NPR’s All Things Considered profiled the Move Your Money campaign on Sunday. Host Guy Raz talked to economist Simon Johnson and bank analyst Bert Ely about the project, and heard from Michael Parisi, a man who made the move to a local bank in Santa Cruz, Calif. “It’s a locally-owned business,” he said of his new institution, “so you feel like you’re talking to people in your community.”
Listen:
Eugene Jarecki, the award-winning
filmmaker behind the Move Your Money video, talked to KUER’s Doug Fabrizio about the movement. “This is supposed to be a democracy,” he said, “it’s supposed to be that if you don’t like the service that you’re getting from the government or from a company that you make a noise about it if it’s the government, and if it’s a company that you take your business elsewhere.” Listeners from all over the country called and e-mailed in to the radio show to tell their own stories.
The Move Your Money campaign has been gaining steam, and news outlets large and small are taking notice. From small local newspapers to major media outlets, people are talking. Here are a few recent clips, but see more on our Press page.
Daniela Perdomo at AlterNet
The Move Your Money campaign has made many people realize that some elements of financial reform may lie in their own hands. While cynics may point out that populist reforms can only take you so far, one idea behind Move Your Money is that this grassroots take on financial reform — if it continues to have impact and grow — may actually increase the possibility of financial reform at the federal level.
The banking behemoths have used our dollars to destroy the economy. We can use those same dollars to fight back.
Alex Miller at the Summit Daily News in Colorado
The idea is simple: Since the mega, “too big to fail” banks played fast and loose with our money and had to take government bailouts to stay afloat, we can, at the very least, express our displeasure by moving our money — or not patronizing them in the first place. After all, these banks are already back handing out big bonuses, are being stingy with lending and, so far as most of us can tell, have done little to prevent a similar meltdown in the future.
It’s hard to imagine the average schmo moving his pitful holdings would have much effect on institutions like Bank of America or Citigroup, but there’s certainly a psychological benefit to holding one’s money out of the hands of the Big Six. These banks control an enormous percentage of the financial market — too big to fail, indeed, and it would seem like a good thing to help even things out a bit, even in a small way.
Chris Camire at the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts
Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and current MIT professor, says that we can do more than just move our money; we can elect politicians who trust local banks and credit unions with their money instead of Wall Street:
our current difficulties is that so many people — both in power and from all walks of life — still actually think our biggest banks are good for their customers and for society as a whole, so we must hold our noses and live with them. This view must be challenged, directly and repeatedly.
In this context, moving your own money is more than an important gesture, and if enough people get on board, it will make a difference. More likely, thinking hard — and talking with others — about your various monetary transactions also begins to change the rules of the political game. How can politicians claim to be against Too Big To Fail banks when they actually have an account or a credit card or a mortgage at one such offender? Shouldn’t state officials be held accountable for where they park the taxpayers’ funds? Which governor wants to risk reelection while heavily dependent on big banks? Who got what kind of commission last time a government body issued bonds?
A number of politicians have already hopped on board with the idea. Click here to see why Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) moved her money. And download the Huffington Post’s spreadsheets to see where your senators and representatives bank (information was not available for all legislators; those with accounts less than $5,000 do not have to disclose).
The American Debt Relief Challenge has saved American families nearly $20 million by teaming up with cooperating credit unions to help people deal with their credit card debt. Co-founder Jamie Chase explains:
move from a profit-maximizing bank to a credit union can be financially quantified, credit unions across the United States are participating in the American Debt Relief Challenge to put their money where their principles are, proving they are different than the banks.
How does it work? We encouraged credit unions to step up to the plate to help people with credit card debt, instead of shying away from the presumed risk. Those willing to help people with credit card balance transfers are added to a website so consumers know where to find them. The simple truth is the credit unions participating in the American Debt Relief Challenge leverage their not-for-profit status to offer lower credit card rates than big, for-profit mega-banks. When the consumer transfers their debt to a credit union, more of their monthly payment is applied to reducing the debt and less to cover a high interest rate.
Ray Brescia, Assistant Professor of Law at Albany Law School, proposes a national crash test ratings system for banks, akin to the one for cars, to ensure consumer faith and confront the “crisis of confidence” that we have in the financial industry.
of conduct voluntary (but verifiable), where compliance will generate strong market share, it is likely that sustainable and sensible practices will become the norm, and not the exception. Whether the Obama Administration promoted such a system through regulation, or private groups developed them without government intervention, such efforts would sidestep a Congress that is looking less and less able to pass progressive legislation, no matter how popular it may be.
Crash tests for banks just make sense where unrestrained bank practices threaten the health of the financial system. We do not need to place our money in banks unable to survive another crisis. This is certainly the case where present practices, unchecked, simply recreate the conditions that brought about the last crash and will likely fuel the next.
Terra Verde, a show on KPFA in Berkeley, Calif., that focuses on environmental issues, talked about the ways that the big banks impact that environment. Listen:
We’ve been getting a lot of responses from people asking what to do with their credit card debt. Read what Dennis Santiago has to say:
from redeploying credit card balances to place a larger fraction of it in smaller institutions? My personal worry is that over concentraing the market share among too few innovators might not be enough for such a national interest priority. Spreading the balances would tend to make finding business service quality and fraud management solutions even more urgent to more banks. Necessity still being the true mother of invention, this might accelerate the process as more banks explore alternative technology approaches to securing their credit cards. Ideally, it sparks a new contest for banks to retain credit card customers based on a new generation of more risk managed services solutions. That in turn means the cost of doing business lessens and puts increased competitive pressure on the system to pass those improvements on to consumers in the form of better interest rates and fee structures. I do believe this issue is strategically important enough that there’s merit in all of us trying some out of the box approaches to shake things up.
In the State of the Union address President Barack Obama advocated taking billions of dollars of TARP money and giving it to community banks to use for small business lending.
The Huffington Post reports
Obama also called for a new small business tax credit that would help over one million small businesses “who hire new workers or raise wages”; the elimination of all capital gains taxes on small business investment; and a new tax incentive for “all businesses, large and small, to invest in new plants and equipment.”
Heather Booth, Director of Americans for Financial Reform, saw this as a call to action:
Local newspapers around the country have been taking notice. See what they’re saying:
Adam Van Brimmer at the Savannah Morning News:
A grassroots campaign known as “Move Your Money” began last month. The Web-based effort encourages megabank customers to switch their deposit account business to local community banks or credit unions.
Marcus Rauhut at the Chambersburg Public Opinion:
“Our membership in the Cumberland Valley alone has grown by over 700 members,” Silvers said. “We increased over $23 million in new deposits. We believe this increase is due to members wanting to know that their money is safe and local.
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