Bankers Join Billionaires to Debunk 'Imbecile' Attack on Top 1%

By Max Abelson
Bloomberg
Dec. 20, 2011

[...]Peter Schiff, CEO of Westport, Connecticut-based broker- dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., is delivering the message directly. He went in October to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, where Occupy Wall Street protesters had camped out, with a sign that said "I Am the 1%" and a video camera.

"Somebody needs to do it," Schiff said in an interview.

Schiff, 48, disclosed assets of at least $64.7 million before losing the 2010 Republican primary for a Connecticut U.S. Senate seat, according to filings. He's wealthier now, even though his taxes are "more than a medieval lord would have taken from a serf," he said.

A clip from Schiff's video was used in a Nov. 1 segment of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," in which comedian John Hodgman, wearing a cravat, called the wealthy a "persecuted minority." He asked that the phrase "moneyed Americans" replace "the 1 percent."

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