People gathered at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in DC yesterday to protest a meeting of the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR), a lobbying group of the US’s top financial institutions. Protestors staged a mock trial of the FSR to try them for their criminal use of taxpayer’s TARP money from last year’s bailout to enrich themselves instead of putting money back into the economy to help end the recession.
The Financial Services Roundtable is a group of 90 companies in the finance and insurance industry who received an estimated $213.8 billion in taxpayer funds as a part of the bail-out. The FSR spent $43.9 million on lobbying from 2000-2008. They have lobbied Congress to:
- oppose accountability for TARP recipients
- oppose solutions to the housing crisis
- oppose basic consumer protections
- oppose the Employee Free Choice Act
Thursday’s protest and mock trial was organized by National JwJ, DC JwJ, and SEIU and included participants from the Teamsters, AFSCME, CWA, Americans for Financial Reform, and other union and community groups.
The protest was one of the first to kick of JwJ’s Week of Action to Demand a Real Economic Recovery. Events are planned in more than 20 cities this week to condemn the “corporate criminals” at Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo and to demand jobs, homes, health care, and a new economy that works for everyone.
