The Move Your Money Project
January 5, 2010Jon Brooks 1 Comment »It’s a different type of “bail-out.”
The Huffington Post and friends are spearheading a nascent movement to move your money from the big financial giants to community banks. From a column by Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson:
Meanwhile, America’s Main Street community banks — the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of — are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.
A web site has been set up called Move Your Money, at which you can type in your zip code to locate a community bank near you. The Huffington Post has a page at which you can submit your experience with local banking, and an interactive map that allows you to drill down to your own area to find what people are saying about the small banks in your neighborhood.
The filmmaker Eugene Jareck has also created a video using the banking-related film “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a theme.
And as usual, Facebook is involved. The Move Your Money page there has over 5200 friends, with many people trading info and stories about local banks. Ditto Twitter. Here’s one post we found there from the blog “Through the Eyes of Mike Anthony.”
Today was the dawn of a new day for me. It was the day I said something with the money that I have. I took the leap and left my big bank for a hometown community bank…
I have been a big bank customer for seven years. For the most part, I’ve never really had any problems. Easy access to my bank twenty four seven is one of the many reasons I opened my accounts there. However, in recent years, they have decided they’re not going to appreciate my business. Any problems I had, I simply had to live with.
Well, I wasn’t going to stand for this… (T)he execs that asked for taxpayer money to help bail their banks out just raked in some pretty hefty profits, not to mention bonuses. I kept thinking to myself “My hard earned taxpayer money, the money I worked for, went to go help someone else who in turn just put it in their own pockets and became richer??” Oh, that was the last straw for me.
I happily walked into the big bank today to close out my accounts. When I walked in I went to see a branch manager. I simply asked her if I would be able to close out my account. Do you know what her response was? “Sure not a problem!” with a smile too!!!! I was absolutely appalled. I couldn’t believe a bank I’ve been so loyal too would just have no problem closing my accounts, not even asking me why! Then, if that wasn’t enough, once they were closed out, here was the last response I got “Thanks, have a great day!” again with a smile!!!
Well, of course they’re smiling. They’re raking in millions of dollars from hard-working taxpayers like us who are helping to bail them out, only for them to go ahead and pocket that money. I’m happy to be with my community bank. It’s not run by any shareholders. Only a board of directors with less than 10 branches. Sure, the conveniences I’ve come to expect from the larger bank aren’t all there, but here’s what it really boils down to: Do I want my money going to greedy people or do I want it representing the people who live where I live and are looking to actually help out the community rather than be extremely greedy? I have voted with my money…
Looks like a fair amount of people think too big to fail doesn’t mean too big to bail…not “out,” but “out of.”
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:32 pm
[...] months ago we did a post on the Move Your Money site, a project started at the Huffington Post with the goal of encouraging [...]