The Americans are angry

NEW YORK, (AFP) - - An angry US public and Congress demanded to snip the rip cord on golden parachutes used by fat cat CEOs to escape Wall Street's mayhem.... Their push caught the mood of a nation sickened at watching the titans of finance walk away from Wall Street disasters not only unscathed, but enriched.... Those gigantic pay checks, bonuses, and Midas-like farewells encapsulate what the public sees as Wall Street's greed-is-good philosophy.... Public anger at such figures underlies skepticism about the entire government rescue. "We'll never see that money again," said Mathew May, a 24-year-old economics student who skipped lectures to attend a small demonstration at the iconic bronze bull statue near the New York Stock Exchange. "They deregulated the markets and ran wild. Now we're bailing them out." Arun Gupta, an editor of alternative New York newspaper The Indypendent, said there was "socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us." "Think about it," he wrote in an email that quickly circulated to thousands of activists and appeared on several websites. "They said providing healthcare for nine million children, perhaps costing six billion dollars a year, was too expensive, but there's evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs." But left-wingers are not the only ones speaking out. Newt Gingrich, the fiercely conservative former speaker in the House of Representatives, wrote in the National Review that the bailouts, likely to top a trillion dollars, smack of "crony capitalism." "Doesn't that mean that we're using the taxpayers' money to hire people to save their friends with even more taxpayer money?" he asked. Forbes, the magazine for and about the rich, also says enough is enough.... " One worker in the New York finance sector, who asked not to be named, told AFP that his colleagues are as angry as the general public. "A lot of people are very upset that managers in their own companies and captains of industry in other areas made some really, really bad decisions," he said. "The most insulting thing is the golden parachutes where these jackals from Fannie and Freddie, having destroyed the company, walked away with millions ... It all comes down to greed." The above are just samples of angry comments by Americans at the greedy fat pigs that threw the American financial sector into disarray.