Is anger against Bank of America and the banking system behind Bank Transfer Day?

While looking through Youtube for videos related to Bank Transfer Day, I stumbled across one from 2009 with a personal rant against Bank of America and calling for a mass walkout against BofA.  It's a very personal rant against Bank of America because they had the gall to raise his credit card rates.

By the way there's an easy way to be unaffected by credit card rates.  Always pay off your card in full every month.  They can't charge you interest fees if you don't carry a balance.

In any case given that Bank of America committed the largest number of foreclosures, there's sure to be a huge amount of anger targeted in their direction.

He accompanied the video (the only one he's posted) with the following statement:

If you are like me, you are concerned, frustrated, and a bit confused that Bank of America has been allowed, and enabled, by the U.S. government to suck the life out of our financial system. In addition, if you are like me you are very pissed-off that BOA has recently sent out letters to customers, like myself, that our credit card interest rates have nearly tripled. Because they feel like it. Regardless of the customer's history and good standing with the bank.

Both personally and professionally I believe this brand has become a joke, a picture of sleaze that even Larry Flint can not compete with. At least Larry Flint makes money the old fashioned way, he earns it! BOA has to steal their money from us to continue to fuel their failing machine.

I believe it is time that we Bank of America customers tell these pirates that we are not going to take this anymore and we are going to give our business to the smaller regional and local banks that deserve the business.

I ask each of you to close your accounts at BOA and walk out the door this week. Tell them goodbye, and that we are not going to bend-over for them anymore and take this crap! If we all do this it will send a message that extortion-based banking is no longer acceptable in this new era of customer empowerment. I also ask that each of you share my new interpretation, with your friends and family, of what I believe the acronym BOA should now stand for, as well as the new logo Bank of America should employ since it is much more fitting and aligned with their business model.

A PBS News Hour report from 2 weeks ago discussing "monthly usage fees" that are now being charged by Bank of America.

Here's another individual rant about BofA posted on Sept 9, 2011

Dear Bank of America,

I closed my checking and savings accounts today, because I heard that Bank of America foreclosed on a Florida couple who did not even have a mortgage loan through B of A. When this couple sued you and won, your company stiff-armed them and refused to pay the court judgment. The couple then foreclosed upon one of your branches in an attempt to recover the judgment and their costs.

When I think about how stupid someone would have to be to foreclose on someone who does not have a mortgage loan, it boggles the mind. Not only is it indicative of appalling ignorance and lack of true customer service ethics, it is a clear sign that your company is being run by criminals.

When I went into the branch today to close my accounts, I heard that you have now decided to close the local branch in order to save money; no doubt, you need to save that money because of the way you have been pissing away cash by financing bogus mortgages. Now the decent and friendly people at my local branch who have been serving this community for up to 20 years will soon be looking for work rather than having to drive many miles to work at the nearest remaining branch. I commiserated with them and wished them all well. They have been loyal to your company and to people like me for years, and they are being shafted by snot-nosed crooks (probably with freshly-minted MBAs) in the higher echelons of your criminal enterprise.

I took my cash and went home only to see that your dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks online banking system had sent me an email stating that my account was now empty and had fallen below the minimum $25 balance. Amazing deduction, Sherlock! I closed the account!

I am now sorry I ever allowed myself to associate with your company, for it enabled people of no character to conduct business with my cash, which, you can bet, you will never see again. I will tell everyone I know of my experience and urge them to put their money in reputable institutions which do not attempt to extort money from innocent victims.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would 'Bank Transfer Day' make any difference in anything?

Coming up on Nov 5th some activists are trying to organize a nationwide "Bank Transfer Day" where people would transfer their money out of big banks, and into credit unions.  Why on Nov 5?  It's Guy Fawkes Day, which is related to a 1600's era Englishman who wanted to blow up the English Parliament and later inspired a comic book (and even later a movie) named V for Vendetta.  Between the Fawkes mask in the Bank Transfer Day logo, and the choice of day, one can assume their intention is destructive, to cause some harm to the banking system by removing money from the banks.

When we deposit money in a bank account it increases the asset base of that bank.  That is, deposits in bank accounts are carried as assets on the bank's books.  Bank's lend their assets (the money we deposit in the bank account) and earn revenue based on interest (and bank fees) they charge from the loans.  Our money deposited in big megabank accounts increases the power of the megabanks.  If we instead deposited money into credit unions, it would shift power from big megabanks to smaller local banks.

The Bank Transfer Day Facebook page talks about this, the difference between banks and credit unions, and some recent bank reform laws.  Banks are for-profit companies whose Board of Directors are appointed by shareholders, where Credit Unions are non-profit companies whose Board of Directors are selected from members, that is the account holders.  This probably means, as the BTD people suggest, that decisions running Credit Unions are more closely aligned with account holders, than decisions running the big banks.

Maybe we'd have a better world if the credit unions were stronger and the big banks were weaker.  But … the BTD crew is inciting us into committing a mass run on the bank, which would crash the system.  Or are they?  They say that's not their intention, nor is their intention to crash the system.  A mass withdrawal of money from banks seems like the very definition of a run on the banks, and as we know this is something which can cause big havoc.  The Great Depression was caused when a stock market collapse (1929) spooked the population, who tried to withdraw their money (run the banks), to keep the money at home, causing the banking system to have no money and therefore collapse.

That's what they're risking with this call for action - crashing the banks.  The BTD crew suggests in their Facebook page notes this isn't a true run on the banks like what caused the Great Depression.  Rather than keep their money at home, the instructions are to switch from big banks to credit unions.  Money will still be in the banking system, but instead with organizations that are friendlier to real people than the big banks.

What I'm wondering is whether it will make a difference?

This reminds me of boycotts ...  Boycotts tend to have a short blip of an effect, you avoid buying gasoline from the particular brand for a day or a week or whatever, and eventually go back to that brand.  In this case the big banks have been rightfully tarred with negativity due to the 2007-8-9 financial collapse and the mortgage crisis.   Would transferring bank accounts have a similarly short term effect?

I rather doubt there will be very many people switching their bank accounts.  Banking relationships are more permanent, with longer ranging effects, than gasoline purchases.  Right?  There's all sorts of things connected to your bank account, automatic deposits, automatic payments, credit cards, and so on.

The major difference would be a relocalization of banking relationships.  A criticism some have of the current financial system is the siphoning of profits out of a local area to the pockets of remote business owners.  This depletes the financial strength of a given location.  Relocalization calls for buying from locally owned stores, and using a locally owned bank, and maybe even taking the step of creating a local currency.  The point of that is to keep profits within the local community, keep money circulating locally, keeping financial strength in your local place.

Relocalization of this sort is a larger thing than a blip of an event riding the coat-tails of a protest movement that might fizzle out once the snow starts falling.  Relocalizing the economy is a long term large scale project of education and action.

In any case here's a few videos:-

Fox News talking about "Should Wall Street be Worried"?  Towards the middle they start getting riled up about how Dodd-Frank is preventing the banks from doing things, and over the Government acting to Prevent a Bank from "investing their own capital" in whatever they want.  Uh..  Do they not recall how the financial system recently collapsed?  Have banks been reduced to utilities who must follow the edict of government?  That's how banks used to be run, with strictly laid out interest rates that gave banking huge predictability, and safety, but made banking jobs incredibly boring.  Decades of deregulation made banking a more interesting career, but let banks go into riskier businesses, and let banks create financial crises.

The rightful role of Banks probably is more like a utility.  Their job is to manage investment dollars.  This is a fundamental bedrock of society, and if we want that to be a solid bedrock then banks must be tightly regulated.

A local news program going over the difference between banks and credit unions

Protesters from Occupy Santa Cruz wanted to close their bank accounts, but got kicked out of the bank and threatened with the police.

Another group of protesters, in St. Louis, also prevented by BofA from closing their accounts.

 

The Denver Community Credit Union makes a plea for Credit Unions...

 

 

 

Steve Jobs

Who protects us from banking swindlers? Rachel Maddow, Barney Frank, on the Dodd-Frank law that's getting attention in OccupyWallStreet and 'Bank Transfer Day' protests

The OccupyWallStreet movement and its sister movement, Bank Transfer Day, are up in arms about banking bailouts, the general state of banks swindling the mass populace, and so on.  Part of the anger is at the Dodd-Frank bill.  Rachel Maddow had Barney Frank (the Frank in Dodd-Frank) on to discuss protest movements and consumer protection laws.

Maddow started the segment going over the Bank Transfer Day planned protest - and discussing what she calls Banks and other Corporations committing Swindles against all of us.  An example was an American aid worker who was in Haiti on the day of the massive earthquake last winter, who shot a bunch of cell phone video uploading it to the Internet so she could tell her friends and family she's okay, and ended up with a $35,000 charge for going over her data plan allowance.  A recent regulation change is requiring cell phone companies to notify their customers before committing the swindle of charging for going over data plan limits.

Whether that particular instance was a swindle or not is debatable - but it's true that in general the Corporations and Rich People (the 1%) are continually lobbying to tilt the playing field in their favor, to remove regulations in the name of personal freedom and whatnot but for the real purpose of swindling us - their customers.

I would refer back to something like the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration.  Perhaps the food industry feels overly burdened by the regulations, but the food industry also proved a hundred years ago that they're quite willing to sell crap poisoned products they claim are food.  In other words - in the Conservative wing of the world they have an ideology of Enlightened Self Interest, and that by removing laws everyone will magically act out of Enlightened Self Interest and make their behaviors benefit others, because they know in Enlightened Self Interest other peoples behaviors will benefit themselves.  It sounds great in theory until you remember that there are plenty of people who have zero enlightened self interest, and are instead bent on screwing everyone they can so they themselves can get ahead.

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