10 Years on and we’ve had enough

The ten-year anniversary of the financial crash is fast approaching. For many of us, life has got worse in the last 10 years. The banks got bailed out, we got sold out. The government’s failed to fix the broken banking system. So now we’re calling for action.

September 15th will mark ten years since Lehman Brothers collapsed, sparking off the global financial crisis. After the crash, the government bailed the banks out with half a trillion pounds. Shortly after, they started starving our public services and the wider economy of investment, and this decade will be the worst for pay growth since the 1800s.

Ten years on, big banks are still behaving in reckless, unfair and neglectful ways. The structural problems with our money and banking system still haven’t been fixed. And many experts fear that if we don’t change things soon, we’re going to sleepwalk into another crash.

Enough’s enough. Voices in the media will be talking a lot about banks around this anniversary, about the impact of the crisis on the UK, and reforms in the financial sector since 2008. So we need to make sure it’s us, not the big banks, who shape the story.

We’re busy planning a big action outside the Bank of England on Saturday 15th September, to help us get the message we want into the newspapers and on to big news channels.

Positive Money is a people-powered movement of students, grandparents, economists, activists, politicians, journalists, dreamers and realists – all working together to build a fairer, greener, safer economy. We believe our economy should serve people, not big business or big banks. To make sure all these voices are heard, Positive Money supporters have been voting on their favourite creative, visual ideas for an action. Here’s how we voted:

A giant magic money tree – 13 votes

A financial crime scene with tape around the Bank of England – 845 votes

10 year-olds holding empty piggy banks to illustrate 10 years of lost investment – 255 votes

A giant tap pumping out sewage to illustrate the wasted bailout – 13 votes

To bring these ideas to life, Positive Money is working alongside other civil society groups such as the Robin Hood Campaign, Unite, Christian Aid and War on Want to help us make the most of this opportunity. They don’t come along very often, and we know working together will make us stronger.

We also know that our system badly needs reform if we’re going to avoid another crash, tackle climate change, and bring down inequality. Big banks’ reckless lending was the main cause of the crash. Yet ten years on, they are still behaving in basically the same way. And what’s even worse is that the Government’s letting them get away with it, and the Bank of England’s policies have only boosted banks’ profits and worsened inequality.

The media will be watching on 15th September. Let’s give them a story to remember.