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AFL-CIO Plans Nationwide Protests Against Big Banks
From today through March 26th, the AFL-CIO is "taking our fight for good jobs now to the biggest Wall Street banks whose reckless greed has gone a long way to wreck the U.S. economy and kill American jobs," as a blog post on the labor group's Web site puts it.
The group will hold rallies at branches of Bank of America, Chase, Citigroup, Wachovia-Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley around the country. It says it has planned more than 200 events in all 50 states. Three such events were listed within 100 miles of New York City, in Jersey City, NJ, Philadelphia, PA and Hartford, CT.
The AFL-CIO is pushing for fees on Wall Street banks to repay taxpayers for the bank bailouts, a tax on Wall Street bonuses, and "a tax on the income of hedge fund and private equity managers, the wealthiest people in the country, at ordinary income rates, by closing the carried interest loophole and a financial speculation."
A proposal for a transaction tax on securities trading, which the AFL-CIO backs, has been opposed by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.
Protesters are sending the message that "it's time to create good jobs now and the big Wall Street banks that destroyed jobs should pay to restore them," AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said in a statement. He added that "while millions of Americans continue to lose their homes, their jobs and their retirement saving, it's been business as usual for Wall Street doling out record pay and bonuses to their CEOs."
On CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday, author Michael Lewis said "Wall Street organized itself so people were paid to see something other than the truth." (Watch the first part above.)
"They insured tens of billions of dollars of subprime mortgage loans without even knowing they were doing it," Lewis said of insurance company AIG. "Goldman Sachs persuaded them to insure these piles of loans without them ever investigating what was in the pile. So, there's an additional level of incompetence. They didn't even know the mistake they were making."
The government eventually stepped in to pay AIG's debts and Goldman was the biggest beneficiary, making out with nearly $13 billion in taxpayer money in the deal.
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Brian Montopoli Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
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