A campaign to encourage Americans across the country to move their money out of big banks and into local community ones is hitting the public consciousness.
In December 2009, Huffington Post founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington announced a campaign called Move Your Money in reaction to what she described as a mishandling of taxpayer bailout money by the country’s big banks.
In a blog post, Huffington described how she and a group of influential friends came up with the campaign idea after a dinner conversation.
“The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly-leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster,” she wrote.
To make matters worse, Huffington argued that banks cut loans to businesses by $100 billion even though loosening up the credit crunch was a stipulation of the bailout.
The Move Your Money campaign kicked-off with a cinematic promotional video, in which the greed of big banks is contrasted with the community spirit of smaller ones using the familiar storyline of It’s a Wonderful Life. In the classic Christmas film, small town banker George Bailey confronts going bankrupt when the antagonist, big banker Mr. Potter, comes to town. It’s the community of banking customers who end up bailing Bailey out in the name of small town values over big city profit.
Huffington appeared on CBS Sunday Morning this week to talk about why moving money out of big banks and into smaller banks is important.
“JP Morgan, Citi, Bank of America, Wells Fargo — these banks, that have received taxpayer money, that have been bailed out by the taxpayer, have not done their job at helping small businesses at lending so that the economy can start again and start producing jobs,” she said.
Those interested in joining the campaign can enter their zip code on the Move Your Money website to get a list of local banks and credit unions with a “B” or better rating by an independent reviewer. Of course, CBS warns customers that these banks are just as vulnerable as the big ones to foreclosures, though many of them have not participated in the sub-prime lending glut that contributed to the country’s financial crisis.
And of course, one could argue that since these smaller banks are by definition not “too big to fail” they are even more vulnerable to bankruptcy because they didn’t and won’t get a piece of any government bailout funds. If you do opt to support them, in other words, it’s at your own peril.
Still, it’s nice to be reminded that there are options. If you’ve seen your credit card interest rates skyrocket or your banking fees return in light of the federal government’s new CARD act, which went into effect earlier this week, you can always move your money down the block.
Photo courtesy of Postdlf via Wikipedia Commons.
