The Movement Against the Banks - Real Grassroots vs Wall Street

A massive rally in Chicago next week aims to express public displeasure with the massive bank bailout outside the American Bank Association annual meeting. Protesters will converge at 11:30 on Monday, October 26, at 301 North Water Street, where the meeting is taking place.

"The same financial institutions that caused the economic crisis and took billions in taxpayer bailouts are back to earning incredible profits," rally organizers—including Public Citizen, the AFL-CIO, and Change to Win—declare. "Meanwhile, Americans face shrinking pensions, rising foreclosures and unemployment, state budget cuts, predatory lending, outrageous overdraft fees, and sky-high credit card interest rates."

Protesters will demand oversight and accountability and reforms that would rein in the banks. It is an important moment, since Congress takes up regulatory legislation, including the idea of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, this month.

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The site calls for criminal penalties for the bankers: "On the one-year anniversary of the Banksters blowing a hole in the global economy, no employee of a major American bank or financial institution is behind bars," Bankster points out. "Compare this to what happened after the Savings and Loan heist almost 20 years ago. No less than 1,852 S&L officials were prosecuted and 1,072 were jailed. Over 500 CEOs and top officers were indicted. What is going on here? Don't we believe in holding people accountable anymore? Tell the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI to get cracking!"

Among the other citizens' groups featured on the site are the "10 percent is enough" campaign that brings together leaders from all the major world religions to oppose usurious interest rates on moral grounds.

And just in time for Halloween, the anti-death-bonds campaign focuses on an issue Michael Moore brought to light in his new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story": employers and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs taking out life insurance policies on working people and naming themselves the beneficiaries, so they can benefit from your death.

All of these issues should galvanize public opposition to the banks' control of their own regulators in Washington. As Bankster puts it, "If you want to rein in the Banksters and if you think America deserves better than a ‘boom and bail’ economy, you need to muscle up and weigh in." Only engaged citizens can stop the banks.

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