On Ash Wednesday, churches in San Francisco announced they were removing 10 million from Wells Fargo

Occupy Wall Street has been in the lead, as has the Move Your Money project – its website even includes a handy locator that lists credit unions and community banks near your zip code (http://ow.ly/9ELQ6) On the November 5th “Bank Transfer Day,” some 40,000 moved their money out of the nation’s biggest banks, but according to the consulting firm Javelin Strategy and Research, the event actually had a much wider impact. In a January 26 report, Javelin estimated, “5.6 million U.S. adults with a banking relationship changed providers in the past 90 days. Of those switchers, 610,000 US adults (or 11% of the 5.6 million) cited Bank Transfer Day as their reason and actually moved their accounts from a large to a small institution.”

The March 2 Los Angeles Times noted, “Consumers fed up with the rising tide of bank fees helped the nation’s credit unions more than double their number of new customers last year… More than 1.3 million Americans opened new credit union accounts last year, up from less than 600,000 in 2010, the National Credit Union Administration reported. That brings the number of credit union members to a record 91.8 million.”

As a result of all this, CNN Money reported last November, “The nation's 10 biggest banks could stand to lose as much as $185 billion in deposits in the next year due to customer defections, according to cg42, a Wilton, Conn.-based management consulting firm that has conducted research for several of the nation's top banks.” Sounds like a lot, but keep in mind those same ten banks hold retail deposits of $2.04 trillion.

Nonetheless, public opinion and the post-meltdown, Dodd-Frank financial regulations have the banks and other financial institutions scrambling, while they continue to scream in protest and lobby on Capitol Hill against the ignominy of reform. On March 12, that $25 billion foreclosure abuse settlement was filed by the federal government and 49 states – Oklahoma was the holdout – with Ally Financial, Bank of America, Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Twenty billion of it will be used to give a break to military and the unemployed, reduce principal for delinquent or near default loans and refinance mortgages already underwater. Another billion and half will provide some small restitution to people whose homes were sold or foreclosed upon. But as the Associated Press pointed out, “About 11 million American households are ‘underwater’ on their mortgages, meaning they owe more than their homes are worth,” but the settlement “is expected to reduce loans for only about 1 million.”http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/16-3