A compilation of poll data by the conservative American Enterprise Institute finds that confidence in Wall Street, banks and other financial institutions is at its lowest point in 40 years.
Those who have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of faith in our financial titans has dropped to 23 percent in Gallup polls and 11 percent in National Opinion Research Center surveys, according to AEI. At one point, in the late 1970s, Gallup found confidence in Wall Street at about 60 percent.
AEI’s round-up of various polls found that a plurality of 25 percent of Americans favors the Occupy Wall Street movement while 20 percent have an unfavorable view and a majority, 53 percent, is undecided or unsure.
However, when the question is asked in a slightly different way, 43 percent say they generally agree with the views of the OWS movement, 27 percent disagree, and 30 percent said they don’t know.
Certainly a sign of the times.
In the latest report by AEI public opinion expert Karlyn Bowman and researcher Andrew Rugg, they touch on several subjects related to the economy:
* Public interest in OWS does not appear to be growing and Americans blame the federal government more than Wall Street for the economic downturn.
* Although people believe wealth should be more evenly distributed, they are not confident that government should do more to reduce income differences.
* More of us than in the past believe the United States is a nation of “haves” and “have-nots,” and fewer now say they are among the “haves.”
* In a change in views, people now see those cases of individual long-term unemployment as the fault of the economy, not the job seekers themselves.
