Third World America - Arianna Huffington [75]
Moving your money is a good place to start.
BREAKING UP WITH YOUR BIG BANK
It was a lightbulb moment. A group of us, including economist Rob Johnson, political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, was having dinner, talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street and Main Street, and the outrageous behavior of America’s megabanks—how they’d taken our bailout money but cut back on lending, paid themselves record bonuses, and kept on with all the greedy, abusive, ruthless practices that have earned them billions a year—year after year. We were getting madder by the minute.
Then the lightbulb clicked on: Why don’t we take our money out of these big banks and put it into community banks and credit unions? And why don’t we see if we can encourage everyone in America to do the same thing?
The concept was simple: If enough people who had money in one of the Big Six investment banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) moved their money into smaller, more local, more traditional community banks and credit unions, collectively we, as individuals, would have taken a big step toward transforming the financial system so it again becomes the productive, stable engine for growth it’s meant to be.84 And since deposit insurance at small banks is the same as at big banks—up to $250,000—there is zero risk involved.85 While it may not be in our power to change the system single-handedly, we do have the power to take our money out of the banks that undermined our economy and move it to more responsible banks to help rebuild it. We don’t have to wait for Washington to act. We can do a complete end run around the closed ecosystem of lobbyists and politicians.
We launched the Move Your Money campaign on the Huffington Post in late 2009, and it took off like wildfire.86 The video Eugene Jarecki made (playing off the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, where community banker George Bailey helps the people of Bedford Falls escape the grip of the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter) went viral. Bill Maher compared moving your money to ending “a loveless, abusive relationship with your big bank.”87 Media coverage was extensive. Top financial analysts Chris Whalen and Dennis Santiago created a tool that allowed people to plug in their zip codes and quickly get a list of small, safe banks and credit unions operating in their communities. About 2 million people, in every region of the country, ended up moving their money—more than $5 billion in the first quarter of 2010—as did a growing number of cities, states, and large pension funds.88
The idea is neither liberal nor conservative—it’s productive populism at its best—and has been embraced by those on both sides of the ideological spectrum who are sick and tired of the megabanks and are ready to do something about it.
The big banks may still be “too big to fail”—but they are not too big to feel the impact of hundreds of thousands of people taking action to change a broken financial and political system. The key thing is we don’t have to wait on Washington to get its act together.
People from all walks of life have written in to say how empowering the small act of moving their money was. One of them, H. Lee Grove, wrote, “Thank you so much.89 I have been so depressed about the apathy I had fallen into, being able to do nothing as the bully on the playground beat everyone to hell right in front of my eyes, that I would just lie in bed for days at a time. I moved my money to a credit union and I feel fantastic.”
EVERYBODY KNOWS THE DICE ARE LOADED … SO CHANGE THE GAME
Leonard Cohen wrote his classic song “Everybody Knows” in the late 1980s, but it couldn’t feel timelier:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys