If the Occupy Wall Street movement is to be characterized as "not having specific aims," then let me submit to the Kos community, and by extension any Occupy Wall Street members who are reading this at Liberty Park, a proposal for a demand. Please discuss it, and hopefully adopt it as a resolution. Point number 3 "securities can be risky" is a given because we witnessed the government paying large sums to secure deposits with the October 2008 bailouts.
We want the reinstatement of the entire Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, and a repeal of the Graham-Leach-Bliley revisions of November 1999. This will be our own Grover Norquist litmus test for any progressive candidate vying for political office in 2012. And just as Grover Norquist plays hardball, so do we. Here is an extract from Wikipedia detailing specifically what the reinstatement includes.
The argument for preserving Glass–Steagall (as written in 1987):
Conflicts of interest characterize the granting of credit (that is to say, lending) and the use of credit (that is to say, investing) by the same entity, which led to abuses that originally produced the Act.
Depository institutions possess enormous financial power, by virtue of their control of other people’s money; its extent must be limited to ensure soundness and competition in the market for funds, whether loans or investments.
Securities activities can be risky, leading to enormous losses. Such losses could threaten the integrity of deposits. In turn, the Government insures deposits and could be required to pay large sums if depository institutions were to collapse as the result of securities losses.
Depository institutions are supposed to be managed to limit risk. Their managers thus may not be conditioned to operate prudently in more speculative securities businesses. An example is the crash of real estate investment trusts sponsored by bank holding companies (in the 1970s and 1980s).