25 Sep 08
In Washington, protesters are gathering outside the Treasury Department at 4:00 p.m against Wall Street bailout. Here in New York, a protest is set for 4:00 p.m., as well, in Bowling Green Park near Wall Street.
The day of action has been partly inspired by an email sent out Monday by New York journalist Arun Gupta. In the email, Gupta described the bailout as the biggest robbery in world history. Arun Gupta is a reporter and editor at The Indypendent newspaper here in New York.
The bailout is a financial September 11th, that the Bush administration was trying to use the shock of this crisis, the self-induced crisis in this case, to ram through legislation that was highly ill-considered in terms of the actual economic merits, on the one hand, and then, on the other hand, it was this extreme power grab that would give these huge sweeping new powers to the Treasury Department.
“So I wrote up this email. I sat on it overnight, because I was hesitant to send it out. I’m a journalist, not an organizer. But after talking with a few people, they felt I should send it out, so I sent it out to about 150 activists, organizers and media folks that I know in New York City. And it just exploded. You know, I don’t take any special credit for it. I was just tapping into this huge amount of anger and resentment that was out there.” said Arun Gupta.
It started, as you know—the idea is like gather in Wall Street, and I thought maybe it would be a dozen people, and we’d be standing on the sidewalk. But now it looks like there will be hundreds, even possibly thousands. And then, True Majority picked up the call, along with United for Peace and Justice, one of the main antiwar groups, and they said, you know, “Let’s have these day of actions around the country.”
So, all over the country now, there are going to be protests in various financial centers. I’ve been getting emails from people, from every single corner of the United States, asking, “What’s going on? How do we plug in?” And so, we’re just trying to point them to these websites. It’s like, look, here’s a list of the protests, or you can plan your own event. And this is really coming from across the political spectrum.
This is leaderless, and no main organization is in charge or no individual is in charge. Everyone is just participating themselves.
That’s what’s great about it. when people say, “Who’s organizing this?” I say, “No one and everyone.” This was just a call to self-organize. And, it’s like I’m just going to show up there as just one more person who’s against this ridiculous bailout, this giveaway to the rich.
Who is Henry Paulson?
We know he worked for Nixon, was the aide to John Ehrlichman, the ex-con, the man who went to jail; then went off to Goldman Sachs; he and Alan Greenspan still being considered the economic wise men, even though this all happened under their watch.
Ralph Nader said, “That’s when you know the system is decayed and corrupt, that the people who brought us this disaster—Robert Rubin, with Bill Clinton pushing through the financial deregulation monster in 1999, which we opposed, which opened the gates for this kind of wild speculation and this casino capitalism, is still an adviser. He’s an adviser to Barack Obama. He’s an adviser to members of Congress. Henry Paulson cashed out at Goldman Sachs in 2006 a half-a-billion dollars. And now he goes to Washington to bail out his buddies.
The public outrage out there is really enormous. The calls coming into C-SPAN yesterday were overwhelmingly against this bailout, this outrageous inequity, this double standard between the guys at the top and the people who are going to have to pay the bills under this bailout, the taxpayers and the consumers.
Mr. Gupta is right in the sense that this is leaderless, but it’s got to be more than just a rally of protests. It’s got to demand something. It’s got to be focused. Otherwise, it will fritter away. We’ve had rallies on Wall Street. It’s a great place to have rallies. You can really congregate a lot of people, and the Wall Street guys look out the window, and they can see the people are coming.
But the first step is to slow down Congress. Once this bill is passed—and it’s a blanket bill. It’s only four pages, four pages of a $700 billion blank check, transferring congressional authority wholesale, and I think unconstitutionally, to the White House, King George IV at work again. Once it passes, then the chance for comprehensive regulation and all the other changes to make Wall Street accountable, instead of allow Wall Street to create a corporate state or what Franklin Delano Roosevelt called fascism, which is government controlled by private economic power, represented by people like Henry Paulson—once this happens, it’s not going to be reversible.”
“Barney Frank was asked about that last night after the hearing, and he said, “This is a money proposition, if you’re going to deal with the homeowners. It’s not my Banking Committee; it’s Charlie Rangel’s House Ways and Means.” In other words, there’s nothing in this bill for homeowners. There’s everything in this bill to bail out the bankers who actually created this problem with these out-of-control speculative financial instruments.”
People are bringing old junk to the protest, old clothes, things they don’t want to symbolize bailout. That’s one of the themes, cash for trash, which is how this bailout bill is being characterized—in other words, that the government is giving the taxpayers’ good money for these worthless securities. So, many protesters are saying, well, let’s bring our own trash to Wall Street. We’ll create a junk pile and then ask the government to bail us out.
Discussion: Ralph Nader, Arun Gupt, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez
Ralph Nader, Independent candidate for president.
Arun Gupt, reporter and editor of The Indypendent newspaper in New York.
PROTESTERS: We paid, we own! Foreclose Wall Street, not my home! We paid, we own! Foreclose Wall Street…
PROTESTER: People on Wall Street do not know the difference between right and wrong. They do not know that it’s wrong to lie, it’s wrong to steal. And then they make a few mistakes, they want us to pay for it.
ARUN GUPTA: They may give it some window dressing about limiting executive compensation, but the real goal is to transfer huge funds to the investment banks, to the hedge funds, to central banks that created this mess in the first place.
PROTESTER: This is like one, two, three: one, the Iraq war, $700 billion out of our back pocket; two, the energy situation, the record profits while we pay for it at the gas tank; and now, three, Wall Street, in terms of looking for another $700 billion on top of all that’s been done.
PROTESTER: So I’m very concerned about the economic circumstance right now, and at the same time trying to understand what is happening and what the things that the politicians are trying to do.
PROTESTER: …the have-nots, when the haves just keep on having. [inaudible] I go to college. I have a job.
PROTESTER: You’re talking about a bailout for, like, some of the wealthiest banks in the world, but yet we can’t seem to help our own citizens who are having foreclosure crises. I mean, in President Bush’s speech the other night, he mentioned all the reasons for the mortgage meltdown but didn’t once mention predatory mortgage lending.
AARON MATE: What’s your thoughts hearing this protest today?
WALL STREET INVESTOR: Look, I totally understand their issues, but I think not bailing out will end up being worse for the country as a whole.
WALL STREET INVESTOR: Come up with another solution. I mean, there is no solution. I mean, I think that the government should get a lot of equity for what they purchase, but there’s no option.
AARON MATE: Which isn’t being proposed right now, though. So do you support the bailout in its current incarnation?
WALL STREET INVESTOR: Something that’s been done. You pull something that’s already been put on the table now, the country will go into a spiraling depression.
WALL STREET INVESTOR: I think it’s great for the economy, and obviously there will be a massive downturn if the government didn’t bail them out. I mean, Wall Street is a massive part of the US economy. If that was to crumble, then a lot of the knock-on effects would happen. The housing market would go down. I think there will be a detrimental effect to the whole US economy if that happened.
WALL STREET INVESTOR: OK, it seems like a lot of money at the time, but it’s all going to get paid back in eighteen months. So they’re coming together. All these companies are going to be—have to refinance. It’s not as if the US government isn’t going to see this money again. And in terms of the economy in the long run, a company like AIG, if that goes down, those knock-on effects is going to go right down to the consumer.
WALL STREET INVESTOR: Personally, I’m a firm believer of, you know, if the company choose to fail, you know, let them fail. But if it’s going to trickle down to everyone else, you know, we’d have to see what the real details are.
PROTESTER: I am amazed that the federal government has so much money to bail out the investment companies that have made unwise decisions and created huge losses to their shareholders, while they always say they don’t have money for things like affordable housing and more parks and healthcare.
PROTESTER: When the financial guys win, they win alone. And when the financial guys lose, the taxpayers losing. That, it’s not fair. It’s not justice.
– from democracynow. 25 Sep 2008, democracynow
US citizens please don’t make corporate richer. They are not only corrupting your government but all the counties in the world.
Buy products from smaller firms. Don’t let the money concentrated on bigger firms.