- Join the France 24 community here
- Log in
Latest update: 07/10/2011
- demonstrations - financial crisis - New York - USA - Wall Street
Wall Street protests spread across US
US President Barack Obama has acknowledged the frustration and anger aimed at the country's financial system as protests against corporate greed and rising inequalities spread to more than a dozen cities across the US.
By News Wires (text)
REUTERS - Protests against the U.S. financial system and economic inequality spread across America on Thursday and found unlikely sympathy from a top official of one of the main targets of scorn—the Federal Reserve.
The Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York last month with a few people expanded to protests in more than a dozen cities.
They included Tampa, Florida; Trenton and Jersey City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Norfolk, Virginia, in the East; Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest; Houston, San Antonio and Austin in Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; and Portland, Oregon, Seattle and Los Angeles in the West.
Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher surprised a business group in Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursday when he said, "I am somewhat sympathetic—that will shock you."
The Fed played a key role in one of the protest targets, the 2008 Wall Street bailout that critics say let banks enjoy huge profits while average Americans suffered high unemployment and job insecurity.
"We have too many people out of work," Fisher said. "We have a very uneven distribution of income. We have too many people out of work for too long. We have a very frustrated people, and I can understand their frustration."
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden also acknowledged the frustration and anger of the protesters on Thursday.
"People are frustrated and, you know, the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works," Obama said at a news conference in Washington.
Biden, speaking at the Washington Ideas Forum, likened the protest movement to the Tea Party, which sprang to life in 2009 after Obama’s election and has become a powerful conservative grass-roots force helping elect dozens of Republicans to office.
"The American people do not think the system is fair," Biden said.
'Fed up'
With support from unions boosting the protesters’ ranks, organizers predicted the momentum would build across the country.
"This is the beginning," said John Preston in Philadelphia, business manager for Teamsters Local 929. "Teamsters will support the movement city to city."
In Philadelphia, up to 1,000 protesters chanted and waved placards reading: "I did not think ‘By the People, For the People’ meant 1 percent," a reference to their argument the country’s top few have too much wealth and political power.
In Los Angeles, more than 100 protesters crowded outside a Bank of America branch downtown, while a smaller group dressed in business attire slipped inside and pitched a tent. Eleven were arrested when they refused to remove the tent.
In Washington, protesters carried signs that read: "Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed" and "Stop the War on Workers."
"I believe the American dream is truly in jeopardy," said protester Darrell Bouldin, 25, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. "There are so many people like me in Tennessee who are fed up with the Wall Street gangsters."
On Wednesday, about 5,000 people marched on New York’s financial district, the biggest rally so far, swelled by nurses, transit workers and other union members. Dozens of people were arrested and police used pepper spray on some protesters.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he understood the anger being felt by the protesters but had to balance that with the economic importance of Wall Street to the state. Wall Street is the pillar of the New York state economy, making up 13 percent of tax contributions.
The head of General Electric Co finance arm, Michael Neal, said he was sympathetic to the cause.
"People are really angry, and I get it. If I were unemployed now, I’d be really angry too," Neal told Reuters in Columbus, Ohio, after a GE event.


























Comments (5)
The Establishemnt ( the 1
The Establishemnt ( the 1 percent) has always taken advantage of the majority( the 99 percetn) simply because they believe they are smarter,more deserving and better than the majority.They have always used force, deception theft,fraud and aggression to gain wealth and power, all over the world. What is new this time is that they became so overtly greedy ,that their greed became blatent and obvious to the majority.We are only seeing the beginning of protests and the protests will become more violent in RESPONSE to violence ,FIRST initated,by the Establishemnt via their proxies ,the police and military.
I expect MARSHAL law to be their next stategy to dissuade the protests, which wil only lead to the overt collapse of the American and possibly the world Economic system.
MAYBE that is what we need in order to get rid of the 1 percent....after all they live for MONEY and POWER
Occupy US
Has anyone ever done a study on how CEO's (and top management) average income has increased over the past decades in comparison with the rest of the jobs? It would be very interesting to see the discrepancy in percent % / per year (at the expense of many others)...
From Occupy Tacoma
See, "Lifting the Veil: Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy {Full Film}", available on youtube.
Regaining Our Republic: Phase I
Big business is sustaining its ever increasing profit margins at the expense of the American people, particularly the unemployed. Big business always operates at an optimum profit level, so they can always increase their workforces, among many other options, at a relatively small cost to their profits; yet whenever this option is put forth, they exaggerate this as if it would destroy their corporation; that is a corporate propaganda lie. They could also stop, “outsourcing”, which they began extensively in the 70s as a means of “disciplining” labor [1], and correct unemployment over night.
Instead, big business has decided to forsake the people that permit them to operate in the, “Republic”, and are, via the state, business partners, in order to further enrich their own gargantuan mountains of loot and, more irresponsibly, keep people, “their labor”, or what they refer to openly as their, “human resources”, cheap, plentiful, desperate, and, above all, obedient. Big business hasn’t been, “unable”, to hire because of the economy that they tanked [2] or because it would cost too much, when they can actually afford it quite easily; they don’t want to hire people for many reasons to include the facts that they are just that greedy and, at their own peril, couldn’t care less about people [3].
Don’t be fooled by their propaganda, to include the posts made by their imps, drones, wannabes, etc. They all have political, philosophical and vested interests in keeping this diseased version of, “Capitalism”, continuing to oppress and exploit the people of the world, which Adam Smith [4], were he alive today, would find wholly despicable.
The first and most egregious sin of big business is the rampant Corporatism [5], if not out-right Fascism [6], that they’ve nurtured for well over a century to make a flailing, dull-witted corporate minion out of the First American, “Republic”. How? Big business and big money, select, support and heavily fund the only two candidates in any election that the people perceive to be electable and, in so doing, they control those candidates. See, “The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy”, by Professor Noam Chomsky [7] under articles on his website at Chomsky dot info, for more specific information, to include references and sources, of which the good Professor is well known, aside from being a highly respected intellectual and Professor of Linguistics at MIT.
In affect, a vote for either a Republican or a Democrat is the same as voting for big business/money against you as a private citizen of this country. Voting for a Democrat, for example, as I did with President Obama, may yield some social justice in the form of human rights, etc., but, in the end, even a Democratic President isn’t immune to Corporatism and will, as the President and other Democrats have, fold when the interests of the people conflict with the interests of big business/money. Indeed, throughout this crisis, although President Obama is supposedly a Liberal Democrat, the vast majority of what he has done and supported, to include who he selected in his cabinet etc., has further enriched big business/money and done practically nothing for the people of this country in this financial crisis that they didn’t cause and also decimated state/federal programs, all for the benefit of big business/money at the expense of the devastated people.
What’s the alternative? Big business and big money has made voting for any Independent, whatever their political views, all but pointless. How? By throwing monumental amounts of corporate and wealthy contributors’ money only at those two parties, this provides an overwhelming advantage in resources that has consistently squashed nearly every single Independent candidate. Indeed, so virulent is the GOP in this regard that a new “party” has arisen to be even more extremely in favor of big business/money, called the, “Tea Party”.
What can be done? Just voting for some Independent will get you nowhere while most people still believe, and with good reason, that they’re wasting their vote and indirectly electing the other party’s candidate. In order to really counter the above Corporatism that has almost destroyed the Republic, the people must do three things just to get started.
First, the people must lobby to strip corporations from their absurd legal status of, “persons” (See, “Corporate Personhood”, via Wikipedia). Secondly, the people must also lobby to make it illegal for any, “entity”, like corporations, that are not simply living breathing individual human beings as citizens to influence the government in any way whatsoever, to include lobbying and especially political contributions; thus only people can donate their own private funds to political campaigns, and not, for example, corporations. Thirdly, there should be an absolute maximum amount of money that any candidate can accept for use in a campaign, with any additional funds being returned to, or not used by those candidates; this maximum should be relatively tiny in comparison to the massive amounts of capital used for the two “main” parties; it is estimated that it will cost for the 2012 Presidential election, will be over $2,000,000,000, but of course, only for the Democrat and Republican candidates. Shear money can not be permitted to control the Republic, which was made by the people and for the people not to pander to the highest bidders, especially when they aren’t even real people, but entities run by people that are oppressing, exploiting everybody but their own.
- "Julie Labrouste" (me)
[1] See, "Capitalism Hits the Fan", which is on youtube, by Professor of Economics, Richard Wolff, PhD for more comprehensive information, which is backed by hard facts gathered by the government, and available for all to see; Prof. Wolff is a very highly respected and regarded Economist and doesn't start his talk until after the 7 minute introduction. For a less detailed, but shorter and a bit more entertaining version, see the RSA Animation of, “Crises of Capitalism”, by Professor of Economics, David Harvey, which is also on youtube.
[2] See the FCIC and Levin-Coburn reports on the financial crisis. Both of these completely refute the corporate propaganda that immediately claimed that this crisis was the result of a “perfect storm” to moment that the crisis was made public knowledge. Both reports also place the vast majority of blame for the crisis on the financial sectors of big business, and the, “regulators”, that they controlled through transparent conflicts of interest. I submit also that big business in general also facilitated this crisis by using their vast wealth and power the above-described Corporatism to coerce the state into crippling the regulations created by FDR to protect the people of this nation from precisely what happened.
[3] “Corporations were given the rights of immortal persons. But then special kinds of persons, persons who had no moral conscience. These are a special kind of persons, which are designed by law, to be concerned only for their stockholders. And not, say, what are sometimes called their stakeholders, like the community or the work force or whatever.”
- Noam Chomsky
[4] Adam Smith (baptized 16 June 1723 – died 17 July 1790 [OS: 5 June 1723 – 17 July 1790]) was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. His theories on Capitalism, which are often sighted by scholars and supporters of big business, are considered virtually sacrosanct, but whose warnings of the horrific social consequences associated with the abuses of Capitalism have been almost completely ignored. Much, if not all, of what has happened with regard to the current social consequences of this financial crisis were heralded by Adam Smith over 200 years ago.
[5] Corporatism can have different meanings depending upon who you’re talking to at the time. In this context, it means the use of corporate funds to heavily influence the government away from its primary charge, which is to serve the people, not corporations.
[6] “Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.”
“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’ People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”
“(People should have the) right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation (and the) right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation”.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
[7] Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) of in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.
GE sympathetic
Michael Neal's sympathies are hypocrisy at its best. GE pays very little if no taxes. Let them begin to pony up their share and then he can talk about how much he sympathizes with the protesters.
wall street protests
I agree with the protesters. Fed up with Wall street gangsters. All governements think of their own interests, those of financial markets and of banks. Wealth among people is becoming more and more unequal and the number of poor people is increasing more and more year after year. The worst, it's I am pessimistic about the futur of my children.
Post new comment