Compliancex

As the year winds rapidly to a close, the usual stories of ringing out the old and ringing in the new are being featured in a variety of media outlets, and the darlings of the media in 2011, the OWS movement, appear to be headed for the dustbin of history says the UK’s Independent.

While the legacy of the OWS movement is arguable, one question that can be answered with some clarity is whether the anti-capitalist protestors had any effect on Wall Street.

And the paper opines that the answer is no.

Even though it’s been a tough year for financial firms in the US and the UK, especially in light of the fact that the global finance industry has announced more than 200,000 job cuts this year, economics and not the OWS movement had more of an effect.

Here, the British paper points put that “Morgan Stanley, one of the mightiest investment banks, set out the details of the “rolling layoffs” it began the week before Christmas. Of 1,600 jobs going across the firm, 580 will be in New York.”

That’s gonna leave a mark, and not just in Zuccotti Park.

Obviously there are many factors contributing to the retrenchment of the financial world, in particular, “a new mood of caution among clients, shareholders and regulators has been crimping profits.”

Coupled with the reform laws like Dodd-Frank and the Basel III Accord, as well as “new rules coming to curb profitable inter-bank derivatives trades” the global markets beyond Wall Street will continue to hunker down, not for only the time being, but quite possibly the long haul.

What’s a protestor to do if there’s no one left to protest?

Of course, business will go on and Wall Street’s lobbying has continued and the story notes that “the coming election will most likely prove the test of OWS’s influence.”

Because politicos, in the final analysis, still need Wall Street’s money, and money still makes the world go around.

Kyle Colona is a New York based freelance writer and a Feature Writer for the Compliance Exchange. He has an extensive background in legal and regulatory affairs in the financial services sector and his work has appeared in a variety of print and on-line publications.