---
title: Occupy the SEC
date: 2012-05-02T09:14:16Z
modified: 2012-05-02T09:21:12Z
permalink: "https://nko.org/occupy-sec/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 3285
categories:
  - Education
tags:
  - Education
  - demonstrations
  - Glass-Steagall Act
  - Occupy Wall Street
  - quants
  - SEC
featured_image: /wp-content/uploads/2012/05/occupiedsec_seal_transparent.png
author: Paul Garrett Hugel
timestamp: 2012-05-02T09:21:12Z
---

[![](http://nko.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/occupiedsec_seal_transparent.png "occupiedsec_seal_transparent")

](http://nko.org/occupy-sec/occupiedsec_seal_transparent/)Until today — when [Occupy Wall Street activists held renewed demonstrations](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/01/us-usa-occupy-may-idUSBRE8400UV20120501) across the country – the movement against economic injustice that emerged with such a loud bang last summer seemed to have fallen dormant over the winter months.

But even as protests slowed down and media coverage declined, a small group of “policy wonks” within the larger movement — former bankers, business analysts, traders and hedge fund [“quants”](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/oral-history/financial-crisis/cathy-oneil/#cathy-oneil1) motivated by their belief that the banks wield too much power — has been quietly working within the financial system to change America’s regulatory processes.

They call themselves [Occupy the SEC](http://www.occupythesec.org/), and [as Suzy Khimm explains in _The Washington Post_](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/occupy-the-regulatory-system/2012/04/27/gIQAjo21lT_blog.html), they’ve slowly built an audience with some of the rulemakers and titans of finance they’re trying to influence. Khimm describes it as “one of the most surprising iterations of the free-wheeling, anarchic movement: fighting the man through the tedious and Byzantine regulatory process.”

Though they have a number of goals and projects, one part of the group is focused on trying to make sure banks can’t game the “Volcker Rule” – a provision that would in effect reinstate a cornerstone of the depression era [Glass-Steagall Act](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html) by separating proprietary trading from traditional customer-oriented banking.

Tonight on FRONTLINE’s final installment of _Money, Power and Wall Street_, you’ll hear from three of these activists who abandoned their finance careers to change Wall Street. ([Watch an excerpt.](http://business.time.com/2012/05/01/frontline-preview-i-felt-like-i-was-doing-something-immoral/))

“I just felt like I was doing something immoral. I was taking advantage of people I don’t even know… so I ended up deciding to work for the other side,” explains Cathy O’Neil, a math-professor-turned-hedge-fund-quant-turned-Occupy-the-SEC activist.

“Occupy Wall Street from the very beginning was being criticized,” she tells FRONTLINE below, “for not really knowing how the system works. And what I realized was, you know what? Nobody knows how the system works. Even the people in finance don’t understand the system.”

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## Topics

**Categories:** [Education](https://nko.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/category/education.md)

**Tags:** [demonstrations](https://nko.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/post_tag/demonstrations.md), [Glass-Steagall Act](https://nko.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/post_tag/glass-steagall-act.md), [Occupy Wall Street](https://nko.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/post_tag/occupy-wall-street.md), [quants](https://nko.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/post_tag/quants.md), [SEC](https://nko.org/wp-content/uploads/wp-mfa-exports/taxonomy/post_tag/sec.md)