Mrs. R stumbled on a video today that needs far more exposure than it has received. Frankly, I'm not sure why this video hasn't gone viral. This isn't current news, this video was recorded a week ago. It shows what transpired when two young Bank of America customers went into a local branch in Santa Cruz to close their accounts.
Please watch the entire video and join me over the little squiggly thing and I'll share my thoughts on this video.
As this video clearly shows, we have two individuals, customers, who entered a Bank of America branch to close their accounts. Rather than politely closing those accounts, the bank manager chose to call the police, lock the doors and explain to these two customers that they "cannot be protesters and customers!"
I know there is a lot of fine print in those bank contracts that the "too big to fail banks" regularly require their customers to sign in order to open an account, but I do not recall surrendering your 1st amendments rights and authorizing the bank to arbitrarily detain you if the bank finds your political positions offensive, to be one those.
Apparently, I wasn't reading them closely enough! It now appears that if you happen to enter a "too big to fail bank" carrying a sign that the bank finds offensive, they can lock the doors and call the police with the full expectation that you will be arrested. It doesn't seem to matter that your intent was to terminate your agreement with bank, requesting that the money you placed in this banks trust be returned to you. No, instead you are labeled a "protester" and in the banks mind subject to arrest. Not only are you subject to arrest, but the bank believes it has the right to physically detain by locking you up inside of their institution!
I'm not sure, but perhaps I've missed something since the "too big to fail banks" were bailed out by the taxpayers of this country in 2007. Was there some law passed at that time that allowed the banks the authority to arbitrarily incarcerate people and hold them against their will until the police arrived to take them to jail? Was there a law passed that allowed the banks to determine what is acceptable free speech? Strange, I don't recall any of this!
What I do recall is a president who submitted a one page bill to Congress, demanding that the taxpayers of the United States of America, immediately hand over $700 billion, yes billion, to the "too big to fail banks", or life as we know it would come to an end. We weren't even really given time to sit down and discuss or debate this as the situation was so dire, that if we didn't act immediately the world would essentially come to an end. I guess it would be inappropriate to put in a plug for Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine here.
And what did we do? We coughed up an initial $700 billion which has now grown to amount that no one, and I mean no one, can fully explain because that number is hidden by the Fed and in the financial records of the "too big to fail banks". Just exactly how much money the taxpayers have poured into these behemoths, is a number that we the taxpayers are not allowed to know. We are simply to accept that this was all done for our own good.
And what have we gotten for this incredible transfer of funds to these huge entities? We ended up with the same gambling and the same huge CEO bonuses that helped bring us to the disaster of 2007. We ended up with these "too big to fail banks" sitting on a couple trillion, yes trillion, dollars worth of cash, refusing to loan that same cash out to small businesses who might create jobs or homeowners who are a little bit underwater on their mortgages but could keep their homes and continue to make those payments if they could just refinance their loans. But they can't! Because the "too big to fail banks" won't make those loans. And there is a reason for that!
That reason is extremely simple yet most people just don't understand. Those "too big to fail banks" exist for only one reason! They exist to return a dividend or profit to their shareholders! They are not the least bit concerned about the economy or the lives of everyday customers, they exist for the sole purpose of returning a profit to their shareholders!
It doesn't have to be this way!!! We the People can easily put an end to this. We may not be able to eliminate it completely, but we can surely restore the balance of power. Many people don't seem to understand that most credit unions are non-profit. They exist, not to serve the interest of shareholders, but to serve the interests of their members. Members like you and me who put our life savings in an institution hoping that those funds will be wisely put to use so they will be there when we need them in the future. We expect the funds we deposit to be used responsibly to generate a reasonable return that will be used to continue to pay us interest on those funds.
We understand that in order to generate those returns that we will loan out our collective investments to those who will responsibly borrow those funds, at a reasonable interest rate to invest in their communities to better their communities, create jobs and to earn a reasonable profit for themselves. This is not the goal of our "too big to fail banks" that we are still bailing out and who are now using ridiculous tactics to prevent their customers from closing the accounts and getting their own money back to invest elsewhere.
We do not have to stand for this! I urge everyone reading this, who still has an account at a major for profit bank, to move those funds to a community bank or local credit union and put your money to work rebuilding our economy.
Our government has no desire or intention to ever break up these "too big to fail banks". They had an opportunity in 2007, yet they chose to take the money from our futures to keep these vampire banks alive. We do not need the government to dismantle these banks. We are the 99%! We can do it one account at a time until they are no longer "too big to fail". Please, lets put money back into the hands of the people in our communities, those who can use the money and will use it to put all of our country back to work!