Financial Services Roundtable Responds to Change To Win Demand, Moves Spring Meeting

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, February 12, 2009

CONTACT: Greg Denier, 202-486-2365
Noreen Nielsen, 202-721-6047

WASHINGTON, DC -- Embarrassed by the opulence of the location of its March 2009 Spring Meeting in Naples, Florida, Financial Services Roundtable (FSR) president and CEO Steve Bartlett responded to the letter from Change to Win chair Anna Burger yesterday by moving the meeting to an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C.  The Roundtable's decision to move the meeting -- whose invitees included Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., FDIC chair Sheila Bair, and SEC chair Mary Schapiro -- made in response to Burger's letter was first reported in this morning's Los Angeles Times.

Shifting the three-day meeting location from the Ritz Carlton Beach Resort, where rooms start at $530 per night, may avoid the optics of an AIG quail hunt.  But it doesn't change the underlying disgrace of FSR bank and finance executives meeting in the midst of the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression to plot their attack on workers' rights.  Having undermined the economic security of millions of working families, and received the lion's share of TARP subsidies, it's time for FSR and its members to focus exclusively on fixing the financial system they shattered. 

"Working Americans deserve answers and action from the Roundtable and its members, who now have the audacity to follow the ranks of AIG, Wells Fargo, and Merrill Lynch in a parade of TARP funded shame and excess, while 1.2 million workers have lost their jobs since Thanksgiving," said Change to Win executive director Chris Chafe.  "Anyone who received TARP funds and is trying to use them to squash worker's rights or have a party on our tax dollars should have to give it all back, and be banned from receiving it in the future. Change to Win will continue to monitor and expose any misuse or misconduct of funds by the FSR."

Yesterday Bank of America chairman Ken Lewis provided further evidence, when challenged, that Wall Street will not own up to its role in running the anti-worker agenda.  In response to questioning from Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., at yesterday's hearing on TARP accountability, Mr. Lewis said he agreed with the principle that TARP funds "should be used to either recapitalize the banks or to otherwise promote solvency within the bank and promote lending and not to try to impact or defeat any measures in Congress to promote union organizing."  But when pressed on Bank of America's own anti-worker activities, Mr. Lewis qualified his position, saying that Bank of America's TARP funds are "forty-five billion in the context of 230 billion in equity."

Change to Win chair Anna Burger sent a letter to Financial Services Roundtable president and CEO Steve Bartlett on Tuesday calling on the FSR to immediately cease all lobbying and advocacy against the Employee Free Choice Act and to revoke the membership of any bailout recipient that is engaged in similar partisan political activity. A copy of the letter is available for download in Adobe PDF format.

** Note: Media representatives interested in scheduling an interview with Change to Win leaders should contact Noreen Nielsen at Noreen.nielsen@changetowin.org. **