US congregations withdraw money from large banks [CNAU]

[Catholic_Press]

Apr 30, '12 6:00 am
American religious congregations have withdrawn about $40 million nationwide from the country’s largest banks, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup, as part of a cmpaign to make banks accountable for their impact on families, reports the Catholic News Service. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/cathnews/RSS/~4/uk7WCwe6gH4

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[Dale_M]

I think it is admirable that parishes are willing to stick up for the interests of their community. In this era of nationwide banks, I sense that local concerns are increasingly unnoticed or deemed irrelevant if those concerns aren’t reflected in the bank’s financial data.

Given the small size of the withdrawals, I am not sure that national banks will care all that much. To the extent that local banks, or credit unions, are still available, perhaps transferring parish funds to them are an option. However, if the problem being protested is related to mortgages, then I suppose the financial institution holding the mortgages needs to be engaged and not simply walked away from.

 

[JimG]

I think it’s a good idea to use local banks. Often, big national banks are more impersonal and difficult to deal with.

But I really doubt that a local bank will be any more willing to to carry bad loans that national banks. In fact, they may have even less leeway to work out payment plans.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think it’s a good idea to use local banks. Often, big national banks are more impersonal and difficult to deal with.

But I really doubt that a local bank will be any more willing to to carry bad loans that national banks. In fact, they may have even less leeway to work out payment plans.

I agree. And community banks are much less likely to receive any leeway from the government in doing so, and much less likely to get any kind of “bailout” or subsidy for doing it.

Still, there is something warmer and fuzzier about a parish depositing its money with a local bank (especially if one of the bank’s employees is a parishioner) than depositing it with B of A or somebody, who will loan it a half continent away perhaps.