Because the international banking system is global, so too are the protests. The magnitude of the protests will have some relation to how screwed over the average citizen feels. For example there are lots of good reasons for people in the united states to be pissed off, but in the entire country of 300+Million, less than half the protesters were reported than the Spanish city of Madrid. Just one city in a country of only 46M.

Why? I don't know. Is it the poor media coverage? Do people not realize that they have a reason to be pissed off? Or that they really can change things if they get together? I will have to let our American friends offer better insight than I can.

The last time that the income gap was this extreme was immediately followed by the Great Depression, which was immediately followed by WWII. (Presently, I see a repeat of history from about 90 years ago in charts and other data.) The recent push to refresh in military technology, be it the F-35 White Elephant or the recent $35B Canadian navy contract, are not isolated only to NorthAm militaries. And I do believe that there is potential for some kind of blowback from NATO/US involvement in Libya/Iraq/Afghanistan etc. To what extent or force the blowback will or won't be remains to be seen. I hope the my spidey-senses and my surface reading of history are both very off on this point.

My prediction is that things will get worse before they get better. The recession in the U.S. is not a double dip, because it hasn't really gotten enough better to stop being a recession. Lots of soldiers are about to come home from Iraq, many will be discharged and not be able to find other non-military work. Greece will likely default or the process of preventing default will be so complicated that it will be seen as a lesser evil as opposed to a victory for the globalized financial casino markets, and some form of protest will continue or will be revived after a brief hiatus once a leak in the patchwork repair job springs true.

The real wildcard in Occupy Wall Street could be the reaction of those thousands of hard-working soldiers home from a long war to a country in protest. There are certainly a lot of factors to be considered. All I can say for certain is that something will come of Occupy.