Press TV
Independent presidential contender Ralph Nader criticizing the USD 700b bailout, demands a new tax against Wall Street financial institutions. “Make Wall Street pay for its own bailout, by implementing a securities speculation tax, starting with derivatives,” Nader told a crowd of several hundred in front of the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan.
He said America’s high-flying financial wizards were guilty of “high economic crimes” which have led to the complete unraveling of the US financial system. A bailout tax, he said, “would have the additional benefit of deterring some of the worst excesses of casino-capitalism”. Nader, 74, who rose to fame in the 1960s as the guiding genius behind ‘Nader’s Raiders’ and the consumer protection movement the largely student volunteer group created to the chagrin of corporate America , also had harsh words for the two main White House contenders — Democratic hopeful Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain.
“Senator Obama and Senator McCain, willingly or unwillingly, are puppets of corporate power,” Nader said. He also called for federal action to protect millions of cash-strapped Americans at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure, and faulted Obama and McCain for caring more about their own political fortunes than about Americans’ economic travails. The consumer rights activist, who has challenged the two major parties’ dominance of the US political scene, is making his fifth bid for the White House. He ran for the White House as a Green Party candidate in 1996 and 2000 and as an independent in 1992 and 2004.
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