The title of a recently released Yahoo! article is "Bankers face protests in Chicago". Can we expect anything different with all the money that they're making and main street dealing with tens or even hundreds of thousands of job losses every week?

According to Edward Yingling, president of the American Bankers Association (ABA), speaking at an annual convention, "YOU DID NOT MAKE ANY ABUSIVE SUBPRIME LOANS(?); you did not TAKE BIG BONUSES FOR PRODUCTS THAT LATER BLEW UP". What? If bankers, property speculators and insurance companies aren't responsible for this financial mess, then who is? We must also note the name Yingling. He is WHITE, but "Yingling" sounds like a CHINESE name and as we know, Chinese officials are arguing that the financial crisis is over now because they (CHINA) are growing at 8%. Again, let's see China continue growing at the pumped up 8% economic growth rate that they are claiming IF ALL EXTERNAL OVERSEAS DEMAND IS REMOVED after we tell the international community aboust questionable Chinese manufacturing standards.

However, protesters gathered outside the conference venue with placards reading "Hold Banks Accountable" which no one has satisfactorily done yet. According to a statement by the Service Employees' International (China MUST learn the significance of this word and accept it) Union, a major labor group, "The big banks have heard loud and clear tonight that CONSUMERS ARE FED UP with them taking our money and using it to pay themselves OUTRAGEOUS PROFITS and lobby against financial reform". For anyone who needs an explanation, "fed up" = angry. We are angry that bankers are still living lavishly while we are still dealing with mass layoffs on main street and we are angry that we are getting misleading indicators about the recession from CERTAIN governments. The economy is what it is (bad) and no amount of manipulation of key indicators (e.g. pumping up the Hang Seng Index by approximately 379 points) can change this FACT.

Yingling told convention attendees that "I KNOW this makes you angry, AS IT SHOULD", but is he or any of his fellow banking cronies doing anything about this? Right now, it doesn't seem like they are. It's this familiar pattern of all talk and no concrete action.

Finally, President Obama released the following statement: "IT'S TIME for banks to fulfill their responsibility TO HELP ensure a wider recovery, a more secure system and more BROADLY SHARED PROSPERITY". OK, "It's time for banks" to do all this, but WILL THEY? They haven't yet. There will surely be resistance among Wall Street banks and bankers to the "broadly shared prosperity" idea because this simply isn't Wall Street culture.