The Economy

The “Occupy Wall Street” Protest Vents Anger that “A Few Prosper, Billions Suffer”

Christina Latta Henry |  | The Economy

“How do we pick ourselves up when Wall St.’s stealing our bootstraps?”

“We are not leaving. Not while the richest 1% own 75% of the USA’s wealth. “

These were some of the hand-written signs at the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration in front of and around the New York Stock Exchange as it entered its second week of daily protests. The stated mission of “Occupy Wall Street,”according to its website, is

“to flood into lower Manhattan, set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Like our brothers and sisters in Egypt, Greece, Spain and Iceland, we plan to use the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic of mass occupation to restore democracy in America.

“Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.” Continue reading →

Carper Amendment Passes, Gutting Financial Reform Bill

Christina Latta Henry |  | Current Events, Predatory Lending, The Economy

Congress will try to tell you that it is on the verge of passing major reform that will help consumers and avoid “too big to fail” and other sound bites that the public will think are important. What the press and Congress will fail to tell you is that yesterday they gutted any real reform for consumers in this bill by passing the Carper Amendment, allowing federal preemption of state consumer protection laws against federally insured banks.

I do not believe that one federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency would have more power than 50 attorneys general and private attorneys enforcing state consumer protection laws against banks. Washington state was only able to stop predatory lending practices against Ameriquest and Household Finance on behalf of state residents because those companies were not federally insured banks. If our Attorney General had been able to sue WAMU on behalf of Washington state citizens or other banks that were swindling their clients, perhaps there would not have been a financial meltdown that almost caused another great depression.

For more information, see these articles from the Huffington Post‘s Stacy Mitchell: