Europe's Politicians Side with the Protesters

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,792199,00.html

The numbers were far from overwhelming. Some 20,000 people on the streets of Lisbon, around 10,000 in front of the Reichstag in Berlin, a few thousand each in London's banking district and in Rome's city center. Five-thousand rallied in front of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

Taken together, though, the hundreds of anti-bank protests held in over 80 countries around the world on Saturday -- an outgrowth of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States -- have been difficult to ignore. And an increasing number of politicians have launched efforts to tap into the anti-bank anger.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, vowed in a Sunday evening television interview that he was taking the protests "very seriously" and said that banks need to submit to "clear controls and transparency for all parts of the banking business."

On the eve of the protests, center-left Social Democrat leader Sigmar Gabriel told SPIEGEL that "we have to force the banks back into their role as servants to the real economy. The correct move would be to split investment banking off from commercial banking. Every mid-sized company which needs a loan will soon run into difficulties because banks are threatened with bankruptcy as a result of bad bets on the investment banking side."

November 5th., they will feel the pain.

xchrom

In Europe, politicans KNOW what wil happend when Peopole Power get into action. This is a continent, who over the last 250 year have experienced what wil happend, when polticans dosen't listen to their subjects.. Rembember, it is just 20 year sinse last time Europe was trowing their leaders down the steps of the halls of power, to elect others who was more listning to everyones wishes...

In US, the Powers to be, are pretty safe, as long as they are able to play one group on eaths other.. But they wil experience, when the groups deside to stand togheter, that the other side is bigger than them... As they allways do, when they dosen't reform their ways..

Diclotican

if they dont listen to the people the people will revolt, protest, strike, hell even push the country to go communist

reggie the dog

If you dosent listen, you can end up in the front of a firing suqad (as in Romania in 1989). Or just trown out of power... They usaly is able to hold into a minor post in some provintional town long away from the grand halls of power.

And even tho the communist partys of old are not what they once was, they are still verry clearly parties who you can reconize as organizated parties.. And if everything else goes to hell, it can end up in a communist overtake again.. It have happened before, it can happend again..

And that is maybe one of the reasons, politicans in Europe IS afraid of the rest of the peopole, becouse they KNOW we can revolt..

Diclotican