Financial Activism

Posted by: Abel Collins

Today I took the first step toward moving my money out of Bank of America where I have kept it for several years. I went to a local credit union and started a checking account from which I will be able to do all of my banking. The terms on the new account are much better than the ones that I at BofA (2.5% interest versus .1%), but that is not why I am moving my money.

Two years into this financial crisis, it is obvious that banks are in large part responsible for the calamity. Financial institutions, primarily those now seen as too big to fail, rose to great influence over the past four decades (TBTF list here, http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/03/19th-nervous-breakdown-tbtf-stress-test-banks/). They created financial innovations that allowed them to take on insane amounts of leverage. They encouraged so much debt that they guaranteed a credit bubble and its inevitable collapse. In fact, they engineered numerous bubbles, and at every opportunity said that deregulation would allow them to make a more productive and efficient financial system so it would never happen again. The banks made money on the way up and on the way down, and they used it to gain ever greater political and economic power.

By now, we are familiar with the results. The regulators and the legislators crafting financial policy were captured by the banking industry that they were supposed to be holding accountable. Regrettably, nothing has been done to reform this broken economic model. The reform that is proposed would be laughable if it were not so tragic, and even those weak measures will probably never be enacted.

It has become clear that the only thing the political system and the powerful people it represents care about is money. Therefore, I suggest that it is incumbent upon us to redress our grievances in terms that they understand. It is time for some good old nonviolent activism. It is time to stop giving them our money, and the logical place to start is with the TBTF banks.

If you do your banking with Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, or one of the other monster banks that control approximately 60% of the deposits of US citizens, it is time to move your money. Go to http://moveyourmoney.info/ and find out how to get started.

Time and again, massive nonviolent activism is the only effective way to realize revolutionary change, and it is time to bring it to bear on the economy. We must follow in the footsteps of great leaders like MLK, Gandhi, and Jesus, and refuse to support the system that abuses us. The first step is taking our money from the banks that control the system. If they do not listen then, if they simply turn to the government for another round of tax payer funding, we must resort to civil disobedience. We must sever the ties between money and politics, whatever it takes. Let’s get started.