucuses on Capitol Hill, the industry also has moved to trim regulators’ budgets, block nominations to regulatory posts and deny industry critics such as Elizabeth Warren seats on relevant oversight committees.

The depth and breadth of the industry campaign to gut Dodd-Frank is unlike any I have seen in Washington. I have no doubt it was a factor in Mary Schapiro’s decision last week to retire as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. ...Steven Pearlstein, WaPo

We might already know this, or at least suspect it.  But that doesn't lessen its impact.  Wall Street remains unleashed and, for sure!, dangerous. 

There is a way to counter Wall Street's continuing power grab, as Pearlstein points out but I'd be willing to bet 100 shares of a blue chip that we won't get off our butts and do it.

If we don’t like how Wall Street is investing it and lending it and what they are charging to do so, then all we have to do is put it elsewhere. ...Pearlstein, WaPo

 Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis suggested a solution years ago.

What Brandeis had in mind was a new set of institutions that are owned and controlled by their customers. Mutual banks and insurance companies. Cooperatives of various kinds. Credit unions. Employee-run pension funds. ...Pearlstein, WaPo

Wall Street's capitalism hasn't worked for most people.  What Pearlstein offers is a more progressive (big and small "p") solution.

Here’s the point: If we don’t like the rip-out-your-eyeball culture of Wall Street, if we’re tired of the inherent conflicts of interest, if we don’t want to encourage the excessive leverage and risk taking and executive compensation, we can take our money elsewhere — to companies that deliver as good or better products and services at the same or lower prices. Forget about occupying Wall Street — why not just defund it?  ...Pearlstein,WaPo