The man New Yorkers elected as their latest Sheriff of Wall Street seems so much smaller than one expects a man in such an outsize job to be, sitting behind his huge desk flanked by a potted rubber plant on one side and the state flag on the other. Behind him, the behemoth black iron shell of the Freedom Tower -- Manhattan real estate's rough, unfinished rebuke to terrorists -- hogs the sky and blocks out the sunset.
Low-key and boyish-looking at 55, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is the American progressive movement's best and probably last hope for some kind of public retribution against the banksters, some righting of wrongs -- rolling of heads -- as far as the Great Recession. Yet, he is the anti-Spitzer, in style, if not substance. He has none of Eliot's dominating physicality, none of the hawk-eyed vigor of the man striding around town with everyone's high hopes riding on his shoulders, until he fell, quite literally, on his own figurative sword. This reasonable character could not, one hopes, turn out to be Client 10.
With protesters about to be pepper sprayed by the NYPD below on Wall Street, we sat down with Mr. Schneiderman to talk about what legal avenues exist. Read the rest of the interview with Mr. Schneiderman here.