Working-Class Protest $700 Billion Wall Street Welfare Program. Biggest Bank Failure in US History.

Today, people took to the streets to protest a proposed $700 Billion dollar bailout of the mortgage banking industry.

Congress still has not signed off on the bailout, despite threats from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen and later from President Bush, that failure to give a blank check this week would lead to a long recession. Neither Paulsen nor Bush seem very concerned with more than a million working-class people facing foreclosures and bankruptcies in the next year. Neither appears to be interested in reforming the system that created the panic. The Republican plan, in fact, calls for a two-year moratorium on capital gains taxes which would disproportionately help the rich.

In other news, today's demise of Washington Mutual (WaMu) was the largest bank failure in US history. JP Morgan Chase has bought WaMu's assets at a fire sale price while it is assumed that the people will absorb the mortgage banking losses. Rumors of additional corporate failures in the banking, insurance, and auto industries have been circulating the Internet for months.