A week ago I hemmed and hawed about whether I should attend a Houston political protest about bank bailouts. Normally I never do these kinds of things (even though protests seems as natural to many progressives as going to church is for conservatives).
Here’s meeting info if you’re interested. Saturday at 1:00 PM.
Just for variety, I am going to attend…maybe to meet people, see what’s going on. Maybe I’ll even give a yell or two. Seriously, I will have no idea what to do. Maybe I’ll snap a photo and catch up on RSS feeds on my PDA. I don’t know.
Seriously, though, what impressed me about this protest was the well-written mission statement.
It’s not enough to patch up the current system. We need to restrict the ways that bankers can lobby and serve in the government. We need to prohibit compensation plans that encourages huge short-term risk. We have to break up any bank that’s "too big to fail" so that we can have a functional free market. We need serious reform that fixes the root causes in our political and economic system: excessive influence of banks, dangerous compensation systems, and massive consolidation that does nothing to serve the public interest. We must have an independent regulatory body that protects consumers against usury and predatory lending and shuts down any industry behavior that poses a systemic risk to our financial system.
By the way, on the same day (tomorrow) I’ll also be attending Freelancecamp, an all-day event at the Houston Technology Center.
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