Why Bank Transfer Day (Today) Is Only the Beginning of Something Huge

http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152975/why_bank_transfer_day_%28today%29_is_only_the_beginning_of_something_huge/

November 4, 2011 |

On Oct. 9, Kristen Christian, a 27-year-old art gallery owner in Los Angeles, created a Facebook page urging her friends to move their money out of the big banks on Nov. 5. The suggestion hit a nerve. By Nov. 4, 77,015 “friends” had declared their intention to “attend” Bank Transfer Day.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that 77,015 people will be pulling all their money out of the likes of Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America all at once. Saturday is hardly an ideal day to get banking business done, and the process of switching over one’s account to a new bank or credit union is not something that can be accomplished — yet — with a flip of a switch. (Detailed advice on how to change your banking account can be found here.) And of course, clicking your intent to do something on Facebook is a far cry from actually, well, doing it.

t’s also not clear that the big banks will take a big hit from Bank Transfer Day. The usually sensible economics commentator Felix Salmon goes so far as to assert that “the big banks are blithely unconcerned about people withdrawing their funds on Saturday … I’m not kidding myself that doing so is going to harm the big banks at all.”

n purely numerical terms, Salmon might be right, but there’s a larger sense in which he is almost surely wrong. The simple fact that one ordinary citizen using social media tools can start a grass fire of protest that captures massive media attention and connects hundreds of thousands of people to useful information is an encouraging sign of where our society is headed. Every single person who actually goes ahead with a switch of banks is casting a potent vote in the long-range democratization of finance. Even if the banks shrug it off, people who go ahead and change their bank will probably feel better about themselves. Just because it’s a psychotherapeutic cliché doesn’t mean it’s wrong: Taking action is empowering.

TombStone

Oh yea "power to the people".


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wos-dDxpJlQ

they bank as a choice and that there are options other than the mega banks. Total $$$ may not be all that large, but it may grow to some significance over time.