Pissed Off at the Corporate Banking Industry? Here's an Easy Way You Can Hurt Them

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Pissed Off at the Corporate Banking Industry? Here's an Easy Way You Can Hurt Them

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted April 1, 2009.

We need to force the administration to do to these tumorlike institutions what they just did to GM. Moving our checking accounts will do the trick.




I voted for Barack Obama, and I continue to wish him nothing but success. But I have to admit his and Tim Geithner's solution to the banking crisis is exactly the wrong solution. The administration seems to believe the best thing to do is to throw the drunken "money center" bankers into detox, hose them off and put them back in the game.

It's a bit like asking ExxonMobil to run the Environmental Protection Agency, or appointing Charles Keating to head the General Accounting Office.

The strange thing is that others in the administration, particularly those tasked with straightening out the auto industry, are taking the opposite -- and correct -- tact. They fired the head of GM and cleaned out GM's board of directors for good measure.

That's how you begin fixing stuff that's broke -- first you get rid of the folks who broke it. What you don't do is hand them billions of free bucks, a hearty slap on the back and a rousing "Now, go get 'em tiger!" (Because they will.)

But that's precisely what the administration is doing for America's failed money center banks. The nation's largest banks are often referred to as money market banks or money center banks. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/134392/pissed_off_at_the_corporate_banking_industry_here%27s_an_easy_way_you_can_hurt_them/

[tularetom]

1. Credit Unions are the answer

Even an independent local or regional bank can make dumb lending decisions and get into trouble as a result. And possibly get gobbled up by one of the biggies.Won't happen with a credit union. The profit motive is removed from the equation and all the decisions made are in the best interest of the stakeholders who coincidentally are also the depositors.

Credit unions won't make risky loans for developers wet dreams like posh golf resorts; they are limited to lending money to their members. As a result their financial policies are sound, conservative and boring - just the way banks used to be before risk taking (with other people's money) became sexy.

I've banked with the same credit union for over thirty years - even did a couple years on the board of directors in the 90's. I can't imagine a better solution to the mess these ginormous banks have caused than for everyone to seek out their local credit union, join it and use it for your banking needs.

[yurbud]

4. definitely--I'm in the process of moving my accounts over now.

I just got to reset all my automatic payments.

[kristopher]

2. His solution has two parts.

To recycle Obama's words, first you have to get the bus out of the ditch. They are putting a new regulatory system in place to keep it on the road *once they get it there*.

[yurbud]

3. I would add a third: punish those who got drunk and drove the bus into the ditch

[rhett o rick]

5. LOL, like that could happen. Unless they find a scapgoat like Libby or Cunningham. nm