When smalltown USA turned on 'Fraud Street'

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Americans have watched with horror as financial chaos has spread across the country, choking the economy and threatening to plunge the country into recession. Last week they turned their anger on the administration as it battled to put together a rescue package. Report by Paul Harris in Pennsylvania, Ruth Sunderland and Heather Stewart
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/28/wallstreet.useconomy


Demonstrators protest the proposed 700 USD billion Wall Street bail out at the bull stature near Bowling Green Park in the Financial District in New York. Photograph: Nicholas Roberts/AFP

It was the week when an angry Main Street finally fought back after a decade when the financial Masters of Wall Street were seemingly invincible. As President George Bush looked straight into the TV camera last week and spelled out to the nation the economic peril facing America, fury and fear were mounting in millions of homes.

'Without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic,' Bush warned. He sketched out a scenario of failing banks and plunging share prices that would savage retirement plans and put millions out of work. It was a terrifying scenario. Having waged two wars that are not yet over, Bush faced the final legacy of his tumultuous two-term period in office: the possible collapse of the American economy.

But the action he was calling for stuck in the throats of the American people. The administration's planned $700bn bailout for the financial sector has outraged and appalled many on the country's Main Streets. It has led to anger on the left of American politics, shocked at such aid to wealthy bankers when the millions of families losing their homes get little direct help. At the same time many on the right have expressed equal disbelief, watching in amazement as the previously free-marketeer Bush suddenly embarked on the biggest government intervention since the Great Depression

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The events that led to that astonishing twist began at 8.30am on Wednesday. Obama had placed the call to McCain, reaching out with the idea that the two rival candidates could draft a common statement on the financial crisis gripping America. Such a move was far from altruistic. A Washington Post poll had been published that morning showing Obama opening up a nine-point lead in the race. The poll was perhaps the strongest sign that voters were beginning to decisively break for the Democrats. By reaching out to McCain across party divides, Obama could stamp his ownership on the economic issue and also appear as a unifying president-in-waiting.

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1. WE aren't the ones who are panicked.