Appearances On Television And Radio

The Huffington Post’s Move Your Money Big News Page

Andrea Rock in Consumer Reports – September 9, 2010

Follow the money. Crooks apparently are taking that famous line to heart. At the same time the non-profit Move Your Money campaign has successfully urged many Americans to switch to community banks as a way of expressing their displeasure with “too big to fail” corporate banks, thieves are now targeting customers of these smaller community banks and credit unions with phone-based phishing scams. His latest wave of fraud directed at local banks and credit unions is no reason to shun them, however. We’ve found in some cases they actually may offer better rates and more personalized service than the nation’s biggest institutions.

Patrik Jonsson in the Christian Science Monitor – Sept 8, 2010

The NCSECU campaign is one way credit unions can take advantage of public animosity toward Wall Street and large banks and build their customer base. Web maven Arianna Huffington’s “Move your Money” appeal has specifically mentioned credit unions as a viable option to large banks.Programs like Another Chance! and other credit union perks like same-day check clearance could also pressure larger banks and other financial-services companies to be more innovative in customer service.

David Phillips for the Bluff Country Newspaper Group – August 10, 2010

Bigger may be better in the minds of a lot of people – even small town residents themselves that are enamored with the mega-stores in bigger cities – but there are advantages to doing business locally, whether it is with an auto dealer, a farmer, a bank or a Main Street business.Maybe people are finally getting the message that it makes sense to not only move your money to a local bank, but also keep your money locally by shopping at community businesses that reinvest your money back into the community.

How you spend your money does have consequences. Wouldn’t you rather put it into the hands of a neighbor who makes decisions based on the local economy rather than some out-of-town business where the CEO comes to the conclusion that the Toyota model is best for us?

Lee Fehrenbacher in the Wenatchee Business Journal – August 9, 2010

When it comes to banking, it’s hard to think of money as having grass roots. But in an era marked by billion-dollar bailouts, failing financial institutions, and fledgling cash-strapped businesses, a grass roots banking movement is in full swing.It’s called “Move Your Money.” It is a national campaign designed to inspire depositors to transition their money away from the large, international banks that received hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in bailout money, and into the credit unions and community banks that bolster local communities.

Pat Schmidt in the Redwood Gazette – August 2, 2010

Community banks can make or break a community. They can truly add to the quality of life, and they probably won’t be getting any of our bail out money. Being fair to customers is a great marketing tool for community banks and credit unions.
In our small towns this can also apply to any business.Money spent here circulates here and does everybody good.

Laurie Essig at True/Slant – July 28, 2010

Localize as much as possible. We must opt out of the global economy. Buy local foods, of course, but also move your money out of mega banks and put it in a local credit union, go see local live theater, consider a staycation and spend your leisure time and money where you live. This is good for the environment, good for your money, but even more importantly, a necessary brake on the madness that is globalization.Aleshia Howe in the Fort Worth Business Press – July 26, 2010

Worthington National joined hundreds of other local banks on the ‘Move Your Money’ database, which was designed to assist consumers in transferring money from banks that took government bailout funds into strong local banks.For the Fort Worth institution, the listing will add some fire power to a marketing campaign as well as act as validation of a solid local presence.

Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post – July 21, 2010

Arianna Huffington’s Move Your Money campaign handed consumers a creative tool with which to hit the big banks. It encourages them to divest their money from those banks and open accounts at smaller community banks and credit unions. Last week in New York City, the most powerful local union presidents and city Comptroller John Liu took another step when they let Wall Street banks know their response to the mortgage crisis is unacceptable.[…]Civic and labor leaders can use this model to let banks know that if they don’t behave as good corporate citizens, they will move their big money to institutions that do.

Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times – July 17, 2010

I say we try it. Face it: Congress isn’t going to favor Main Street over Wall Street. Everyone still talks about how dangerous it was that banks were too big to fail. But the lasting paradox of the great financial collapse is that it has made the big banks only one thing: bigger.

 

Lynn Brenner at AARP The Magazine – July 15, 2010

Here’s how bad it’s gotten for bankers: they’re less popular than politicians, according to a recent Zogby Interactive survey. And no wonder. After receiving a huge bailout to escape a debacle of their own making, America’s biggest banks raised their fees, posted record profits, and paid enormous bonuses to their executives. Meanwhile, most of us are still struggling to regain our footing. Unemployment hovers around 10 percent—and although the bailout was supposed to help get credit flowing, banks still are not lending to the small businesses whose recovery is vital to creating jobs. “We need a citizens’ intervention to reform our financial institutions,” says pundit Arianna Huffington. Late last year she launched Move Your Money, a campaign that urges Americans to shift their accounts to community banks and credit unions.

 

Dolores M. Bernal at News Junkie Post – July 8, 2010

Banks have gotten away with charging billions of dollars in fees to their costumers. With the new Federal rules on the banking industry, banks will have to get permission from customers about the overdraft protection on their checking accounts. Until recently, banks would slap customers with overdraft fees if the customer did not have enough money to cover a transaction. By covering the transaction, the banks gave themselves permission to charge customers.Huffington believes that big banks have gotten away with hidden fees that work against the customers instead of help them be financially successful.

Already some $5 billion have been moved from big banks to smaller banks, according to Huffington. The state governments of Massachusetts and New Mexico are also looking to save money by perhaps banking with smaller banks, she told CNN.

Consumer Reports – July 1, 2010

The Move Your Money campaign spearheaded by blogger and pundit Arianna Huffington urges consumers to switch from big corporate banks to local ones. Too-big-to-fail banks took taxpayer bailout money and then, the argument goes, repaid that generosity by cutting home-equity loans, raising APRs on credit cards, and refusing to refinance mortgages.Although smaller banks emphasize service and community ties, national banks generally have more branches and better online and mobile banking. That said, there are great deals at local banks and especially at credit unions.

E. Scott Reckard at the Los Angeles Times – June 26, 2010

It’s an appealing notion in an era of outrage over the huge bailouts and high fees of the big banks. Consumers are much more willing to switch banks than they were before the financial crisis, according to a recent survey by market research firm J.D. Power & Associates. Two-thirds of the big-bank customers surveyed said they would consider jumping to a smaller institution.It’s too soon to tell whether switch-your-bank campaigns, including the Move Your Money crusade undertaken by website entrepreneur Arianna Huffington, have prompted a significant number of bank customers to trade down.

David V Johnson at San Francisco online – June 22, 2010

Does that mean we’ll choose the bank that offers doggy biscuits and stroller parking? We’re certainly not going to base our decision on such trifles: to switch from a big bank to a community lender for superficial reasons would be just as lazy and as irresponsible as reflexively keeping our money in a badly behaving global giant because it happens to have convenient ATMs. In the past six months, I’ve pored over call reports, spread sheets, and court documents. I’ve flipped through glossy brochures, clicked through websites, and talked to countless people. I’ve come away impressed by Circle’s renewed commitment to small-business lending. But I’m not running my own company. I don’t share Kaselionis’s enthusiasm for TICs. (Also, I’m allergic to dogs.) Even if Kit Cole isn’t Mr. Potter, she’s no George Bailey, either—and she’s Circle’s long-term strategist. Kaselionis strikes me as a sharp, committed banker, but Circle’s probably not the bank for me.However, I am sold on moving my money. Com­mu­nity banks may not be paragons of virtue, but to my mind, they’re better than the alternative. Says Move Your Money’s Rob Johnson, “There are shades of immoral everywhere, but the ones who had trillion-dollar impact were the big guys. Aggregations of power are politically dangerous, and I think we’ve gone beyond the threshold of danger when it comes to our financial system.” MIT professor Simon Johnson (no relation to Rob), former chief economist of the International Mon­etary Fund and coauthor of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, agrees: “Anything that takes our resources away from the big banks that have caused so much trouble can only help.”

The University of Iowa Daily Iowan – June 17, 2010

Though it may seem a waste of time and an inconvenience to transfer your funds to a local bank, consider this: If you know someone who lost her or his to job to the recession, or if your retirement savings took a major hit, or if the funds that you had set aside to pay for college shrank drastically in size, or if you have ever wrung your hands in frustration at the latest jobs report, Wall Street shenanigans, or the sheer magnitude of the bank bailouts, and wished there was something you could do — well, now there is.The greatest benefit of more people moving their money away from the banks largely responsible for this economic mess is that they will be less capable of wreaking such havoc in the future. As hackneyed and cliché as this advice has become, Gandhi’s immortal axiom, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” is abundantly applicable in this instance.

Andrew Martin and Ron Lieber at the New York Times – June 11, 2010

Some outsiders have taken marketing matters into their own hands. Late last year, Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post, and some like-minded friends made New Year’s resolutions to yank money from accounts at large banks and put it someplace smaller. They also created a tool at moveyourmoney to help people find community banks and credit unions in their area.

The Economist – June 8, 2010

Whether fighting apartheid in South Africa or mass murder in Darfur, activists routinely call on people to take their business elsewhere. Arianna Huffington, founder of a news website “The Huffington Post”, wants Americans to abandon another unpopular regime: Wall Street.In December she launched a campaign called “Move Your Money”, which encourages people to withdraw their savings from Wall Street’s megabanks and open accounts at community banks and credit unions instead. This helps “bring more competition into the system” and bolsters smaller banks, which lend more to their communities, she says.

Tim Sheehan in the Fresno Bee – June 7, 2010

“It’s good for the community,” said political pundit Arianna Huffington, who launched a national “Move Your Money” campaign on her popular Huffington Post blog in late December. “We all increasingly need to support the businesses that support the community.”Collectively, deposits among banks and credit unions headquartered in Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties increased by more than $103 million, according to financial reports filed with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Credit Union Administration.

Veronica Moscoso in the Bay Citizen – June 2, 2010

The bank’s involvement with nonprofits and record of reciprocity with the community hasn’t gone unnoticed. Last December, the Move Your Money campaign started encouraging people to transfer their funds from big banks to credit unions or community banks. Their site provides a link to a zip code look-up service to help consumers find “risk free” community banks. The Mechanics Bank pops on the list of recommended institutions.

 

Tom Van Howe on WWMT-TV – May 27, 2010

The big banks, after all, are the remorseless ones who use our money in high-risk investment schemes that line their pockets with bonuses if and when they pay off, and ask taxpayers to be bailed out if and when they fail.They are the ones who have forked over millions of dollars to lobbyists to fight banking reform, and thumb their noses at national consternation with their greedy banking practices.

On the point of moving money out of the big banks, it is hard to find anyone who disagrees, but where to move it is a different matter.

Sandy McCollum at the Examiner – May 25, 2010

They way they put it, all the profits that the big banks make ends up on Wall Street somewhere, somehow, and moving our money to a smaller, more local bank keeps the money local, which is crucial in this economic downturn.Local banks and credit unions donate money to local causes, and they know what causes are in need because they’re a part of the very community that banks with them. They’re also more approachable to a small business that needs a loan to expand, update or operate, and because they’re more approachable, they’re more likely to listen and try to help. Sounds like a win/win situation! They encouraged us to see ourselves in partnership with each other.

Vale Jokisch at Triplepundit – May 22, 2010

Last December, Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post started a campaign to compel individuals to move their money to small community banks and credit unions, effectively boycotting the large banks at the center of the financial crisis. The gist of the “Move Your Money” campaign was to create a grassroots movement that would repair the country’s financial system by moving dollars to banks that were “more closely connected to the people and businesses who live near them.” By May of this year the campaign had grown so large that Huffington and others are now fundraising to create a nonprofit agency that will coordinate groups involved in the initiative and work to identify important policy initiatives towards this end.Umair Haque at the Harvard Business Review

– May 20, 2010

It’s a mystery why so many keep their money parked in big banks that bleed them dry through bailouts. Move your money to a better bank, a local bank, a community bank, a bank that hasn’t needed a bailout, or a totally new kind of bank, like BankSimple. Switching costs are low and the benefits are clear.Carol Kopp at Minyanville – May 19, 2010

Weirdly, it’s the one issue that unites liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. They’re all mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. The liberal Huffington Post started the Move Your Money campaign last year, stressing that smaller banks invest more in their local communities. But it also appeals to Tea Party conservatives enraged by the taxpayer bailout of the banks.Moreover, some state governments may jump on the bandwagon. Legislatures in Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Mexico all are considering bills that would move more state money into community banks, on the grounds that local banks invest more of their money in other local businesses.

Chris Hoffman at the Madison County Courier – May 14, 2010

The market crash of 2008 was, simply put, a direct result of huge financial and banking institutions speculatively gambling with our money in ridiculously complex and nonsensical ways that had virtually nothing to do with serving local communities and everything to do with making obscene amounts of money for their top management, no matter who or what got ruined in the process.However, there are almost 16,000 small community banks and credit unions in the country that exist to service the financial needs of their local communities and that did not engage in the unethical practices that nearly crippled the global economy (and may still). These small institutions are the focus of a national, mostly unorganized, volunteer movement called Move Your Money, which encourages people to take their money out of the “too big to fail” banks (the four above plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) and put it instead into community banks. The Independent Community Bankers of America describes community banks as “focusing on the needs of local families, businesses, and farmers” and “making loans to the neighborhoods where their depositors live and work.”

Tom Van Howe at WWMT-TV – May 13, 2010

It’s time to move your money.It’s time to move your money as part of a grassroots effort to break up the big banks.

I’m talking about the really big banks, the Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and so on, that consider themselves too big to fail.

Too big to fail, they say, because they are so gigantic that failure would cause disastrous ripple effects in our economy.

Lee Patton at OpEdNews – May 10, 2010

Despite the Move Your Money advocacy of recent months, I’m amazed at how many friends don’t know the benefits of banking with credit unions. Joining a credit union is easy and open to almost everyone. Credit union membership helps shield the community from powerful commercial banks now hoarding our money after a decade of gambling with it. For most of us, it’s in our public and self-interest to transfer savings and checking accounts from big national banks to local credit unions–first thing tomorrow.Unlike big commercial banks, credit unions came through the 2008 meltdown relatively unscathed and never required taxpayer bailouts. Credit unions didn’t suffer from vast holdings of junk debt because they didn’t issue bad loans during the easy-money, predatory financial climate of the Bush years. Born during another great financial crisis, the first credit unions were formed in the 1930s as member-owned cooperatives. Today, in a similar time of public rescue and clean up after private banks’ failure and toxic profiteering, credit unions fulfill the same mission: to help people save and borrow locally at competitive rates from people they knew.

Al Ruechel at Central Florida News 13 – May 8, 2010

You remember the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. George Bailey savings and loan verses the big banks and evil Mr. Potter.In this case, moveyourmoney contends the too big to fail banks are a danger to America.

[…]But the notion that local banks and credit unions might provide better service and security is catching on, sort of like the Tea Party movement, with consumers trying to be proactive and hoping moving their money will send a statement to the government that bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.

Alexandria Taylor in the Albuquerque Examiner – May 7, 2010

The recent vote to continue to allow Wall Street to win adds to an already growing frustration. Many every day Americans can feel powerless, but we are not. There are several things each one of us can do to make a huge impact on the financial institutes in our country.1. Move Your Money: There is a campaign to encourage individuals to move their money from the big banks into smaller community banks or credit unions. If enough people move their money, the big bankers who Washington keeps protecting will feel the effects.

Chris Bowers at OpenLeft – May 6, 2010

We are going to have to break up the big banks ourselves by getting people, organizations, companies and governments to move their money (check out the Move Your Money campaign). It may be a long slog, but right now it seems like the only way.Daniel Newberry at Jefferson Public Radio – May 1, 2010

The idea is simple and follows a long tradition of boycotts, albeit with a new twist. Move Your Money founders are especially adamant that we move our money out of the six institutions that hold 97 percent of the derivative markets: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.According to the FDIC, the five largest banks in 1994 held 13% of domestic deposits. In 2009, that number had risen to 38%. For many Americans, the biggest banks are now too big. The Move Your Money campaign gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Vote with your dollars.’

Mark Calvey at the San Francisco Business Times – April 30, 2010

“Community banks are true Main Street champions serving its customers, families and communities,” said Brian Garrett, CEO of Oakland-based Community Bank of the Bay.The “Move Your Money” campaign, which features an online video touting Jimmy Stewart-turned-banker in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” also focuses on the nation’s strongest community banks and excludes banks less than 3 years old, bankers say.

Jonathan Bilyk in the Kane County Chronicle – April 27, 2010

Across the country, a movement has sprung up. Dubbed “Move Your Money” and championed by blogger Arianna Huffington since late 2009, the campaign aims to persuade consumers, businesses and municipalities alike to transfer their financial holdings from institutions such as JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other large banks based in New York and other capitols of capital to smaller, locally-owned and operated banks and credit unions that dot the landscape throughout America.Underlying the movement is the belief that community banking institutions more readily contribute to the health of their communities, as they are more likely to loan money to start-up businesses and other organizations to grow local companies and employ local people.

Simos at UWSA – April 23, 2010

There’s a name for this phenomenon: “Move Your Money.” Though it started among a widely dispersed group of taxpayers dissatisfied with big banks and bailouts, it has since generated a number of useful, grass-roots sources for getting and comparing information about practical banking matters. As with any “crowdsourced” movement, be sure to corroborate your data with official sources, and don’t be afraid to check several outlets before making a decision. Information is power: use it wisely and your budget will thank you!The original home of the movement is the website MoveYourMoney. The top contributors here are opposed to the bank bailouts and make no secret of their desire to inform consumers about alternatives to big banks using taxpayer funds. They offer a variety of ways to search for smaller, community-oriented banks and credit unions by area. There’s also a network of supporters you can contact to get more information, and a helpful FAQ to give you context on why “moving your money” makes a difference in the bigger financial picture. With the latest news on Goldman Sachs just starting to make waves, don’t expect this to quiet down any time soon.

Malcolm Berko at the Daily Journal – April 20, 2010

The “Move Your Money” movement is a loosely organized grass-roots, ground swell that encourages depositors to move their banking accounts from the big banks like Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, to smaller community banks that dot the highways and byways of thousands of American cities. It sort of reminds me of the Frank Capra film, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. In this story, a community banker, George Bailey, rescues Bedford Falls from a near fatal grip of the predatory and rapacious big city banker, Henry Potter. Every community bank should gift a copy of this movie to each of its depositors.There are many well-capitalized hometown banks in Springfield where you will be welcomed like a good neighbor. Unlike mega-banks, community banks value your business, remember your name with a smile and will work with you if you overdraw your checking account or are late making a credit card or loan payment. And unlike the mega-banks that have all the warmth and compassion of a rattlesnake, a community bank wants you to know that their success depends on your success. You’re an important part of the Springfield community, not a microscopic molecule in a metropolis 2,000 miles away where auditors play Whack-A-Mole with your mortgages and checking accounts. Community banks will treat you like a friend, but step on a crack and those mega-banks will be all over you like a combat proctologist. So by all means, move your accounts to a community bank.

politicalpartypooper at Firedoglake – April 18, 2010

Here’s the what. When you bank locally, your money stays local, mostly. When you bank with a giant too big to fail bank, the chances that your money is staying local are slim. When you bank locally, your money is invested back into your community, back into small businesses that create good paying jobs and keep the local economy humming. When you bank with a huge corporation, your money is invested in huge corporate investments, like international building projects, overseas oil ventures, and god-only-knows what else or where. When you bank locally, you help your local economy, and that helps you. When you bank with a corporate giant, you bank nationally and internationally, and that usually helps everyone else but you and your local economy.If you want your local economy to have the best opportunity available, keep your money at a small, local bank.

The Advocate – April 15, 2010

While Alan Cumming urges people to move all of their money out of Goldman Sachs, the financial firm is sending the entertainer e-mail reminders of how much money it has made him over the years.Alan Cumming talked to New York Magazine in advance of his upcoming run at Feinstein’s in Manhattan about making it in the city on $35K a year, his favorite meds, and moving all of his money our of Goldman Sachs.

Queerty – April 15, 2010

Within hours of a New York magazine post going live, where Alan Cumming details how he pulled his cash out of Goldman Sachs after learning about MoveYourMoney he received a phone call from, yep, Goldman Sachs “saying they had read the piece and reminding me of the amount of cash I had made whilst my money was with them, despite the financial crash…” Well, talking about it helps too. Are you moving your money? (If there’s any left, of course. And that assumes you had any to begin with.)

 

Garrett McAuliffe at Mission Local – April 14, 2010

Mission National Bank and Mission SF Federal Credit Union are among the beneficiaries of a national movement encouraging customers of big banks to move their money to smaller institutions.What started as a proposed New Year’s resolution on the news site Huffington Post, the “Move Your Money” campaign has spread, a populist revolt against big banks’ predatory lending practices, the taxpayer bailout, and extravagant bonuses for bankers. A recent Zogby poll shows nearly 10 percent of U.S. adults have taken some of their business away from big banks in protest.

While many larger regional and national banks, including Bank of America, continue to report net losses domestically, the Mission’s two neighborhood financial institutions have grown in customers over the past year.

Erica Ho at lifehacker – April 12, 2010

Often, consumers head straight to mega-banks they’ve heard of, but if you want to switch to a more personal, local bank, you may not have even heard of any. The Independent Community Bankers of America web site will help you search for local banks, and the Credit Union National Association will help you look for local credit unions. Long used these tools to find several local banks he’d never heard of. You’ll also want to try CheckingFinder to compare between community banks for the best perks.Step two involves making sure your money is secure at said banks. For this information, you’ll want to check with money and government sites like the FDIC, BankRate, and the Move Your Money campaign. The Move Your Money web site lets you search for local banks scoring a “B” or higher in ratings.

Munknee.com – April 12, 2010

I’m happy to say that my family has joined the “Move Your Money” campaign. We’ve moved our money from a large, global bank to a couple of smaller, local credit unions and community banks. Community banks are typically more conservative about how they manage their money. I certainly don’t have to worry about them using my taxpayer dollars to hand out billion-dollar bonuses.I checked on Bankrate.com to find out which banks in my area are the most financially secure — a precaution I recommend for anyone thinking of making the same move. And you can google “Move Your Money” for more information on this movement. It’s not just individuals who are doing this. Cities as big as New York and Los Angeles are fed up and considering moving their money to local community banks as well.

William Hamilton at Providence Business News – April 12, 2010

For Kathy Black, making the move was a matter of principle.After reading about the Move Your Money campaign earlier this year, she transferred her personal and business accounts from Citizens Bank to The Washington Trust Co., Rhode Island’s largest independent bank.

[…]“But I got to the point where I felt the big-bank thing wasn’t working for me, and I don’t think it’s working for society,” said Black, who operates a life-coaching business out of her Cranston home. “We’re realizing how empowered we really are to make changes to a system that is no longer working for us.”

Lucy Lazarony at BankRate.com – April 9, 2010

Are you fed up with your bank?You’re not alone.

The Move Your Money movement launched in late December 2009 […] and is urging bank customers angered by the reckless lending practices of too-big-too-fail national banks to move their money to a community bank or credit union.

Robert Long at Kiplinger – April 8, 2010

Start with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s Bank Find tool to determine whether your deposits at a particular bank will be FDIC-insured.Then, look to BankRate.com’s Safe & Sound rating system to see ratings of individual banks’ financial strength. Go beyond the one- to five-star rating system, and dive into BankRate’s accompanying memo about each bank for hard numbers and further insights into the overall score.

Another option: You may have heard about the Move Your Money campaign, launched by Arianna Huffington and others. The campaign’s site lets you search for local banks scoring a “B” or higher in the ratings by an outfit called Institutional Risk Analytics.

Justin Fox at the Harvard Business Review – April 7, 2010

Consider the list of “10 ways you can fix the economy and build popular capitalism” that [Michael] Green recently listed on HuffingtonPost: Move your money into a community bank! Put your money in a socially responsible mutual fund! Sign a management oath! Agitate to get TV networks to include campaign-finance disclosures when politicians appear air! Avoid “companies that are all about short-term greed”!Okay, sign me up for all of that. (In fact, I’m in the midst of applying for a mortgage from Wainwright Bank here in Boston after deciding I didn’t want to go through a mortgage broker who would likely hook me up with some disembodied servicer thousands of miles away.) Still, it’s a bit underwhelming.

Stacy Mitchell in Yes! Magazine – April 7, 2010

Why are small banks and credit unions a better deal? One reason is that they really want your deposits. Unlike big banks, which have access to wholesale funding, community banks rely much more on customer deposits to finance their lending and investments.A second reason is that many small banks are more efficient than their big competitors. That may seem surprising at first. In many industries, more volume lowers costs, but in banking there’s an upper limit—a point at which a bank’s bloated bureaucracy makes the cost of doing everything more expensive, not less. Exactly where that threshold lies is a matter of debate, but some analysts suggest that the sweet-spot for efficiency starts as low as $500 million in assets and ends once a bank hits $4 or $5 billion. To put that in perspective, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase are about 300 times that size.

But perhaps a more instructive question to ask is not why are small banks a better deal, but how do big banks get away with charging so much more? After all, people have a choice about where to bank and free markets are suppose to drive down prices.

John Knefel at True/Slant – April 5, 2010

Move Your Money: To use another crude analogy, this is the “Shop Locally” of FinReg. The MYM folks are encouraging people to take their money out of the giant mega-banks and put it in local shops. If you’re looking for a narrative to convince you to do this, think It’s A Wonderful Life. For more information, and for ways to find community credit unions, check out the Move Your Money website here.Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times – April 1, 2010

Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post recently helped start a campaign called “Move Your Money” to persuade the public and businesses to transfer their money from big banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan to community banks. So far, it seems to be working, at least in small numbers: the City Council of Los Angeles recently approved a bill that requires banks to reinvest in the community.Lynn Parramore at the Roosevelt Institute – March 31, 2010

Move Your Money, the brainchild of Rob Johnson, Arianna Huffington and Eugene Jarecki, has taken America by storm. For anyone who thought grassroots action was futile, think again. According to a recent Zogby poll, nine percent of U.S. adults have taken at least some of their money out of the big banks to protest abuses and bailouts. As we have been reporting, state and local governments are joining the movement. Legislatures in New Mexico and Minnesota inspired by the campaign have proposed measures that would prioritize local banks for dealing with state deposits.Jessica Hullinger at Conducive Chronicle – March 30, 2010

The impacts of the Move Your Money campaign are surprising, even for its creators at the Huffington Post.[…]a recent Zogby poll showed that nine percent of Americans have moved at least some of their accounts to protest the big banks. The Huffington Post site has had about a million unique visitors, he said, and almost all of the zip codes with a bank branch have been searched using the tool on their Web site.

Lindsay Shively at KSHB-TV – March 30, 2010

From a powerful campaign video evoking emotions and images from the film “It’s A Wonderful Life” to everyday folks posting videos of themselves closing accounts at big banks, the movement has gone viral online.Community banks and credit unions are noticing, several seeing growth by the thousands since the movement started. Dennis Pierce, CEO of Community America Credit Union, says credit unions were started after the Great Depression because of similar economic circumstances we’ve been experiencing as a country and because people want alternatives to big banks.