Protests Are A Payday For Security Firms

[Dover]

Source: NYT


By KEVIN ROOSE


...The ultra-rich bankers, hedge fund managers and private equity executives of New York City have long enlisted private security firms to help safeguard them and their wealth. But as the mood on Main Street turns increasingly hostile, New York’s financial titans are cranking their security measures up to 11. For the high-end security firms that provide the moneyed elite with specialty services like around-the-clock bodyguards and elaborate home security systems, Occupy Wall Street has been a stimulus package all its own.

..//..

Executive protection, as the guard-the-rich industry is known, got an initial jolt from the financial crisis of 2008. Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, got permission from a local review board to build a six-foot-high security gate outside his Hamptons house in April 2008, the month after Bear Stearns collapsed. Lehman Brothers, another crisis casualty, had a bomb-sniffing Labrador retriever named Bella stationed at its headquarters. And in 2010, when the activist group the Yes Men encouraged its supporters to perform citizens’ arrests on John A. Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager, Mr. Paulson’s firm hired additional security guards to combat the threat, according to a person with knowledge of the decision. A spokesman for Mr. Paulson declined to comment.

But the most recent round of Main Street rage has raised the risk factor. Last week, when protesters picketed the homes of some of Manhattan’s richest residents, they made a stop at Mr. Paulson’s mansion, as well as the homes of Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and Stephen A. Schwarzman, the billionaire co-founder of the Blackstone Group. One sign carried by protesters depicted Mr. Blankfein’s severed head on a stake.


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“If Zuccotti Park is tapping into resentment against wealthy people, that really changes the calculus,” said Mr. Falkenberg, a former Secret Service agent. “It’s not that far of a connection between what’s happening now in that park and a more focused, research-based kind of attack.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/business/protests-are...

[lbrtbell]

1. Poor widdle billionaires

Frightened because the peasants aren't taking it anymore? Why are they so scared? After all, the crowds are just a bunch of tree-hugging hippies, right?

[Dover]

3. I guess visiting their homes was too close for comfort....n/t

[FarCenter]

2. OWS is a jobs creator -- they'll do more for police budgets than Obama's jobs bill