The Occupy effect? In the last 3 months, Americans switched banks at three times the normal rate

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



Two summers ago, at the U.S. Social Forum, I attended a panel discussion about ways to expand the use of credit unions as alternatives to the “too big to fail” banks whose risky investments had helped tank the economy. Each of the speakers—people involved in credit union leadership or advocacy—expressed confusion and frustration that they hadn’t already seen a post-crisis shift away from corporate banks and toward credit unions (which have the advantages of being not-for-profit, owned and governed by their depositors, far more likely than big banks to lend to small businesses, and not responsible for any global economic meltdowns).

It seemed that even as Americans were angry with Big Finance, they didn’t make the connection to their personal accounts.

Fast forward to last fall—when Occupy Wall Street was in full swing and activists were mobilizing around Bank Transfer Day, an effort to get customers to leave their Wall Street banks—and it seemed everybody was making the connection. Suddenly I was overhearing conversations on the ferry, on the bus, on the soccer field. People kept saying, “I really should have done this a long time ago, but I’m switching from Bank of America [or Chase, or Wells Fargo]. What bank do you use?” Local credit unions and community banks started staying open for extra hours to accommodate the rush of new customers. One morning in November, at my own credit union, I overheard a man explaining to the teller that he was considering becoming a member—but first he wanted to know if his money would be invested in mortgage-backed securities or credit default swaps.

This change, it turns out, was much more than anecdotal. A new analysis from the firm Javelin Strategy and Research found that, in the last 90 days, Americans changed banking providers at three times the normal rate, with 5.6 million people moving their money to a different bank. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/brooke-jarvis/big-news-on-bank-transfers

[gopiscrap]

1. excellent

[Ian62]

2. About time

More should switch away from the big Wall St banks.
In fact everyone if they thought about it should switch their acct away from big National banks.
A lot of the big national banks are insolvent.
Gonna be quite a few banks going bust / needing bailing over the next year or so. It will start in Europe and spread to America.
But a lot of the Wall St banks have European operations/divisions. All of the largest ones do.
Ain't no good if your acct is frozen for a while and you incur charges. Big banks are DANGEROUS.

European banks are being bailed now.
But only about 500 of 'em.
ECB (European Central Bank) lent cheap dollars to 527 European banks. Think it was 527 anyhows.
ECB did an accounting trick so that European banks had about 10 trillion Euro's more liquidity. (No more real cash - just more liquidity.)
Greece is gonna default on March 20th - next debt rollover. And the dominoes are gonna start falling.

[jillan]

3. I had to go into B of A this afternoon....

Friday afternoon they are usually swamped.

It was dead in there