What a perfect day for a protest! Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman and SEIU’s Andy Stern rallied the crowd in front of the Capitol Hill headquarters of Goldman Sachs. Our message? Break up the banks.
Several speakers and numerous signs at the protest called for Congress to break up the “too big to fail” banks – a proposal that’s actually gaining some traction on Capitol Hill.
Some of the banks have gotten too big for the health of the economy and for American democracy, proclaimed Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, a government watchdog group.
“That’s the message: Break them up!” he yelled, the crowd following with several rounds of chanting that message.
Numerous Public Citizen activists turned out, holding high our protest signs demanding “Put people before Wall Street profits” and “Don’t let the banks drive us off another cliff.”
Meanwhile, our new report on Wall Street firms’ donations to Congressional re-election campaigns raises serious questions about where our elected representatives will stand.
While Congress has debated legislation to reform Wall Street, the financial services industry has showered members of the Senate and House banking committees with about two and a half times as much money, on average, as other members of Congress, according to a new Public Citizen report.
The industry – including banks, investment firms, insurance companies and real estate companies – has given $42 million in campaign contributions to lawmakers and their leadership political action committees since the current election cycle began in November 2008. The industry has concentrated its contributions on members of the House and Senate banking and the congressional leadership, the report showed.
We’re keeping up the pressure and fighting to hold Congress accountable (and you can help us keep up the fight by writing your senators and representatives). Their job is to represent the people, and we’ll continue to hold their feet to the fire to make them stand with the people, not the corporate financial industry.
Why don’t we try to organize and promote a nationwide campaign to promote the idea that everybody, EVERYBODY, in the United States should repudiate their credit card balances. I mean EVERYONE. If we could get hundreds of millions of people to join in such an endeavor … can you imagine the financial havoc on the banks? And how could they possibly cope with it. There really is not much they can do if an individual refuses to pay. Imagine the effect with hundreds of millions.
I would so much like to be part of this kind of peaceful revolution. It would be one way to make a massive and significant impact in the manner of that old film quote, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore.” And it would certainly assert the power and authority of an organized public.
This would be a revolution that would truly matter, and truly achieve results, without firing a shot.
Count me in. Sign me up!
Paul Myers
Great speech by Robert Weissman.
I also like Paul Myers idea, but believe that it will not work because too many are held hostage by having to have good credit scores, so the banks do have some leverage.
However, what may work is a mass movement to STOP USING CREDIT CARDS. That would cut off the money flow to these greedy banks and would not affect peoples’ credit ratings.
Rudy A
Follow Michael Moore’s advice. JOIN A CREDIT UNION. Martha Conte
The reality is the opposite of common sense or democratic principles.
Banks (Corporations in general) regulate Government.
Government does not regulate Banks.
This is not a democracy.
It is a corporate owned and managed society, with a false veneer of being an elected democracy.
You can’t vote Corporations out of Government control, because Corporations were never voted into control of Government.
Corporate controlled government is what used to be called Corporatism. Or Oligarchy. Or Fascism. or any combination of those terms you prefer.
Fascism is alive and well, pretending to be ‘Capitalism.’
Oligarchic/Corporate control of the Government through legalized bribes called campaign donations and lobbyists is a systemic impediment to actual functioning democracy.
These are known issues. Or from a corporate perspective – a success story in preventing democracy, and securing the United States as a militarized base for Corporatist Empire.
Or again to keep it simple – Fascism.
I appreciate your efforts to educate and influence progressive change, and to perhaps one day have real supporters of democracy elected to the Presidency, Congress and finally, the Supreme Court. That said, I think it will be an inter-generational project.
Have a nice day
Thanks to you Public Citizen for addressing the biggest issue. Breaking up the banks will definitely help.
I really like Michael Moore’s recommendation to get Credit Union cards, and we can also work with local banks that have their own credit cards not manged by the big banks. That’s pretty easy to do! You can keep your big bank cards which leaves your credit capacity limits high–just don”t use them and your credit score should remain unaffected!
However, the core of the financial system problem is the ability of commercial, investment banks to work with mortage and insurance companies which has led to the “exotic” derivitive instuments, which because they are dis-honestly assembled and rated become toxic assets. The only real remedy for this is re-enactment of Glass Steagall and regulations requring an adequate reserve to loan ratio on investment packages. These can help prevent flooding the market with unsafe investments and this critical to ensuring that there is not another crash which has such deep consequences.
We must fight for this; apparently the production and trading of unsecured, unintelligible and falsely rated derivitives, hedge funds etc. continues. While the average person doesn’t buy them becuse they know better, they are being traded all over the world and when they crash again, the American public will be called upon to bail them out again because we can’t let the world financial system fail. Or can we??????
A good portion of the citizens are so dependent on credit cards to keep their heads above water that it would require an act of god to have them change. If we the people would develop a public finance system where every person running for office could only use public funds for his/her campaign after they met certain requirements. The radio and T.V. station, the air ways belong to the citizens, should be required to give each qualified candidate so many free minutes of air time. This would eliminate a lot of the influence that large donors have now.
[...] Public Citizen president Robert Weissman fired up a rally at the Washington, D.C., offices of Goldman Sachs – you know, the taxpayer-bailed-out financial services behemoth that, according to its own CEO, is “doing God’s work.” [...]
[...] Public Citizen rallies against the banksters Numerous Public Citizen activists turned out, holding high our protest signs demanding “Put people before Wall Street profits” and “Don’t let the banks drive us off another cliff.” [...]
This post has really opened up some great discussion. Thanks for putting forth the effort to put it together.