By They may be trying to play it cool, but more and more evidence keeps pouring in that the big Wall Street banks are feeling the pressure.
They’ve tried to downplay the enormous transfer of funds that happened around Nov. 5, a.k.a. Bank Transfer Day. In the five weeks leading up to that day, more than 650,000 customers moved some $4.5 billion out of big banks and into credit unions. The banks have tried to dismiss these customers as their “least-profitable” clients, but we know they’re freaking out behind closed doors.
How do we know? Well, first we had Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan whining that people ought to start thinking before they criticize his bank — ignoring the fact that we’ve thought long and hard about what BoA and its ilk have done to our economy and our environment, and that’s exactly why we’re criticizing them.
Now Daily Kos has compiled a list of “Ten stories of people moving their money, despite bank efforts to stop them,” which you really must read. It includes epic freakouts by BoA and Citibank when customers tried to close their accounts, bank managers calling the cops on a guy who was flyering outside their branches to get people to move their money (the cops told the bank manager, “he has the right to be here — please don’t call the police again if he is not bothering you”), and even a banker flat out admitting that “management is nervous” in a rare truthful moment.
Why is management nervous? Because of you. Because of us. Because of everyone who has let the banks know that we’re fed up with their profits-first mentality, and that we’re going to protest, move our money, and do whatever else it takes to change this perverse system.
To illustrate this, I thought I’d share this video that highlights some Chicago community members who are fighting to get the BoA-financed coal plants in their community shut down. These people are exactly what Wall Street is afraid of. Wall Street bankers are used to only being accountable to their shareholders. In other words, greed is usually good in their world. Now they’re being held accountable by a whole new group of people, and they don’t quite know how to handle it.
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