The Big Banks crashed our economy, destroying jobs, foreclosing on millions of homes and wrecking cities and states budgets across the country.
After trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, Wall Street is now making billions in profits and giving away record bonuses to CEOs – not a single one of whom has ever been prosecuted or held accountable for the economic crimes they committed.
From Bed-Stuy to the Bronx, our communities are hurting. Here in New York City, tens of thousands have lost their homes and their jobs.
Now, Billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg is proposing devastating budget cuts as the only solution to the economic crisis that Wall Street caused. Thousands of teachers could be laid off. Childcare and senior centers could be closed down while our homeless shelters are overwhelmed. All while our subways, schools, and parks decay.
At the same time, Mayor Bloomberg is pushing for more tax cuts for the wealthy and giving away billions to Wall Street in corporate welfare, bogus property tax exemptions, and sweetheart deals. Enough is enough.
- New York’s big banks must give up their subsidies and sweetheart deals – we’ve got to press “pause” on tax credits and other payments that might have made sense in the boom times but don’t make sense now.
- New York’s big banks must end the practices that hurt public finance – they must stop foreclosures and modify mortgages, they must pay back what they owed our county clerks but avoided through the MERS scams, they must unwind the toxic interest rate swaps that were promised to save government funds but ended up costing the taxpayers.
- New York’s big banks must take cuts to their multi-million dollar public contracts, just like government agencies and non-profit service groups are being asked to do.