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The treasury’s bailout plan is facing headwind from both Congress and voters. Public backlash spilled into the streets on Thursday as protesters rallied against the proposal to use tax dollars to bailout Wall Street. Hundreds gathered near the New York Stock Exchange to voice their frustrations. CNNMONEY.com and NYMAG.com were on the scene of the demonstration.
Story Transcript
Bailout plan sparks anger
JESSE FREESTON (VOICEOVER), TRNN: The US government’s proposed bailout of Wall Street provoked a national day of protests on Thursday. Dubbed “cash for trash” by skeptics, the proposal to hand over $700 billion to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has angered Americans from across the political spectrum. Truemajority.org said its members organized over 251 events in more than 41 states to protest the bailout. The largest gathering took place in New York City, where several hundred protesters yelled enthusiastic support as union leaders decried the bailout.
Courtesy: nymag.com
PROTESTER: Bush and Paulson are taking our hard-earned tax dollars to buy useless junk financial instruments from Wall Street, right, that have no value. They’re just going to assign an arbitrary value on it just to infuse a lot of cash into the pockets of the people that got us into this mess. So people are bringing their junk, and they’re putting an arbitrary value on it, just like the Wall Street bankers are, and saying, “Bail me out too.”
PROTESTER: I think that’s just taking advantage of a crisis in order to frighten the American people into submission.
PROTESTER: This is money that we could use for health care, we could use for education, we could use for housing, and we could use it even to create jobs and stimulate the economy that way. But instead we’re going to buy all these bad assets from these banks. Maybe we do need to have some sort of bailout, but it really has to have really strong regulations. It has to have some sort of taxpayer ownership in the companies. We need to get some of the profits back once they start being profitable again.
DISCLAIMER:
Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
