'Showdown In Chicago' Brings Out 1000 Protesters At Banking Conference
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Oct 27, 2009 8:00am
[H/t Heather]
Via Raw Story, the heartwarming news that bankers aren't getting to celebrate in peace at their annual conference:
The annual American Bankers Association meeting in Chicago is not going as planned.
Besieged by activists from the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO and Americans for Financial Reform, the leaders of America's financial sector were interrupted Sunday night as a throng of protesters poured into the conference area and began to chant.
The meeting, scheduled to continue through Tuesday, will feature "[exceptional] speakers like FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and political commentator George Will," the ABA's site announced.
"All we wanted to do was deliver a letter to the Wall Street bankers to let them know how much they've hurt our communities - and what they need to do to clean up their act," the SEIU's blog declared. "They wouldn't listen to us. They kicked us out. But the bad news for them is that we'll be back.
Instead of delivering a letter, they shouted their message. "Bust up big banks!" activists chanted. When police confronted a senior who was damning the ABA over a loudspeaker, the crowd shifted into cries of "Shame on you! Shame on you!"
When police finally got around to pushing them out, cheers of "We'll be back" shook the hotel's lobby.
"Our demand is simple: stop taking our tax dollars and squandering them away on billion dollar bonuses and massive lobbying campaigns against financial reform," the SEIU said.
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Here's a protest. everyone overdraw your checking account as much as possible by the end of the week. Float a check, direct deposit advance, pull out against your overdraft protection. I figure many of us are good for $1000 to 5000 dollars.
Now here's the trick: Don't pay it back! It will be like a run on the banks but you are taking out their money, not yours.
You think that's unethical? What did they just do to tax payers?
...........I think your idea is great! Hope you don't get swatted down by the mods, tho. If I had a checking account, 'credit' card or any of the above, I would do it immediately! We liberals have to STOP with Mr/Ms. Niceperson! We need experts in the related fields to advise us of ways unthought of before, to get revenge on ALL who have ripped us off!
is the drop date and we’re going to need a million more police on the street to control the unrest that’s coming. Keep public arteries clean of riffraff and to prevent any impediment to trade or commerce.
We should fire all the bankers.
Start from scratch. I am convinced the current crop is over ripe and spoiled.
It's almost all executives of small and medium-sized banks that attend these things.
Misplaced anger on the part of the protestors.
We needed attendance of the Billionaires for WealthCare to put in another performance.
I am thinking of the tune they could have done.
Politics Chicago Style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HWa9asBxw8
That was funny...I miss that show.
I miss cheesecake.
watch that movie again to get a clear sense of what’s coming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_%28film%29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN97tmw6qvY
Put 5% to 10% of your holdings into real money and peace of mind is yours. "Sleep tonic".
Freddie Mac's CFO's pay package sends the wrong message
FHLMC's new CFO, basically a government employee, gets a $2 million signing bonus on top of a $1.6 million annual salary.
SEIU/ACORN protestors should be out in front of the FHLMC building in DC instead of the benign ABA Conference yelling at the operations officer from the First National Bank of Dixon, IL.
heh..."benign"...yes...it wasn't their fault...the bankers were mere tools in the hands of the Svengali of big government.
I've been to more of these things that I want to remember, and there aren't a whole lot of Wall Street guys that show up unless they're asked to speak. The only thing most of the guys in attendance at that conference have to do with the bonuses at the big banks is the same thing the protesters have.....jealousy.
Oh..can you top this. I've worked in financial services and banking for 30 years. I've been to quite a few of these AND others. Don't make it sound like there are no senior people. WRONG. The ABA meeting is a big deal.
And as far as your Wall Street type comment. Duuuuh...investment banks were bailed out. They are now de facto commercial banks.
Nice try, though.
of CITI, JPMorgan, BofA...they're not going to be there and neither are the guys making the big bonuses. Not unless they are scheduled to deliver a speech and then they're in and out for it, L&P. Go look up an attendees list on the internet.
Do you know the difference between Citibank and the First National Bank of Dixon, IL and which one is likely to have have it's employees getting bigger bonuses?
yeah...i'm going to put the location of the CEOs of the biggest banks on the internet.
I guess you can find their travel and hotel arrangements too.
I'm just saying the guys that the SEIU/ACORN protesters are angry at are not at that conference. Nor are the guys on Wall Street who make the decisions to pay out the huge bonuses.
And I'm saying that you're whole premise is a dodge to deflect criticism away from those that created this problem.
Please...i don't want to give you a lesson in this. The investment banks wrote this shit...yes...but the BANKERS bought it...bought the bundles...leveraged their balance sheets against them...and then lent the money out.
They also screwed up the valuations on the loans, didn't do their homework on the borrowers they lent too...etc...etc....etc.
"Hundreds of union members and organizers descended on the streets of downtown Chicago on Monday morning to picket the offices of Goldman Sachs Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co."
Both fair targets
"Around noon, the group boarded a fleet of yellow school buses that took them to the American Bankers Association convention.
At the convention, speeches by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair and Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan weren't disrupted by the protests amid tight security"
They weren't going after the community bankers but the FDIC person and currency comptroller - from how I read it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1256581758424...
From the article:
But would you reprint this for me and show it to Liberal and Proud, please? I think it's pretty much exactly what I said on my very first post and what he seems bound and determined to argue against me for.
In the Jurassic Park books and movies the character of Ian Malcolm had an interesting thought while he predicted chaos for that adventure:
“You spent so much time trying to figure out if you could, you never stopped once to consider if you should.”
That is the same problem with these bankers. For the most part, what they did was not technically illegal (some was, but not most). They were given free rein to “experiment” in profit making using speculation, gambling, made up assets, etc., when the regulations constraining these machinations were removed. Once free to make a buck, they did what they do – made a buck. It was not their concern that the ultimate consequences of their actions was chaos; they had/have a single criteria for determining success – money. If they make money, they are successful.
The chaos that ensued would have been easily predicted by the fictional Ian.
Is it the bankers’ fault that the US financial markets melted down by their actions? Yes. Had they not pursued profit with such reckless abandon, others would have – because they could. Had they not used the rigged system to make their mega-bucks, they would have just made big-bucks. But with everyone playing the same game, knowing the rules were faulty, they marched the entire financial system over the cliff – en-mass… AGAIN.
Is it their fault? Yes. Would any of them do it again? Yes – every last one of them, because they could… and that is a problem.
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
We think we know why we do it. But we never ask what what we do does. (paraphrase)
"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
I'm amazed (well not really) that all these bankers aren't locked up where criminals like them belong.
.........when I recently closed my checking account, I told the bank person that----at the very least----they could have used some grease when they screwed me!
I've since opened a credit union account and sleep much better at night.
http://wallstreetexaminer.com/forums/uploads/...
Too funny not to share:
******
Rush will surely be the center of gravity for something or another. . .
lol
And we all know how astute Bill Kristol is.
Ass toot?
Exactly.
You know that nothing is going to change the policies of these bankers -- all the protests in the world will have no affect.
They need to feel something personal.
These bankers need to have protests outside their homes, so they can start to feel the pressure. Once they hear angry mobs of people right outside their door they will begin to understand that the villagers are pissed, and that they are on the radar.
Too bad all the fools who brought their guns and anger to aren't involved with this!
Village of Winnetka police were called to the residence of Harwitz E. Green.
Mr. Green said that trespassers were chanting and singing in his back yard.
Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Two squirrels were said to have fallen from chestnut trees during the melee and were taken to a nearby animal hospital for treatment.
We'll be back after these messages.
the real cause of all of this decline is capitalism
look at the system not the individual
capitalism must self destruct
few understand why, very few
reagan put capitalism on steroids, how did that work out for the middle class?
he knew what he was doing as he hated unions as ge does
he was a ge mouth piece
covering the story with their stages set up? where was Armey?
We let it happen by letting the crooks run the till
http://rawstory.com/2009/10/irs-unit-target-s...
and those companies were stablished in tax heavens well before Obama entered politics.
How can we take your blog whoring seriously, if you have to resort to such a intellectually dishonest name for it?
boosh bailed out the banks with no strings attached
Obama bailed out Detroit with strings attached
And reichwingers complained because it save jobs and had strings attached.
Bonuses for BMW executives will be linked to floor workers.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/...
Hopefully this will catch on. I know I'm dreaming.
Good post " She " , that is a shocker isn't it ? Good for BMW !
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