People Demand 'Banks for the Common Good' to Overthrow Multinational Behemoths

[eridani]

The report, called "Banking for the Common Good: Laying the foundations of safe, sustainable, stakeholder banking in Scotland," was the result of a collaboration between the social and economic justice groups New Economics Foundation, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Move Your Money and Common Weal.

"Scotland’s banking system is unstable and unfit for purpose," the report begins. It goes on to paint a woeful picture of the effects of corporate banking on Scottish society:

Our banks are not providing sufficient funds for much-needed infrastructure. Our banking system is structurally unable to fund “patient capital”, i.e. low-return but potentially risky investments, like those which are needed to stimulate the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy. Instead, billions are channelled into property, inflating asset prices, as well as unsustainable industries such as coal mining, the manufacture of nuclear weapons, and speculation on food prices, a practice which is fuelling global malnutrition.

Friends of the Earth Scotland argues, "We need to move away from highly concentrated, profit-driven banking to an ecosystem of institutions which are structurally designed to work for the common good."

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The report notes that in most other developed countries, people keep their money in small, local banks (or credit unions) in higher numbers than in the U.K. But Scotland's particularly severe over-reliance on multinational conglomerates, on the other hand, results in a system "locked into a cycle of fines, bailouts and crisis," the report argues.

"We really want to get across the message that Scotland could create a really powerful, people-centred banking system within the powers it already has and that this could be a really big, really transformative project for a Scottish Government," Robin McAlpine, director of Common Weal, said of the report. "It is the kind of project future generations would thank us for."