Like fire-fighting anti-terrorist elk, Wall Street braces for protests

The terrifying enemy. (Nina Montenegro) Nothing seems to ever frighten Wall Street bankers. Even during the worst economic downturns, you'll still get your bonus, after all. Government regulation? Pfft; pay the fine, then move on. No, there are no natural predators of the Modern American Financial Magnate. None, that is, except for the scary, scary street protester:

The world's biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants said. [...]

Banks are preparing for Occupy demonstrations at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Chicago summit on May 20 and 21 by sharing information from video surveillance, robots and officers in buildings, giving 'a real-time, 360-degree' view, said McNary, who works on the project.

I have long had a sneaking suspicion that if robots ever do decide to go rogue and wipe out the human race, it will be robots programmed by bankers. I'm just putting that out there now, because once we're all running for our lives it might be hard to find the time to say "I told you so."

The abject terror these protesters are causing on Wall Street is something to behold. We're not talking mere victimhood, here, but comparisons of the titans of Wall Street finance to prey animals:

Banks cooperating on surveillance are like elk fending off wolves in Yellowstone National Park, [Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations director Brian McNary] said. While other animals try in vain to sprint away alone, elk survive attacks by forming a ring together, he said.

Pfft. If they were smart, elk would defend themselves by funneling millions upon millions of dollars towards anti-wolf lobbying efforts. And the wolves are only pissed off because the elk destroyed the Yellowstone economy and the wolves bailed their furry asses out at great national expense, only to see the elk not give a flying crap and proceed to do the whole thing all over again. In my book, that means the wolves get to eat somebody now.

But the wolves aren't just wolves, the wolves are also forest fires:

Last year's anti-bank protests were 'like a big forest fire that was suppressed and put out,' Chris Swecker, the former head of security at Bank of America, said in an interview. Firms are studying protesters because 'there's also the opportunity for spontaneous fires to spring back up again,' said Swecker, who runs a security-consulting firm in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And those forest fires are like terrorists:

Spokesmen for Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc. (C), Morgan Stanley (MS), UBS AG (UBSN) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) wouldn't describe security measures for the protests. One likened commenting to telling al-Qaeda about the bank's continuity plans.

Got that? The banks are pretty happy because they see the 99 percent movement as being nicely "suppressed" last year, thanks in no small part to city governments that were all fine and dandy with the First Amendment until the First Amendment started camping out on their lawn. But that doesn't mean they're not still so worried about the movement that bank spokesmen are actually comparing the movement to al Qaeda.

I have no idea what's going to happen today, or during the Chicago summit later this month. But just based on the quotes given by terrified bank spokesman, I'm thinking of buying those wolves some toothpicks.