Would you like to strike a blow against the fat cats of Wall Street, and at the same time strengthen your local economy? It’s easy. Just withdraw your assets from the big banks and place them with your home town banks, the small but reliable institutions that you pass each day on your way to work or shop.
If enough depositors did this, what might it accomplish? For one thing, it would reduce the size of the bloated Big Four – Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan-Chase and Wells Fargo – and make it harder for them to dream up the risky, Las Vegas-like schemes and instruments that contributed largely to the financial chaos of the past two years. It would lower the odds that any Wall Street colossus would be regarded as “too big to fail” and therefore eligible to require multibillion-dollar bailouts from Uncle Sam (i.e., the nation’s taxpayers.).
A second result of the “move your money” program would be to strengthen local banks and credit unions. It would give them larger reserves, not for high-rolling schemes and million-dollar executive bonuses, but to lend to private citizens and small businesses.
How does one go about transferring his or her funds from the big banks to smaller ones? First step is to open your computer and boot up a Web site known as moveyourmoney.info/find-a-bank. There you’ll be able to punch in your local zip code. In a couple of seconds you’ll see a listing of banks in your neighborhood deemed safe by IRA – Institutional Risk Analytics – a bank rating firm that specializes in finding out which institutions are dependable and which ones are not.
The Web site was opened early in January. In the first 48 hours, more than 100,000 inquiries were received. According to the Nation magazine, the Web site is getting 45,000 hits per day.
The “Move Your Money” campaign was kicked off around New Year’s Day by Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post and Rob Johnson of the Roosevelt Institute. For continuing news on the MYM rebellion, just Google “move your money.” With mid-term elections coming up in all fifty states, it will be fun to see the variety of positions that candidates will take on the idea of moving wealth from the canyons of Wall Street to the down-home atmosphere of Main Street.
I typed in zip code 33772 (the home address of Tampa Bay Newspapers) and found thirteen banks listed. That’s a pretty wide choice of places to plant your nest egg. As I viewed the list, I noted that several of the local banks were branches of holding companies headquartered in other cities. This led me to ask, “What’s to stop these holding companies – some of them with 50 or 100 branch banks in a region – from becoming a dice-throwing giant like the Big Four?”
I phoned IRA in California and Bank United headquarters in Miami, and asked that question. Their representatives said that community banks, by their very nature, are not oriented toward big-time investment schemes. Their main reason for existing is to lend money to people and companies who need it. And even if some of the larger bank holding companies were to consider joining the fat-cat club, their total assets would be nowhere as large as those of the Wall Street big boys.
There’s no way to know how large the “move your money” phenomenon will grow. One thing that could slow it would be the ingrained habits of depositors who have banked with the Big Four for years and are accustomed to their ways, even when those institutions are imposing outrageous fees and penalty charges. Changing to local banks will involve some red tape. But you can bet that those banks will do their utmost to make the transition easier.
Other financial reform movements are under way. Groups associated with the Industrial Area Foundation are targeting financial sharks who charge usurious rates for credit cards and other forms of lending. The IAF people are urging churches, local governments and foundations to pull their funds from these banks. Labor unions are also said to be trying to make sure their pension funds are invested more wisely.
To learn more about where to invest your money, check out these Web sites: Independent Community Bankers of America, National Credit Union Administration, and the Credit Card Connection. This last-named organization has a “detention list” of credit card companies that routinely stick it to their customers.
You and I may not individually defeat Wall Street, but we can keep our money close to home and make it count for the people and companies we know and care about.
