Another week, another banking scandal. If you’ve seen the papers you’ll have seen Barclays boss Bob Diamond falling on his sword and professing his love for Barclays, the bank at the centre of a scandal about manipulating interest rates. Politicians have been expressing their moral indignation that a bank – a bank, of all things! – could do something that wasn’t entirely in the public interest. And yet, for the fifth year since the banking crisis started, the media once again managed to cough up a million words of analysis whilst completely and utterly missing the point.
So what if Barclays manipulated Libor, the interest rate statistics that influences how much interest people pay on millions of mortgages, loans and other financial contracts? We’ve given the banking sector a monopoloy on creating the nation’s money supply, in the form of those numbers that appear in your account. Rather than getting angry that we’ve been slightly overcharged for the privilege of borrowing this money from them, maybe we should be getting angry that we’ve been put in a position where we are – collectively – forced into a position of debt to the banking system.
We have to stay focused on what the real problem in banking is. We need to tackle the creation of money, by private profit seeking-banks, for their own short-term interest. A system like this will never work well for society or ordinary people.
So here’s four things you can do to make a difference:
1) Sign a petition for an independent judicial inquiry into the banking crisis
A major, independent, judicial inquiry into what actually has been going on at the big banks will help keep up the pressure for reform, so below is a quick petition that you can sign to call for this inquiry.
Please join us in signing the Good Banking Forum’s petition. And forward this email to a friend.
2) Tell Your Friends Why this is the Tip of the Iceberg
E-mail a link to the documentary “97% Owned” to your friends and colleagues. It contains information that are crucial to understand the current crisis. Everyone who cares about what’s going on in the world needs to see it. Ask your friends to forward on to their friends and colleagues to help spread the message faster.
3) Read up on exactly why banks have so much power
This new report from Positive Money explains how power has shifted from parliament to the banking sector, and explains what needs to change to reserve this shift.
Read BANKING VS DEMOCRACY
4) Move Your Money
Do the simplest thing you can do – move your money to more ethical bank. Do not support the harmful activities of the big banks anymore. See where and how to move.
5) Save the date: Saturday 26th January 2013
– for the next Positive Money conference, near Holborn, London. This conference will be more interactive with more workshops/breakouts, and a drinks reception afterwards. More details to be confirmed; booking will be open around September time.