BoE's Haldane says Occupy was right A top Bank of England official has said the Occupy movement was right to attack the global financial system, in a speech to about 500 protesters, students and financiers in London on Monday evening. Andrew Haldane, the Bank's executive director for financial stability, said the Occupy movement - which started with protest camps on Wall Street and in the City of London last year - had not only been right morally, but also in its analysis of "deep and rising inequality" in causing the financial crisis. "Occupy has been successful in its efforts to popularise the problems of the global financial system for one very simple reason; they are right," he said. Mr Haldane is the first senior central banker to say that the Occupy movement was correct in its analysis of the causes of the crisis. But other officials have expressed sympathy with the movement. Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said last year that he could appreciate the Occupy movement's dissatisfaction with the state of the economy. Picking up on the movement's slogan of "we are the 99 per cent," Mr Haldane said: "Occupy have touched a moral nerve in pointing to the growing inequities in the allocation of wealth and incomes globally. The 99 per cent certainly agrees. But so, more interestingly, do a high and rising share of the 1 per cent. Inequality had helped fuel demand of ultra-cheap credit, creating what Mr Haldane dubbed "the Heineken era, in which credit reached parts of society it had previously not reached." "Levels of debt, in particular among households, rose pretty much exactly in line with levels of inequality," he said. Mr Haldane, who is also a member of the Bank's Financial Policy Committee, which is tasked with safeguarding financial stability, said Occupy had played a role in bringing about the "most radical agenda of financial reform for 80 years." However, during an at-times heated question and answer session at the event, organised by Occupy Economics, others disagreed that reforms went far enough. "I'm not entirely optimistic," said Richard Paton of Occupy. There is a gap between what senior technocrats believe is necessary and what political leaders are prepared to accept. Mr Haldane outlined regulatory reforms to what he dubbed the "five Cs": culture, capital, compensation, credit and competition, saying that while the changes "lack the pizzazz of a "tar and feathers" strategy," he thought they would work. "If I am right and a new leaf is being turned, then Occupy will have played a key role in this fledgling financial reformation," he said. You have put the arguments. You have helped win the debate. And policy makers, like me, will need your continuing support in delivering that radical change. Mr Haldane has often called on global regulators to take more action to avoid a repeat of the current financial crisis. Last week, he warned that worldwide efforts to solve the problem of banks that are "too big to fail" were falling short. He said a question mark was still hanging over whether measures to ringfence economically crucial activities would lead to a change in the allocation of resources between retail and investment banking. On Monday, Mr Haldane said that if ringfencing did not work, a full separation would be the logical next step. Mr Haldane supported banks deferring some remuneration until retirement, to align staff goals with those of their customers, and said there were encouraging signs of a "technological revolution" in banking which was opening up the market to new entrants. He called on the protesters to support banks delivering change by moving their money. "Putting your money where your mouth is would deliver far greater and more durable change than any amount of banker-bashing," he said.