Street's Other Rally Finds Fewer Converts

Traders stepped outside the exchange to smoke cigarettes and watch the rabble with looks ranging from curiosity and amusement to derision.

"Those people are freaking out," said one, who declined to be identified. "They sort of make fools of themselves with this kind of stuff."

Whatever distance exists between traders and social activists, media polls show that a growing majority of Americans are losing confidence in the federal government. Casualties are mounting in Iraq, and the relief effort for Hurricane Katrina victims continues to be botched. Does this have any effect on the stock market?

"It doesn't really show up in the market," said Barry Hyman, equity market strategist with Ehrenkrantz King Nussbaum. "In fact, it's possible to say that the spending for the war effort has actually helped the economy through the increase in the government-spending part of the GDP. Then again, the war contributes to a deficit that is getting very large, and that's a big part of the bear case that a lot of people make for the long-term health of the economy."

Steve Millies, a railroad worker and labor activist who volunteered to help the coalition, said the economic arguments about the war are irrelevant. He called people who work inside the stock exchange "bourgeois pigs," and conceded that they probably would greet the rally's message with a tin ear.

"The majority of the people that we're getting through to here aren't traders," Millies said. "They're the people who build the buildings around here, push the carts and clean up the mess. These are the people who understand what we're getting at here. There's no even playing field, and the people at the top are trying to make it as uneven as possible."

On Wall Street, these sentiments are often viewed with scorn by hard-working financial types who observe the job and wealth creation powered by the capital markets first hand. However, the belief that certain economic policies, -- like the Bush administration's controversial tax cuts on capital gains -- are skewed unnecessarily toward the wealthy has been voiced by such capitalist superstars as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates.