Criticism Prompted Bloomberg to Quash Protests

Insiders have dished to the New York Post about the factors behind New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to clear out lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park of protesters, including suggestions that “he was being perceived as being very weak.”

A final straw for the mayor was when he was compared with “the liberal mayors of Oakland and Denver,” writes the Post. Bloomberg also was reportedly ruffled by a phone call from former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who said two weeks ago that he would not have allowed protesters to sleep in the park in the first place.

Other factors include Occupy Wall Street’s purported plan to swarm the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, an act that Bloomberg’s “Wall Street friends wouldn’t stand for,” the Post reports, quoting an anonymous source

NYPD forces evicted protesters on Sunday, and workers tore down tents and disinfected the area after widespread reports of lice, lung ailments, and other conditions among protesters.