Thousands protest outside ECB headquarters

Thousands of people demonstrated Saturday outside the European Central Bank's Frankfurt headquarters on the first day of a world-wide protest against income disparity and corporate greed. Organisers estimated a turnout of nearly 6,000, while police said 5,000 were in the square dominated by a giant blue-and-yellow euro logo.
Youths, retired people and families with children in strollers joined the protest in bright autumn sunshine, with signs reading "Smash the Dictatorship of Capitalism" and "Don't Sell Out Democracy at the ECB". Some demonstrators were also planning to set up a protest camp like those in Madrid and New York.
Sikle Baskaya, 32, said she had travelled from the city of Heidelberg to attend the rally. The financial sector was irresponsible and greedy, she said. "Humanity and nature are also pushed into the background by the thirst for money," she said, citing market speculation in basic foodstuffs and the unequal distribution of wealth.
She herself worked in the financial sector, she added. A 27-year-old schoolteacher who gave his name only as Tobias, said: "I see the global capitalist system as a time bomb for humans but also for the planet. "Our (material) well-being is financed to the detriment of other countries, (and) the ECB represents this unjust and murderous system," he added. He carried a sign reading "Capitalism Will Kill Capitalism."
Pensioner Christl said she came thinking of her children and grandchildren "who will have to pay for our debts. "I think the banking system is awful overall," she added. "Investment banks should bear the cost of their losses on their own. It's time to rise up, otherwise nothing will ever happen." Frauke Distelrath of the Attac anti-globalisation movement that organised the protest said she was pleased with the turnout.
"We chose to demonstrate outside the ECB, but we could have demonstrated outside Deutsche Bank, or outside the Frankfurt stock exchange," she said. "But the ECB is the engine driving the troika," she added, a reference to the ECB, the International Monetary Fund and the Union European - the three international organisations - funding the bail-out of debt-hit Greece.
Their auditors were in Greece week going over its books to decide if it had done enough to merit the latest eight-billion euro instalment of the 110-billion-euro bailout package agreed last year. Another demonstrator, Marcos Gektidis, 45, a German cameraman of Greek origin, said that this issue was why he was at the rally. "Greek has to reform, but they are going in the wrong direct," he said, arguing that they were putting all the pressure on the middle class. Those who were deciding the cuts were not those who were having to suffer them, he added.