I am not a fan of ‘big’ banks, but is this movement any different than the demonization that has been done to and continues to be the focus of “Progressives”? ”Take from the rich to give to the poor!”
Large financial institutions have not helped their images over the past decade. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, Goldman Sachs and other mega-banks, have brought a lot of this upon themselves through their business models. They took TARP money and stopped lending to the small businesses, that needed their help to get through the 2008 financial decline. Instead of working with their small business customers to find creative solutions to stay financially healthy, they actively pursued commercial appraisers to go out and appraise ‘all’ commercial assets to quantify the risk to the bank(s) if their small business clients failed. Not only did they get new appraisal’s (paid for with the bank’s money) but they reappraised every 6 months as the commercial real estate markets (no surprise there) continued to be devalued. Their business clients were now unable to qualify for financial assistance or to rewrite their loans at the new lowered interest rates and SBA points, because of tighter constraints on lending ‘and’ lower commercial real estate values. Couple these actions with their push to automate daily financial transactions (no need to go into your local branch and get to know them) and ever increasing fees for the privilege of parking your money with them, and you have the makings of a love-hate relationship of biblical proportions.
I do not advocate for people to be coerced into moving their money to punish the banks, or to foster the belief that all ‘big’ banks are evil and all ‘small, local” banks are good. That said, I also do not think that it was a good thing when these banks were allowed to merge into financial institutions who could be deemed “too big to fail”. So what am I saying here? I believe that both models of financial institutions serve a niche and to demonize one over the other is not the way to fix things. If we want to fix the financial lending environment, then we must allow them to fail when their business is no longer capable of supporting itself due to their own business practices. That will give the smaller financial institutions the opportunity to fill in the gap(s) as the free markets will do, when allowed to.
Check out this short video which describes “Arianna Huffington’s” movement “Move the Money” and how the local group “Transition Whatcom” has taken up this move here in Whatcom County.
Yours In Truth 
Move Your Money Whatcom
Posted on March 7, 2011 by admin
Tired of Wall Street banks crashing our economy, then trashing our public sector and buying politicians? Move your money out of big banks and into local banks and credit unions. Help strengthen our local economy!
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