The Nation
January 14, 2010
[efoods]Are you angry about Wall Street’s reckless excesses? Are you disappointed with President Obama’s limp approach to reform? You can change this, acting individually and collectively. Withdraw your deposit and savings accounts from the large banks that brought the system to ruin and were subsequently rescued with billions in government bailouts. Put your money instead in smaller, safer banks or credit unions closer to home–the thousands of community institutions that do not harvest their profits from greed and recklessness.
“Move Your Money” is an electrifying slogan that’s lighting up the Internet because it shows people how they can push back against the big dogs of banking. The concept is simple, but this is a big idea that could alter the timid direction of financial reform.
This campaign is potentially more than a feel-good gesture. If coordinated with institutional reform efforts, it could lead to a broad rebellion against the financial system, with citizens reclaiming the power to act directly when politicians are too intimidated by moneyed interests to act in the public interest. Economist Jane D’Arista put it crisply: “We are not a nation of widows and orphans. We have quite a lot of money, and people control some of it. They might ask why they don’t control more of it.”
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