Let's tell Wall Street: We want our money back - Rochelle Riley, pissed off DFP columnist

[Bozita]

POSTED: 7:28 P.M. OCT. 21, 2009 | UPDATED: 7:47 P.M. TODAY

Let's tell Wall Street: We want our money back
BY ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST


Don’t give up.

Don’t think your voice doesn’t matter.

Momentum is building.

When I complained about wanting my money back from Wall Street fiends who would bankrupt America to accept multi-million-dollar bonuses and who would live lavishly while some Americans starve on the streets, the outpouring was immediate. You asked: Where can I sign up?

Well, I can tell you. At the bottom of this column, you will find a form that each of us can fill in and cut and paste into an e-mail to our congressional representatives’ offices. You can find their contact information by entering your zip code at http://www.congress.org/
congressorg/directory/congdir.tt.

If you don’t get a response from a real person, keep sending it until you do. Make sure they hear you.

Reminder: You work for us

Continuing criticism is sweeping the nation. So we have an historic moment here to remind our elected officials that we elected them and that they work for us.

Even President Barack Obama, who needs Wall Street for political reasons and has hired from Wall Street for staff positions, is stepping up. Tuesday evening, he attended a series of soirees in New York to benefit the Democratic Party to the tune of about $3 million. But he didn’t ignore the scandal. He didn’t pretend that Americans aren’t angry. He told folks who had paid $30,400 a couple to see him that they should help him enact financial reforms.

We “know we should never again have to face potential calamity because of reckless speculation and deceptive practices and short sightedness and self-interestedness from a few,” the president said. “So if there are members of the financial industry in the audience today, I would ask that you join us in passing what are necessary reforms. Don’t fight them.”

And this afternoon, the Associated Press reported that the Obama administration plans to order companies that received huge government bailouts last year to make sharp cuts in the pay of their top executives. The seven companies that got the most money would see their highest-paid exec salaries cut by an average of about 90% from last year.

But that's not enough.

more...
http://www.freep.com/article/20091021/COL10/91021077/1320/Let-s-tell-Wall-Street--We-want-our-money-back