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Tens of thousands of Americans moved their money out of Big Banks into smaller banks or credit unions yesterday. The action was part of “National Bank Transfer Day.” The action mostly hinged upon individuals going into banks to close out their accounts with banks like Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo, etc, but there were also a number of demonstrations held at banks by occupations all over the country as well.
Ahead of Bank Transfer Day, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) confirmed that the calls for Americans by Occupy protesters and various organizations are having an impact. In the past four weeks, CUNA reported 650,000 Americans joined credit unions. Also, CUNA estimates since September 29, “credit unions have added $4.5 billion in new savings accounts.”
A combination is responsible for the growing interest in credit unions. Bank of America’s announcement to charge debit card users $5/month stirred up anger. The growing Occupy movement began to draw attention to banking practices pushing more Americans to join in Bank Transfer Day, which was first announced on Facebook.
Big Bank executives now sociopathically threaten consumers willing to wield their power as consumers with the responsibility of forcing them to charge their loyal customers with fees because they chose to change to a credit union. They argue that they have to “recoup revenues” somehow. They are like drug addicts, who need to ensure they can continue to enjoy their high and that high involves being able to give those at the top of the bank millions of dollars in bonuses. It involves being able to place speculative bets against ventures they know are doomed to fail. It involves gambling with Americans’ money to reap huge profits and it also entails upping fees on consumers to make more and more money.
It is so clear that Big Bank executives are cynically hoping they can pit their consumers against consumers with a conscience, who have made a decision to not be linked to their businesses. I assume they expect the people who want to remain Bank of America or Citibank members will see the cost of having an account soar and blame people joining credit unions. Of course, this will just show how banks enjoy a level of protectionism in this country. The act of Americans shifting money away is what happens in a free market that has competition.
As credit unions strengthen because of new members, what will Big Banks do in Washington? I don’t ask that question because I think Big Banks are going to suffocate credit unions and force them to become linked to Big Banks so they can survive and, therefore, consumers fighting back is futile. I simply ask this question because Big Banks have power in Washington and will ask that politicians do something for them if they want to continue to receive huge campaign contributions for their election. So, consumers moving their money should maybe adopt a kind of art of war mentality and anticipate what Big Banks will do next. The ability to predict their next sleazy move will help enrich the “Move Your Money” movement, as well as the movement for economic justice that is the Occupy movement.
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9:23 PM Videographer covering Occupy Oakland shot at by Oakland police
6:59 PM Occupy Boise participants use the “Crapitol” when they have to use the bathroom.
6:56 PM FDLer TarheelDem posted some state-by-state roundups in the comments thread of yesterday’s live blog. The states are primarily southern states.
6:54 PM Introducing Occupy Mosier: “Too Small to Fail”
There are no stoplights, the only gas station closed years ago and there is not a single multinational corporation within five miles. With a population of just 430, Mosier, Oregon will become the smallest U.S. town to have an active Occupy camp. Participants from Mosier and other small communities of the Columbia Gorge are working to highlight their vision for a family-friendly camp that includes music, movies and round-table discussions with the community. While the group has stressed its solidarity with Occupy camps in urban cities across the United States, Occupy Mosier is adopting tactics and strategies they say reflect Wasco County’s rural community values.
6:53 PM A march at Occupy Wall Street has headed to central bookings to support those who were arrested yesterday.
5:08 PM Occupy Vermont protests at a Democratic Party fundraiser
5:04 PM Video of this older woman with the Granny Peace Brigade who police found to be dangerous. That is why they grabbed her and made sure she got penned in behind some orange netting and when she couldn’t move they made an arrest. [New York's finest in action.]
5:01 PM MF Global bankruptcy impacts Iowa farmers
4:58 PM Unfortunate news from Occupy Bloomington – A man was found dead in a tent. Bloomington police arrived on the scene and were unable to revive him. The coroner is saying he died of “natural causes.” That is good. The city has been pretty supportive. I happen to doubt that this will have the same effect that the death of a woman at Occupy Vancouver is having, but this news is just breaking so hard to definitively conclude that there will be no pressure on Occupy Bloomington to vacate People’s Park.
4:44 PM A number of people from Occupy DC have been showing solidarity with a anti-Keystone XL pipeline demonstration at the White House. The Tar Sands Action Twitter account just reported a big crowd broke away and was chanting “We are the 99%.”
Watch the live stream from the action.
4:40 PM Actress Bette Midler would donate porta-potties to Occupy Wall Street (if they were permitted)
4:38 PM Former Vice President Al Gore says Occupy Wall Street has already been a success
11:47 AM Occupy Fresno: 40 arrested, police arrive in riot gear
11:30 AM Occupy Fort Collins (in Colorado) must move tents from the area they have been occupying for several weeks.
11:28 AM Mayor of Vancouver cites death of woman at Occupy Vancouver and calls for the occupation to be shut down.
11:25 AM 20 arrests at Occupy Atlanta last night. Also, here is a video of a police officer using a motorcycle to run over protesters and disperse them:
69 Comments
Agree about thinking ahead regarding what steps TBTF will take next. Any politician that even thinks of talking about helping those poor bankstas will be Publicly roasted.
SERIOUSLY! Hey, Washington. Did you notice that people are in the streets?
You should listen to them more.
It looks like a concerted effort to shut down the occupy movement before winter arrives. Mayor Slay in St. Louis looks to issuing citations. H/T to you Kevin. I think I will make a visit tomorrow and see what is happening and find out the mood and plans for occupy St. Louis.
From commenter pianosaurus rex 2 hours ago to “Mayor says woman’s death means Occupy Vancouver must be shut down” (TheTyee.CA [reprint from The Canadian Press], Nov. 5, 2011, 09:44 pm):
As if borrowing unlimited amounts of cash from the Fed window at 0% and charging customers up to 30% for the use of that cash does not generate enough revenue. Asshole crackheads…
OK, ‘Christians’ pop quiz…………….Who were the only group NOT forgiven by Jesus???????? In fact He screamed at them, used a whip to drive them off, screamed at them ‘You have made my Father’s House into a den of theives’????????????
Banksters just don’t understand what it’s like to have to follow the rules governing the rest of us.
Thanks for keeping us up-to-date Kevin! With the efforts to push them out, we have all the more reason to make sure they have the supplies they need … hope folks are helping OccupySupply a lot!
I thought it was interesting on Friday when I saw a local credit union was promoting bank transfer day on an electronic billboard with a clock counting down the days, hours and minutes. I have no clue what that kind of advertising costs, but they obviously felt it was worth the money.
Aren’t credit unions usually rather low key in ad money spent?
Saw some of the Occupy Atlanta police state response on our local Atlanta NBC station as “breaking news” after I got home from work last night. “Reporter” Duffy Dixon exclaimed (and on air practically offered to testify in court) she “saw” OA protestors “attack” the motorcycle cop. First, fuck you, Duffy. Next, thanks to their newsroom/sound guy(?) for repeatedly cutting her mic off.
My credit union has been heavily promoting its low fees for some time, since some of the banks tightened up on free checking accounts.
An electronic billboard is very low on ad money spent …
Regardless of how they spin or morph the economic aftershocks of this bank action, it is in the end an act of self-empowerment, which they loathe. And, while not all credit unions are local, this is still a significant mass of money coming back to “local,” a wise trend.
(Quibble time: If you’re counting Sept. 17th as Day One, then I believe today is day 51. Of course, if you’re using 0-based indexing… OK, that’s a programmer joke.)
Faboo! My transfer is in progress! Direct deposit issues, etc. . . . The bank will help you with this stuff when you get an account, but won’t when you leave. Pffft.
The only thing I have left to do is get rid of my FIA credit card which I found out is owned by Bank of America. Shame on me for not knowing sooner. *g*
The NC State Employees Credit Union (SECU) didn’t spend a lot of money but let the media know that they had Switch Kits to facilitate people moving their funds from a bank to SECU.
They sure do have endless excuses for themselves and spin for their bad behavior. Du jour excuse: “it’s an accounting error“!
It’s how IBM became HAL. One of the first public programmer inside jokes.
The weekly roundup state by state of media reaction to the Occupy movement in the South is one the Bank Transfer Day thread.
Good first step in dealing with the banks. Would like to see a push for cities and counties to divest themselves of too-big-to-fail banks whose reckless use of our money has done so much harm to those same cities and counties; enabling those banks really doesn’t seem cost effective in the long run.
That’s what I mean, CUs advertise warm fuzzy things all the time but this one was savvy enough to get out ahead of a political/social movement and promote both itself and the movement. I thought that was pretty radical, given the industry.
Thanks for highlighting the Atlanta Occupy movement. I think they are facing quite a determined and powerful opposition. They need all the help they can get as well as kudos for enduring so far. The arrest and holding on felony charges of the young man run down by the motor cycle was quite a shocker. I wish I were not so old to be there on site.
Ha! Forgot about that one
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You get yourselves new city officials if they won’t be subject to your financial cooperatives of which you are owner-managers. Lather, rinse, repeat. How about that?
The #Tarsands action (on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%40tarsandsaction ) at the White House starts in < 30 minutes ( 2 PM EST ). The chat at the live stream, http://www.livestream.com/tarsandsaction , is up .
Michelle Samaad, Credit Union Times: Bank Transfer Day: Occupy Movements Continue to Promote CUs
‘Scuse me, but…Duffy Dixon? Yer local news hired a reporter named Duffy Dixon? That tells me every last think I need to know about local news in Atlanta. WTF?!?
HA HA! Great.
The protest that takes the form of moving your money from a big bank to a local credit union is the kind of thing I admire. It’s personal, it’s active, it’s responsible, and it’s accomplished using nothing but your own effort and your own money.
It has a very conservative flavor.
Tarheel, Have you all heard about the Occupy Dalton event Thursday evening? https://www.facebook.com/groups/ga.dem.values.proj/218097108258720/
Occupy Atlanta: Police Attack Two Protesters, Arrest Journalists, Others
The lede:
No, I haven’t. I’ll look it up, If nothing there, I’ll wait until Thursday to see if anything appears. Dalton is likely to draw some Ron Paul supporters if it happens.
I was wrong. It’s being driven from the Hispanic community.
Occupy Dalton / Ocupemos Dalton
It is essentially a meetup to see who shows up.
Rob Redding, ReddingsNewsReview: Occupy Atlanta: APD responsible for two injuries and malicious arrest
Occupy DC: The Occupied Press Conference Gives Victims and Witnesses a Chance to Tell Their Side of the Story
The hit-and-run Lexus.
Occupy Gainesville FL: Occupy Homecoming
hey pups, haven’t read everything yet, but are there any numbers on how many moved money to community banks vs. CU’s?
that would make that dissatisfied customer number even higher.
again, apologies if I missed it.
That link’s broken, here’s fixed one:
occupyatlanta.org/2011/11/06/police-brutalize-two-protesters-arrest-three-journalists-a-professor-and-a-church-staffer/#.TrbyKIZoydY
(Funny, when I tried an embedded, clickable link like your original, it broke it in the exact same way.)
The weekly roundup of of the South is on the Bank Transfer Day thread. A couple at Occupy San Antonio were married. Texas Child Protective Services seized a child of a homeless family at Occupy Dallas. And Occupy Murfreesboro had a good turnout for their Bank Transfer Day action.
OT – sort of. Open source hardware for the open source revolution.
Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilization
There is not an Occupy encampment in the country that couldn’t start employing people to put some of this stuff together and create employment.
WSET: “Occupy” Movement hits Lynchburg (VA)
KFOR: Occupy Lincoln (NE) Protestors Trespass at Downtown Bank
The sprinkler timer didn’t “fall back”?
Re Mumbai, India (Dalal is the financial district):
Video that I saw showed that the a-hole practically tackled the motorcycle cop. Given his attack on the policeman, I’m surprised he wasn’t taken away in a body bag. The police showed amazing restraint IMO.
Yesterday (my bold):
(excerpt from “Fixing debt crisis to ‘take 10 years’,” Irishtimes.com, Nov. 5, 2011)
Today (my bold):
‘Wikileaks Exposes German Preparations For “A Eurozone Chapter 11″‘ | ZeroHedge.Com | by Tyler Durden on 11/06/2011 16:34 -0500
The cable is here with a key quote on timing:
Methinks that they won’t have the luxury of 20 years to disengage. And the collapse of the Eurozone has geopolitical ramifications that go beyond economics.
LS – Occupy Columbia
Having folks download livestream apps to their iPhones in case they have to be used to do some broadcasting.
Concur. I’m counting the end of the Eurozone along with the rest of the international financial system like … any day now given all things considered. What the heck are they smoking?
“An Open Letter to the Silent Majority” | Nov. 6, 2011
The fact that there are these contingency plans means that they are unwilling to cut their banks loose. Which means that global financial system is rapidly failing and will likely end. What replaces it? If you are creating a global economic system from scratch how do you handle the functions that the current financial system has used as a justification of its existence? You are up against the expectation of 3 billion or so adults here, all of whom have been initiated into monetary economies that still maintain isolated areas of barter relations and gift relations.
WOW! Awesome concept. Open source machine building instructions. I love it.
TarheelDem @ 53:
Yes but then that is the nature of being consumed by confusion over needs versus desires. Um-hum.
I don’t think the heads of failed states are the ones thinking about anything other than the gerbil wheel they’re on. The rest of us are doing the work. Kuntsler has said to be prepared to live like my great grand mother did before the time of the automobile. Fine I can do that but we better not have a police state to try that in and I see no reason to accept a barbarian culture. That would be plain stupid.
Due to the vast automation, the current financial system can’t even pretend there’s anything going on in a vast portion of it. Its functionaries use to be be able to collect six figures for writing useless white papers before. Those days are over.
Go back to Richard Wilkinson’s charts. We in the US and Europe have had insanity-creating phantasmagorical expectations that the rest of the world just doesn’t have. Relatively speaking we are nuttier than a fruit cake because of them. But, thanks to the therapy of the #Occupy movement, we are getting real in a way that we can play nice with the rest of the world. So long to delusion and good riddance.
Considering the intellectual and technical asset base that has been built since the introduction of the automobile, that is not a prescription for action but a despairing forecast. It assumes the current movement or any future one won’t succeed.
And it really doesn’t address the issue I was raising. There was a financial system before the automobile. There was a financial system in ancient Sumer. We have the clay tablets of contract in museums. It often operated on the gold standard, and fraud was common. Coins were shaved. Bags of gold dust were weighted with sand. A whole rating industry, sometimes part of the state sometimes private assayers grew up around it. And moneychangers and the lenders accumulated commercial wealth the same way as the current banksters – through patronage of the government, fraud, and theft.
As a medium of exchange, money functions as a token of a claim against future economic transactions (and future production). Go back to a standard of living prior to the automobile and that does not go away. And a token (even a computer bit) can become something to be traded itself. And bam you are smackdab back in the same system because it is emergent from trade. It takes some sort of entity that can regulate it to forestall the re-emergence of financial power. The current entities have proven they are not up to the task. What entities must be created to allow the economy to avoid the inevitable re-emergence of a similar system?
From the Early Morning Swim:
By ERRIN HAINES, KATE BRUMBACK, AP: Five arrested in Atlanta as police crackdown on Occupy protest site
KRMG: Occupy Tulsa changing tactics, leaders say
From the KRMG piece:
I love how the media anoints anyone the talk to as a “protest organizer”.
Occupy Harrisonburg (VA) at Say No to Keystone XL
OccupyAtlanta Protestor Occupies Woodruff Park 11-6-11
Sara Robinson: Occupy’s Asshole Problem: Flashbacks from An Old Hippie
The part that Robinson misses is that facilitation is the key role to protecting consensus from assholes. Which is what the hand signals are about. Once there is a consensus policy, there needs to be a sensitive and constantly learning working group dedicated to defusing assholes. Or giving them the decision whether to remain and participate within the boundaries of the community — or leave.
Crowd control and tactical discipline on direct actions is the mandate of the direct action working groups. And as important as figuring out innovative ways to push the envelope.
Rev. Audette Fulson as V speech – Occupy Roanoke
The system you’re talking about is determined by people and is a mental construct that reflects a collective political will. A vast minority want the money in their hands to be worth a whole lot more than the same money in the hands of each of the 99%. If there’s no consensus, there’s no monetary system. The default is various forms of barter and/or slavery. Many of the 99% already barter and you see how they vote regarding slavery.