Millions take to streets in economic protests

Mass demonstrations likely to hit U.S. this summer

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi's Red Alert.

France's trade unions staged a national strike protesting the economic downturn and causing a one-day stoppage in rail, air and local transport throughout the country on Thursday. Similar protests in the United States this summer are becoming increasingly likely, as tent cities for the homeless are springing up in dozens of U.S. cities, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

More than 1 million people took to the streets throughout France Thursday as a national poll showed 74 percent of the French supported the protest.

This followed a one-day national strike in January that sent hundreds of thousands of French workers to the streets, protesting job cuts and demanding higher welfare payments to cushion the impact of the economic crisis.

The mass protests in France are evidence of the increasing economic distress being felt in the EU from the global economic downturn, Corsi wrote.

The French gross domestic product, or GDP, is expected to fall 1.9 percent this year, compared with drops of 2.8 percent in Great Britain and 2.5 percent in Germany, according to the Economist.

Meanwhile, protests in the U.S. are becoming more likely.

In Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports the City Council is considering a proposal to designate a piece of vacant land for the homeless as an alternative to the impromptu tent city that has persisted on Foremaster Lane between Main Street and Las Vegas Boulevard North, despite repeated attempts by city officials to sweep the area clean.

In Sacramento, Calif., Mayor Kevin Johnson has negotiated with a coalition of property owners to move some 100 to 200 homeless living in a tent city camp north of downtown into apartments, shelters and other structures, according to the Sacramento Bee.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported homeless have begun spending their days in the state capitol in Madison, moving into the basement for warmth, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., when they are required to leave.

Red Alert expects that by this summer, street protests will come to the United States, as the U.S. middle class increasingly becomes squeezed by fear of losing jobs and homes.

"The Obama administration would be well advised to realize that President Obama's appearance on Jay Leno's late-night television show may not demonstrate the level of dedicated leadership or seriousness the American public expects of a president when the country is heading toward the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s," Corsi wrote. "The American public would also be well advised to take a close look at French bailouts before becoming too enthusiastic about supporting more Obama administration bailouts."

Red Alert's author, whose books "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command" have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.

In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.

For more information on spreading economic protests and for financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, "The Obama Nation."