Paul Mason there. Joining me from New York is the journalist and activist Laurie Penny. She was out on the streets today with the Occupy protestors. And joining me here in the studio, Richard Sharp, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, won a full city figures recruited last summer by George Osborne to consult on options for reducing the public deficit. And welcome to both of you. Richard Sharp, you've visited both these movements. You must be pretty impressed with how they've managed to influence mainstream politics now, aren't you? I was actually disappointed with the demonstrations themselves in some way, because there is a generation which does have to care deeply about their future, which has been damaged by the activities of the last 15 years of governments and commerce, and left a legacy of debt and problems that they're experiencing in seeking employment, and facing a future where they will have to repay the debts associated with expenditure for which they got no benefit. So what are you saying? They're doing the right thing by protesting, surely. Well, I thought the demonstrations, certainly in New York, was, for my mind, at that time, this is only 10 days ago, was chaotic and flaccid. It was a tourist spectacle with more journalists than protesters, and some of the points being made were trivial. And I think there are some standard points, but they were not being made when I was here. Laurie Penny, what do you make of that? A demonstration that managed to be simultaneously chaotic and flaccid? Well, that may have been the scene a few days ago, but certainly after the eviction of Occupy Wall Street on Tuesday night, the energy has been galvanized again, and there were thousands of people on the street today, very, very, a lot of angry chanting, banks got bailed out, we got sold out. I saw people on the streets being violently arrested, a lot of anger. There was certainly energy, and there were certainly not only broad and sweeping ideas for social change, not unified ideas, certainly. But there was also a wonderful moment, which I hope someone's captured on camera, where people sat down in the middle of one of the Occupy Wall Street and started sharing stories. You know, it's one woman saying her home had been repossessed, another public school teacher saying, all my students, parents are unemployed, students, families, workers, and everyone coming together to share their stories. And this is really what the day has been about partly, and I want to kind of make it clear that it wasn't just scenes of violence and of police brutality on the streets. There was also a lot of hope and a lot of joyful defiance. What do you make of the fact then? Sure, what do you make of the fact then that despite this joyful defiance, as you describe it, broadly, there is less public sympathy for you as the protests go on. People are losing faith in what you're doing, and just finding the demonstrations annoying there. Well, 35% of the American public still support the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Occupy movement. I find it rather disheartening after about a year of interviewing protesters, activists, and journalists, Emily, you still seem not quite to get that this is broader than a public annoyance. This is about a generation and more than just a generation, turning round and trying to refigure politics of having been told for their whole lives, that there's nothing they can do to confront capitalism. It's very interesting, isn't it, Richard Shaw? Broadly, they have managed to bring wealth inequality to the top of the agenda. They've properly spooked President Obama. They've made David Cameron take a very strong stance on bankers, bonuses here. Angela Merkel is talking about the Tobin tax. Doesn't sound that chaotic when you look at how the politicians around the world are responding. Well, look, we're facing a global economic crisis that some leading central bankers have called unprecedented. What is remarkable is that you have these tiny pockets of people where it hasn't gathered more momentum, given some of the real deprivation associated with unemployment as a result of the economic crisis. Well, do you think they should be doing that? What would you want to see them doing? I think the issue is... They have multiple problems. First of all, the leadership is distributed and not apparent at all. They've damaged their cause by making the cleaning up of the park and the behaviour that's taken place a bigger story than their objectives. What they've talked about is what they're against and not what they're for. Okay, let's put that one to Laurie Perry. Then what would you actually like to see change in terms of concrete policies? What are you for? I can't speak for the Occupy movement as a whole. I'm just an individual reporting and associated with the Occupy movement as... But I think what a lot of the Occupy... Occupy is know what they're for is change. It's a different system and obviously that sounds very, very broad. But if you think in Wall Street, for example, many of the people down on the streets are people who spent quite a lot of their young lives voting and working for the Obama campaign. And these are people who were promised change at the hands of left-wing politicians or central left politicians. And now they're seeing that change is something you have to stand up and take for yourselves because politicians at the moment, they don't see that they're going to deliver. What does that mean? What does that mean? Does that mean they want a change to the change of Obama promise or their anti-abarma or their anti-capitalism or what does it mean in defining tangible terms? Well, there are some people down there, for example, who want to see a return of the Glass-Steagall Act. There are some people who want to impose a very limited tax on the wealthy. Some people are asking for revolutionary change. Some people are asking for just a little bit of leeway. A little bit of leeway so people can live their lives with dignity and don't have to be forced into paying more and more towards the financial reclips. It's a super rich. I don't think that's a very big thing to watch. One of the reasons you're not hearing other people is because this is, in some sense, in a positive way, an argument of the left. And the real problem they have is the target should be socialism. In other words, it should be governments that spent money they didn't have. That is an absolute loss. Come and look, excuse me. No, it's not. We have a massive deficit across the world because of a financial crisis that occurred three years ago and was building up for many, many years before that. It was not over-spending. We don't have debt. Because of the public sector. We don't have debt because we spent too much on public services. We have debt because the super rich and the banks were allowed to run. Richeshot. It's not a big deal. It's a little bit of a bad deficit. We're seeing a bank trying to blame other people for the crisis that we're in. Well, Laurie earned an Emily for that matter. The debts of government are government debts. Now, what we're talking about is politicians in seeking popularity, spending money that they didn't take. I was about to get them out of the banks. You're enjoying it. I'm sorry. Spending money they didn't have. A government debt is going to come to you. Let's just hear from Rich. Sorry, Laurie. Let's just hear it just point. We've seen that right across Europe, that the scale of the debt that the governments incurred in order to buy their popularity did two things. First of all, it created a stock of debt the governments have to repay which they worried they can't. Secondly, and this is most important, what it did, it damaged the private sector at a time where we have global competition. Germany has no problem right now. OK, Germany has full employment. You said they bought the popularity. That was what their debt was spent on. The debt was spent surely partly on saving the financial sector from complete collapse in the Lehman years. There's no question that that is part of the debt, but that is not the structural deficit, and nor is that associated with the waste of the last government. What you had today is you had an irresponsible politician who was responsible for the debt, Ed Miliband, talking about the need for responsible capitalism. The fact is politicians throughout Europe have to face up to their lack of responsibility in the debts that they incurred and they wait the money they wasted. Laurie Pettany, last word to you. This is compelling nonsense. You're talking in a local context about a financial crisis that is global. I can't believe that a former banker is sitting here telling me that this is peddling out this Tory line that this is the Labour government last... I mean, I'm no fan of the lower-grade government. But the idea that we overspend that way... Let's go ahead. Last word, last word, Gum Pettany, just finish your sentence. This is no way to talk about a financial crisis. The banks are kidding themselves if they think that we are fooled. Okay, thank you both very much indeed. Thanks for coming in as well.