5 Demands for Protesters on Wall Street

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone loves the Occupy Wall Street protests, no surprise from the journalist who famously likened Goldman Sachs to a "vampire squid." The movement is "the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite," and it's doing the right thing now in building numbers and support, but at some point, it will "need a short but powerful list of demands." He suggests five, including:

• End monopolies: Financial companies that are too big too fail "are a direct threat to national security." Taibbi likes the idea of separating insurance companies, investment banks, and commercial banks.
• Lobbying: Forbid companies that get a public bailout from using the money to lobby. "You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both."
• Bailouts: Make companies pay for their own bailouts. He likes "a tax of 0.1% on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01% tax on all trades of derivatives."

Click for Taibbi's full column. (More Occupy Wall Street stories.)