Responding to an open call circulating in the city, some 300 protesters against the bailout plan gathered in New York’s financial district and marched to the New York Stock Exchange at Wall St. and Broad yesterday afternoon. The crowd was loud, diverse and fed up. Video coverage of the rally is part of today’s Democracy Now! The Indypendent has a live blog archive of the protest. Click on the picture below for more Indymedia photos.
Apparently, we weren’t the only people pissed off, either. TrueMajority.com is hosting a bulletin board for coordinating protests, with over 250 planned or carried out already, as covered her by CNN.
Being on the streets, there was a happy thrill to be back in force, in a protest taking over Wall Street for my first time since the J18 protest against the G8,* when a Reclaim the Streets protest flooded that intersection for nearly an hour. Of course, this time, our connection to most Americans was much more organic, as everyone from New York anarchists to Montana’s governor are raising big questions about this handover of government loans for junk securities.
What was strange, though, was to look so many Wall Street traders in the eyes. While many waded into the crowd to snap photos with their IPhones, others were visibly unnerved at the display of public opposition. And is the unfortunate nature of public protests we weren’t being the most articulate in our chants (see Tom Tomorrow from 1992 below), even if we were some times hillarious saying things like: “You break it, you bought it” and “You fucked up. Suck it up.” Above all, we needed to be loud and unequivocal in just the right physical space. Thankfully the media was the outlet for my desire to be articulate, and apparently for others desire if you listen to Democracy Now!
*Some of you may remember I worked on another more recent protest there, but I spent the morning working phones off-site.
Carwil without Borders 
Not many people know about this. I’ve never read this in any article or blog.I worked it out because I am in banking.
The reasons given for the coming massive inflation are by no means complete. My own view is that – whether the $700 Paulson Plan is passed or not – Mainstreet America is going to suffer badly any way you look at it. Here’s why.
Most articles which address the effects of the Paulson Bail-Out by talking directly about the Economic view, the Wall Street view, the Mainstreet view and the Government view. Funny that no-one ever talks about the Paulson Plan with regard to banking laws and banking mechanisms – The Banking Viewpoint. If people studied it from this aspect – they would fully realize the disgusting and perverse affects of The Paulson Plan.
Put simply, The Fed is a Bank – and therefore acts under the normal banking laws and banking mechanisms of the US. One of these legal mechanisms is called ‘Fractional Reserve Lending’(FRL). This mechanism allows any bank to multiply its direct cash holdings by 10 in order to lend out money as loans. Simple and legal. If you don’t beleive this then look up ‘Fractional Reserve Lending’ in Wikipedia.
So when The Fed – a bank – receives the $700 billion – they will simply multiply this amount by 10, so that it has now grown to $7 trillion. And when the Fed ‘lends’ this money to save other financial institutions – these banks can also multiply their amounts received by 10 using the FRL mechanism.
So, now the amount has grown to $70 trillion out of thin air.
My question to you is this – what will happen to the value of the dollar when this $70 trillion suddenly hits the Mainstreet American Economy ? And who will suffer the most ? You can also bet that Palson knows the answer to this, Bernanke knows this and Bush knows this…
It’s a Mainstreet massacre any way you look at it.
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