This is one of the posters being distributed by A New Way Forward, an organization calling for a national day of protest against CEO and Bank Bailouts on April 11th. Their website will help you discover what is happening in your area. Go out into the streets with your pitchforks and rolling pins!
I chose this poster, designed by Eva Chrysanthe, because it’s so rare to see a female figure in the Investment Banking Bailout scandal. Her No and Section 382 refers to a tax law that was illegally overthrown last year by then-Treasurer Paulson, in a memo providing a tax windfall for his banking buddies who were already getting $700 billion from TARP.
If women educated themselves about the Wall Street Meltdown and the finance culture of male one-up-manship, we might get the structural reform on Wall Street and in Washington we so badly need. Without women’s voices pressing for big change, Obama won’t have what he needs to accomplish it.
A recent Bill Moyer interview, which I very much recommend, presented a lawyer-banking regulator who worked on the Savings and Loan debacle back in the 80s, William K. Black. Black said the nation needs a high-profile Congressional Investigation, as happened after the Great Depression–ideally one headed by an elected woman, he added.
Another recent radio interview of the author of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, William Cohan, asked this former Bears and Stearn investment banker, Did he think this would have happened if some intelligent women had been part of their management team? (I missed the male interviewer’s name, but loved his asking.) Cohan laughed and answered the culture was definitely one of Alpha males gone wild.
What if a million women asked the Fed and the Treasury and all their Wall Street game-playing line-men–what on earth were you thinking? Get real!