Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning
A new movement, led by economist Robert Johnson, who previously served on the Senate Banking and Senate Budget Committees, is urging citizens to move their money out of the big banks, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo and into local community banks in order to “stop this toxic side effect of derivatives lobbying and ‘too big to fail’ lobbying” — a move that is secure so long as the selected community banks are covered by the F.D.I.C. for deposits up to $250,000.
According to Johnson, who was interviewed recently by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, those four banks, along with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, control 97% of the derivatives market:
ROBERT JOHNSON: Well, that requires a little bit of research, but we do have friends at Institutional Risk Analytics that’s on this website, moveyourmoney.info, and they have rated all the FDIC call report banks, and they’ve separated out the big banks from the small, or what you might call the behind-the-scenes ownership, and given you a menu. If you plug in your zip code, it gives you a menu of the banks that they rate A or B, which is safe.
The 01/04/10 Democracy Now segment on the Community Bank Movement follows below…
I’d encourage everyone to get your money out of Wells Fargo before Wells Fargo gets your money outright. They’re twisted pricks with a fee fetish.
I moved out of banking years ago when the mergers began and joined a credit union.
3 car loans and a home mortgage later, I couldn’t be happier
The trascript is online at DemocracyNow for people who have hearing disabilities or are deaf:
http://www.democracynow.org
Ques.:would community bank include the labor bank,
Amalgamated Bank in NYC? Dem.Now has also had
coverage of the dispute over ownership of the bank, between the original union and the break away group. The customer service is wonderful.
If I had any money to move I would go there and look for a community bank in a heartbeat.
I have moved my [no] money to a decent community bank to get away from these evil capitalist banks more times in my life than I care to contemplate. Each and every time the great bank I moved my money to was eaten up by the evil capitalists and I ended up fuming and having to find another place for my money.
Move yer money to yer mattress, right next to yer shotgun.
Agent 99 said
Move yer money to yer mattress, right next to yer shotgun.
____________
Hey 99, maybe we should change your handle to Ma Barker
I’d do it if I thought it would make a difference!
There’s a rather long exploration of the uselessness of progressives at Alternet today. I’m trying to gather the moxie to get through it… but surely the lack of a Ma Barker plays into it somewhere.
99, I recommend you find yourself a credit union. I’ve been with mine for over a decade.
The giant vampire squid attached to the face of the country
This is a fine idea, as long as it is kept in perspective. This is not the way the world or the system changes. “Be the change you desire” is neither effective or a quote from Gandhi (http://www.gandhitopia.org/foru...a-gandhi-quote).
Change is made through mass uprisings, mass organizing and political pressure. Power has to be marshaled.
We must never be sidestepped into a being-impotent-but-feeling-good-about-it state.
Jack @10
Mass uprisings don’t happen until the masses are enlightened. Teabaggers are uprising, but they’re not enlightened theirs is just an anger uprising manufactered and exploited by the right wing.
“Be the change” whether Gandhi originated it or not; is how TRUE, Revolutionary changes occur. It’s not a marshalled force as much as it’s demonstrated almost person to person and then it inundates society like a tsunami.
Being the change we want to see…entails we becoming just as a people first…we adopt peace as our only goal…we practice and demand economic justice for all…
Civil disobedience requires some “Be the change” mojo….civil disobedience entails some personal investment of our own security…and us being able to uphold each other until our voices are heard and heeded.
Civil disbedience like…refusing to pay income taxes until we’re out of Iraq and Afghanistan, Wall Street and the banks be held accountible….That’s where the bulk of our tax dollars are going…to the Military Industrial Complex and Wall Street Bankers. Let’s see how long they can operate when people en masse refuse to pay income taxes.
To be that change people have to be enightened …not marshalled or herded…we have a marshalled and herded public now. They’ve been marshalled and herded with lies….being the change means having the guts to speak and ACT truth to power.
Gandhi led a mass of Indians to the sea to make salt in order to circumvent the British salt tax…in that simple action he threw off the British empire from India…
Gandhi didn’t marshall anything…he simply walked out his enlightenment…a nation followed and Britain lost control.
Does this nation have the guts ?
The guts to lead…or follow someone doing a simple act of civil disobedience simply because it’s the right thing to do.
For the record Gandhi wasn’t trying to “defeat” Britain…he was disobeying a stupid law that taxed something that was abundantly available for free…In that disobedience India was freed from British colonization.
Do we have the guts…?
Jack, this is the first time I read anything that questioned the attribution of the Ghandi quote. You may be right on that, but you are not right when you say “this is not the way the world or the system changes.”
As Howard Zinn observed in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress:
Recall the effect of a minority of homes going into foreclosure on the big banks.
Johnson’s appeal is to the 97% of Americans who do not benefit from the Wall Street schemes. If that 97% were to transfer their money from the big four to local Community Banks, the result would bring the big six to their knees.
True power is in the hands of the people. What is lacking is knowledge on their part of the scope of that power.
A Tax revolt…
If we as a nation stopped paying our income taxes, we could affect massive changes.
Those that are employed change your withholding to 0, those that are self employed stop paying period.
We as a people would have to able to support those who the system comes down on…their families and legal expenses etc. But the system can’t process or prosecute 50 million people for income tax evasion.
Up to 75% of our income tax dollars go directly to military industrialists and to the federal reserve who are raping the nation. We could bring those systems into compliance with the people’s wishes by NOT SUPPORTING THEM with our money anymore…
They’re leeches enriching themselves on our labor.
This kind of action won’t be easy or pretty…We as a people would have to take responsibility for our fellow citizens, we would have to find commonground and keep our minds fixated on the justice we’re meeting out to the system that has used and abused us for decades.
We need some steel in our resolve…
As I said earlier…do we have the friggin’ guts?!?
I propose we create a little social movement: create a flyer w/a catchy title like: why you should break up with your bankster and give people actions steps w/local credit unions to take their money to. It’s a start! We gotta start SOMEWHERE!
“Just slip out the back Jack, make new plan Stan, no need to be coy Roy….just listen to me…Hop on the bus Gus you don’t need to discuss much, just drop off the key Lee and get yourself free”
I agree Sophia…it’s a start…I like the idea…
when we say we, we might do better to be realistic in terms of how limited that word is defined. Serious change requires the we to be much bigger than the we that we can muster here. We (here) do not control the media that we(the entire populous)are educated or rather miseducated and thusly manipulated controlled by.
This moveyourmoney thang is a case in point. Thom Hartmann clicked on it. The screen came back that there were no local banks for him but for a mere $1000, they’d gladly send him a list of banks he could switch to. I clicked on it for my zip code and it sent me to TCF National, Woodforest National and Marquette Natnl. These are not small banks. TCF is a rightwingnut run bank gobbler out of Minnesota with a nasty history and branches in a huge midwest grocery store chain. Woodforest is the same out of Texas with a branch in every Walmart. At some point, we gotta acknowledge where and when we’re being beaten with a stick.
So now we’re searching out a local credit union and working to find out which are honest and trustworthy. Good luck to all.