On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation about the differences between the too big to fail banks, community banks, and credit unions. According to the Credit Union National Association, last month, over 650,000 people moved $4.5 billion out of the big banks into smaller banks and credit unions. How do small banks and credit unions do business differently? Join us at 10 or email feedback@yourcallradio.org. What do you want to know about your bank? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.
Guests:
Bill Peterson, Chief Credit Officer at New Resource Bank
Rob Johnson, a Senior Fellow and Director of the Project on Global Finance at the Roosevelt Institute
Click to Listen: What do you want to know about how banks operate?
What is the name of that school board candidate in Colorado your guest mentioned?
ReplyDeleteHi Rose et al,
ReplyDeletethanks for the show... I am sorry to have entered it so late and so out of left field... that said, I appreciate that you squeezed me in, even if I ended up sounding nutty... finally we really do have to question the whole edifice of banking and finance, and not just accept their existence and hope we can modify it through consumer choices... we can't.
Doug Henwood's point "it's still money" is to emphasize that even when you do move to a local bank or credit union, they have to "move" your money into investments, and those have to produce profits or they are being irresponsible in fiduciary terms. All the wealth we create together as a society is left in the hands of private bankers or credit union managers, who are given the responsibility for making the profound decisions that affect everyone and everything: what should be supported? What should social resources be dedicated to? What will prosper and thrive and what will starve? Under the current logic, which no bank or credit union can really challenge, the uninsured millions go without health care, the planet continues to be destroyed at a breathtaking pace, and basic human services from childcare and senior care to education and transportation are all supposed to "pay for themselves." To get social investment from a banking system (even a credit union-backed one) they have to be able to profit and pay back the loans with interest! Same for art, history, music, literature... without profits, or at least the likelihood of such, no investment, no matter how honest or innovative or local or friendly or well-meaning...
that's the core of the problem! There is no fixing this through moving our money or electing new politicians or buying the right products... we have to reinvent a democratic culture, a democratic life, that encompasses everything and ends our compartmentalized lives as "consumers," "workers," "students," etc. The Occupy movement, while still very nascent and not-ready-for-prime-time in terms of this deep transformation of everyday life, is at least pointing in the right direction...
thanks!
--cc
(response to your editorial on education in Cal.)
ReplyDeleteThe real issue which underlies the phenomena the article discusses is racism. The demise of the schools in the US can be directly traced to Brown vs BofEd (1954). Initially met with a "wait and see" attitude outside the south, and a "over my dead body" attitude in the South, the country essentially refused to accommodate the supreme court's ruling. Crawford vs LA Schools was filed in the 1963, (Watts Riot was 1965) but challenged in court until 1982, making it one of the longest court battles and last decisions favorable to the original 1954 ruling. In 1978 the court ordered desegregation of LA was to commence -- the same year that Prop 13 defunded education by property taxes, without replacing the revenue from another source. In short, the white citizens of California (who essentially are synonymous with power) were and still are determined to prevent people of color from gaining equality and opportunity in the State of California: if they have to join us publicly we will make sure the commons are spoiled, and there is no prize, while we live in our private white world.