The Battle with the Banks is On: Protests and Pitchforks

[marmar]

Published on Saturday, April 11, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
The Battle with the Banks is On: Protests and Pitchforks
As New Bank Bailouts Seem Likely, There Is More to Speak Out Against

by Danny Schechter


There's phrase that's worked its way into the Japanese language: "Lehman Shokku" - translated as Lehman Shock. It refers to what happened to 460,000 people after Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner let the global Lehman Investment Bank collapse. A former Lehman executive told me over Matzoh at a Passover seder that she believes the decision reflected a competitive conflict and ego battle between the former Goldman Sachs chief turned Treasury Secretary and the bullheaded CEO of Lehman.

The clash of two power-crats in New York triggered a hard rain across the world.

Bloomberg reports on a forty year old former bank employee, Miki, who "now sleeps in cardboard boxes under the elevated Hanshin expressway in Umeda, Osaka's central business district...as the global recession triggered by the implosion of Wall Street banks batters Japan. ... Miki's loss of housing shows how Japan's 2.95 million unemployed people threaten to fuel a rise in homelessness."

Bloomberg is doing more than reporting bad news; it is also suing the Federal Reserve Bank for information that the privately run "public institution" wants to hide. Bloomberg wants the FED to disclose securities the central bank is accepting on behalf of American taxpayers as collateral for $1.5 trillion of loans to banks. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/11-2