Banking in Encino and “Move Your Money”

I don’t read the Huffington Post much these days (too many anti-Obama tirades that sound like The Drudge Report), but one thing they got right in 2009 was getting behind the “Move Your Money” campaign. If you are fed up with your bank, you should look into this (here).

The premise is that the 6 “Too Big to Fail” banks like Citibank, Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo (as well as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have betrayed the public trust. If you resent their being bailed out by the taxpayer, their arrogance and their lobbying power, their capricious fees and credit card policies and their manipulated balance sheets, then instead of complaining, customers should move their money to smaller community banks and credit unions. We did.

If you type the 4 Encino zip codes into their search engine it pulls up the following banks who have ratings of “B” or better: One-West, East-West, City National Bank, Luther Burbank, First Commerce and Citizen’s Business. First Commerce even has a “Switch Banks Now!” link on its home page (here). There are no credit unions on the list since they do not disclose financial data but they are a good bet too (that’s the route we chose but all these banks look good to me).

It’s worth noting that Gallup says Americans’ confidence in banks remains at historic lows (here). There’s a sense that banks cannot be regulated successfully (i.e. broken up), yet letting them self-destruct might be even worse. Personally I think if we are handing out blame for the financial crisis of 08 then we the public have been just as culpable as the banks, regulators and politicians. We have allowed a mentality of greed and selfishness to run our business and financial sectors and it will remain highly unstable for years to come if we continue to believe that’s the way to happiness.

On a side note, we found there are some drawbacks to credit unions – there are limits to who can join, ATMs aren’t always easy to find and wire transfers are a pain - but at least we feel we have made our statement about the link between money and power.