Empty The Banks Day
Jenny Diski
Damn, I'm enraptured, yes, enraptured, at Eric Cantona's suggestion that everyone take their money out of the banks. A wonderful, and possibly even serious (it's hard to tell from the English translation of the Belgian French) website, Bankrun 2010, set up by a screenwriter and an actor, has now set aside 7 December as International Take Your Money Home With You Day:
We, the people have finally been awakened by poverty and despair afflicting the most vulnerable among us - pensioners, welfare recipients or working poor - and is now threatening what remains of the middle class & entrepreneurs. Even these are exploited as milking cows, and we now simply want the cancellation of the public debts generated by the sick system that we no longer want. We do not want our taxes, our efforts, our resources to continue to feed this bottomless pit. We want to regain the power to coin money and free ourselves from the guidelines imposed on us by the European Union, which was built against the consent of the majority of people consulted by referendum, not to mention those whose country of origin have no organized popular consultation.
Yes, it is so, who wouldn't want and not want all that? Especially I want to regain the power to coin money.
Ok, so the result of a mass withdrawal of funds from the banks might a) cause civilisation to collapse and bring on Armageddon; b) result in governments giving even more billions of billions to the banks to prevent them from failing for fear of a) occurring and then telling us, the milking cows, that we've got an even more terrible debt problem than we had on 6 December; c) cause no end of hilarity (and perhaps, on the bright side, apoplexy) in the investment bankers who couldn't give a toss what we do with our paltry savings; d) make playing Monopoly much more fun with all the Bank of England notes we'll have lying around; and e) put house breakers and locksmiths up into the supertax bracket.
But wouldn't it be fun?
Comments
-
25 November 2010
at
1:47pm
outofdate
says:
Speaking as someone whose balance of account is 84 p, in short: no.
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25 November 2010
at
6:02pm
A.J.P. Crown
says:
@
outofdate
Banks do seem unnecessary, but Eric Cantona will be using wheelbarrows, won't he?
-
25 November 2010
at
6:48pm
Eric's mattress is going to be up near the ceiling.
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25 November 2010
at
3:59pm
daveboy
says:
Well, yes, it might be an amusing little ruse, but it would also send a symbolic message to the composite banks that there is dissatisfaction with their activities. So, we might have a template of a letter which explains why we are changing our accounts which would be communicated (with personalization) to the bank. Barclays would then understand that its customers were not happy about the previous activities of its subsidiary in Zimbabwe, the appointment of its new CEO, or BarCap's exploits. The money might be piddling, but the symbolic message would be voiced. It could be co-ordinated by 38Degrees or by the unions (which, I hope, bank with the Co-op).
-
26 November 2010
at
12:36pm
CasaCaliente
says:
Ooh, aah, meejah tart...
-
27 November 2010
at
12:26pm
Joe Morison
says:
The trouble is that the money isn't in the banks, it's a fiction that exists only as long as we believe in it. Call it's bluff and it will disappear, the rich would lose the most but we'd all be fucked.
-
27 November 2010
at
8:40pm
Geoff Roberts
says:
@
Joe Morison
You've got it, Joe. There is no money in the banks, apart from a few notes they keep to push at us out of the slot. The notes come from the cashiers at Tesco who have to drop it in every night, so withdrawing money just won't work.
-
29 November 2010
at
10:22pm
V07768198309
says:
Le Run on The Bank.
-
3 December 2010
at
7:12pm
V07768198309
says:
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-
7 December 2010
at
4:41pm
A.J.P. Crown
says:
@
V07768198309
So, V07768198309, what happened? (Apart from nothing, that is.)
Read moreNor is there a need to leave the money vulnerable to the criminal sorority or fraternity. You could place it in an ethical bank (such as, but not exclusively, the Co-op). Actually, that's what I did a few years (moved to the Co-op Bank) when the amorality of the commercial banks became evident.
To make us more effective I will particularly focus my efforts on the French bank which is the most fragile in defence due to its position in the derivatives markets, Société Générale.
I don't care what you think as long as you keep talking of the soft lead!
I am not a man, I'm Cantona.
Attention! BankRun 2010:
BankRun 2010 is a mass cash withdrawals from the banks. It is initiated by retired football player Eric Cantona, organised on the Internet by a network of Facebook events and has attracted an unduly high attention from the media.
I thought as many others that the movement initiated by Eric Cantona was spontaneous and naive and thought that I could hang myself to it in order to establish La Nouvelle Économie After a Skype discussion with Géraldine Feuillien I came to the conclusion that it was a movement whose brain manipulator is still unknown but whose purpose is to establish an economic system probably fascist that will emerge by terror rather than a movement that will foster the economic interests of each of us.
Underestimating, on the short and medium run, the magnitude of this movement, its infamous character and the power of its sponsors would be suicidal.
The page of our community contains precious instructions concerning measures to be taken before December 7 to preserve your life savings.
La Nouvelle Économie.
http://post-crash.com/ea/attention/
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