WASHINGTON -- Protesters marched on Sunday to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's home Sunday in Bethesda, Md., but got no response when they knocked on his door.
The protesters from National People's Action and the National Domestic Workers Alliance tried to deliver a letter to Geithner demanding a financial transactions tax, principal reductions for underwater homeowners and an investigation of the bankers who caused the mortgage crisis.
National People's Action said "more than 1,000 people" went to Geithner's home, while the Wall Street Journal pegged the number at "several hundred."
Barb Kalbach, a farmer from Iowa and a member for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, said in a microphone while standing in Geithner's driveway that the Treasury secretary must "quit protecting the big banks, write down the mortgages and keep us in our homes and stop the foreclosure crisis around the U.S." Continued Kalbach: "Right now, today, he continues to impede the process of investigating the banks that crashed our economy. And he’s blocking a tiny tax of less than half of one percent. It’s small change for Wall Street, but big change for America."
Geithner's house wasn't the only stop for the protesters. National People's Action said it also went to the home of Peter Scher, executive vice president and head of corporate responsibility for JPMorgan Chase, demanding that CEO Jamie Dimon step down from the New York Federal Reserve board in the wake of massive trading losses and calling on the bank to offer principal reductions for underwater homeowners.
An 0.03 percent tax on financial transactions would raise $350 billion over the next nine years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) have proposed legislation on the tax, but it stands a slim chance of passage.
President Barack Obama has proposed imposing a financial crisis responsibility fee on firms with assets exceeding $50 billion that would raise $61 billion over 10 years.
A Treasury spokesman declined to comment.