One of the major gripes of the occupy movement has been that big banks have wrecked the economy and gotten away without even a single banker being investigated or prosecuted. Many people feel that this is wrong, including me. They feel that there are 2 sets of laws; one for the privileged, and another for everyone else. Big Bankers help to make up part of that 1% and every one else is the 99%.
Some 700,000 people have now moved their money from big banks to small community banks and credit unions. That's a good start. I hope more people continue this trend. What I am hoping for is that if enough people put their money into small community banks and credit unions, that these small community banks and credit unions will begin to be able to free up credit for small businesses, which the big banks are very reluctant to do even though President Obama has asked them many times, very nicely, to free up credit for small business. It still hasn't happened. And as long as Eric Cantor and John Boener and their other republican boot lickers have any kind of power, the american people can't expect for big banks to help out the small business owner. I don't know if it's even possible that if as the small community banks and credit unions get a larger part of the american public banking pie, that small business could benefit from it. I would very much like to know what economists might have to say about that possibility since I am not an economist myself, but rather, am one of the 99% who would like to see some positive change come out of the transfer of wealth from the big banks to small community banks and credit unions.
One other thing that I think is really wonderful about moving money out of the big banks and into small community banks and credit unions is that these smaller banks, at least I HOPE this is the case, are NOT playing the derivative markets like the big banks continue to do despite the fact that the derivatives market is so heavily responsible for what happened to cause the economy to implode. Big banks are behaving, as far as I know, as if nothing had ever happened when it comes to derivatives. They act as if that market is just peachy. As a member of the 99%, I see it as being evil and careless and that it if it is allowed to exist at all, (I don't know the practical reason if there is one, for a derivatives market to exist), it should be regulated to the hilt to prevent the type of implosion that next time may very well send the world economy into a tailspin from which it cannot recover. Moving money out of big banks and into smaller community banks and credit unions may be seen as a way of telling the big banks that, no, we don't support you playing games with our money in the derivatives market and that as long as you do, we will do our banking elsewhere. It's a nice way to remind the big banks that in that one small way, the public can have some say in the way the big banks do business as usual.