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Thursday, October 20, 2011

The Occupy Wall Street Activists & Grassroots Tea Party Activists Have a Lot in Common

What has become clearly obvious is that much unites the concerns of the Tea Party leaning Americans and Americans of the Occupy Wall Street protest- many of their individual concerns are in many ways shared.

Both Groups are vastly unhappy and uncomfortable with corporations and ineffective and hidebound congressional members in this our time of our ongoing economic and jobs crisis. Change is demanded.

The one and only Independent Member of Congress, the Honorable Bernie Sanders has succinctly listed Six Demands to be made of Wall Street and they are worthy of our attention:

  1. If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist,
  2. Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury,
  3. The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks,
  4. Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices,
  5. Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives,
  6. Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures.
More from Sanders statement:
"Making these reforms will not be easy. After all, Wall Street is clearly the most powerful lobbying force on Capitol Hill. From 1998 through 2008, the financial sector spent over $5 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions to deregulate Wall Street. More recently, they spent hundreds of millions more to make the Dodd-Frank bill as weak as possible, and after its passage, hundreds of millions more to roll back or diluter the stronger provisions in that legislation."
Sanders Summary of the Wall Street Debacle:
"Let us never forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, and life savings as the middle class underwent an unprecedented collapse. Sadly, despite all the suffering caused by Wall Street, there is no reason to believe that the major financial institutions have changed their ways, or that future financial disasters and bailouts will not happen again.

"More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis."
There is more in these 6 REFORM PROPOSALS that unite both genuine grassroots, independent Tea Partiers - and those now thousands of The Silent Majority who are intent on seeing real changes, and very soon.

Did you get that? THERE IS MORE THAT UNITES THAN DIVIDES PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE BACK AMERICA TO A CORE SET OF VALUES AND AN HONEST GOVERNMENT - overseeing and enforcing honest and business/finance practices which once again will carry us forward.


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