CHICAGO-Thousands of angry protestors marched the city streets and displayed effigies of the nation's leading bankers outside the American Bankers Association's annual convention to protest the billions of dollars in taxpayer funds going to the banking bailout.
ABA officials claimed inside the annual gathering for hundreds of bankers that investment firms - not banks - are to blame for the financial meltdown. "The financial crisis is unfortunately often referred to as a banking crisis," said Edward Yingling, president of the ABA, who asserted during opening remarks that large financial failures such as AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not banks. "You did not make any abusive subprime loans; you did not take big bonuses for products that later blew up," he told the bankers.
The group, most of whom were brought in by the Service Employees International Union and community group National Peoples Action, assailed the bankers' opposition to the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, restrictions on credit card abuses, and efforts to rein in subprime mortgages and overdraft protection charges.
