Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. Move Your Money? (Doug Henwood)Hat-tip to reader Michael E. for pointing us to the lead story in the January issue of Left Business Observer (which I hadn't gotten around to reading yet), where Doug Henwood skewers the "Move Your Money" campaign that we posted on yesterday. Our introductory note to that post expressed some mild skepticism by observing that you have to *have* some savings to participate in the campaign. And we certainly should have gone on to criticize the individualism of the campaign, the limits of PC consumerism, etc.Doug usefully points out that the strategy behind the campaign is flawed because of the fungibility and mobility of money. You can't ensure that your money will be put to good, local uses by picking a local bank; at any rate, the banks that the campaign's zip-code-based locator suggests are not necessarily good ones or insulated from big banks and global capital. I did check my zip code in humble East Boston and found East Boston Savings Bank and some credit unions—maybe Doug's Brooklyn neighborhood is tonier than mine and has not only more banks, but slimier ones. I wouldn't want to face trying to be a PC financial consumer in New York City, even if I had any money to park. Doug's crack about HuffPo is on the money, but it's even worse than he says. HuffPo thrives on the paid labor of interns, in the sense that the interns pay for the privilege of interning at HuffPo, as widely reported last spring. Anyway, here's part of Doug's take; I strongly encourage everyone to subscribe to LBO and/or purchase the January issue go get the full article: The latest populist spasm is Arianna Huffington's "Move Your Money" campaign, which would have those of us with money in large banks move it to small ones. This touches on another foundational populist fantasy: that virtue and size are inversely related. Her website, which thrives on the unpaid labor of hundreds of eager contributors, even provides a helpful list of convenient local banks if you enter your zip code. Read the whole article. Subscribe to LBO. Labels: Arianna Huffington, Doug Henwood, Huffington Post, Move Your Money Please consider donating to Dollars & Sense and/or subscribing to the magazine (both print and e-subscriptions now available!).
Comments:
So what are we saying, the big banks have us by the short ones and there's nothing at all we can do about it? How inspirational. Maybe it's time to promote alternative institutions for depositors who want some of their money to stay in the community. There are community loan funds out there already.
# posted by
 : Tuesday, February 02, 2010 9:38:00 PM
I agree with the previous post. Every time I hear a criticism of the Move Your Money movement, it's always using some technical jargon and finance philosophical mumbo-jumbo to conclude "Moving your money doesn't matter, there's nothing you can do."
Hi GLI--thanks for the comment. I am ambivalent on this. As you might guess from my first post, I don't see anything particularly wrong with the Move Your Money campaign, as long as people don't imagine that on its own it will bring about huge changes in the banking sector. (I remember that I used to rather passively and unreflectively believe in what I now call "PC consumerism," until I bought my first car, and found myself unconsciously wondering what the PC petroleum company was—and then immediately realizing how ridiculous that was. Effective political action against the oil companies for their many crimes—as against the banks for their many crimes—will have to come from other kinds of activism. Doug H.'s article doesn't really tell us much about what that activism would be, though (which is why, I'm guessing, GLI interprets Doug as saying "there's nothing you can do").
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There's one other merit to Doug's argument, though, which is that the MYM campaign might rely on misunderstandings about money and about the banking system, and the campaign itself might reinforce those misunderstandings, and thereby make it harder to take other, more effective action against the banks and the banking system (or other economic activism, if, as Doug seems to suggest, the financial sector shouldn't be the primary target of people's ire). That makes some sense to me. But again, it would be helpful if critics of an activist strategy could point to alternative strategies, and explain how the alternatives are grounded in a better understanding of the actual politics and economics of the situation. —CS << Home |
