Strengthening Banking in the Public Interest
Sunday 03 January 2010
Returning our business to community banks is a great start. However, community banks are not suffering from a lack of customers so much as from a lack of the capital they need to make new loans, and investment capital today is scarce. There is a way out of this dilemma, demonstrated for more than 90 years by the innovative state of North Dakota – a partnership in which community banks are backed by the deep pockets of a state-owned bank.
Arianna Huffington just posted an article that has sparked a remarkable wave of interest, evoking over 4,500 comments in a mere three days. Called “Move Your Money,” the article maintains that we can get credit flowing again on Main Street by moving our money out of the Wall Street behemoths and into our local community banks.
Ralph Nader has spent decades seeking to restore both government and corporate accountability. Eight electoral reforms were drawn from his book Crashing the Party–Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender and are available for any citizen to use in order to agitate for non-violent legal ethical reform at the local, state, and national levels.
Phi Beta Iota: The primary reason Wall Street was desperate for bail-out funds and the government theater was to keep all of the individual stock owners “standing pat.” A run on the bank by individual shareholders would have crushed Wall Street. Although the labor union pension funds are also potentially aligned with the individual citizen-voter, most labor leaders have sold their unions out and joined the “elite” in their desire to maintain the status quo. Democracy does work–but it r5equires commitment. Move your money–and use your vote to put Independents into a position that can ultimately put the two-party tyranny out of business.
