Your Bank Account Probably Supports Cluster Bombs and Big Coal

[Joanne98]

Your Bank Account Probably Supports Cluster Bombs and Big Coal
By Stan Cox, AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/49657/

Posted on March 23, 2007, Printed on March 25, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/49657/
What if you had a solid, reliable business partner who, you discovered, had been investing in cluster bombs, or coal and nuclear power plants, or destruction of tropical ecosystems, or loan-sharking or strip-mining?

You just might be in such a relationship if you're one of those 4 out of 5 Americans who have a bank account. Each time you deposit your paycheck, you build a relationship with a corporation that, going by the odds, is likely to be involved in all sorts of unsavory pursuits.

Short of stowing cash in your socks drawer, is there a way to keep your hard-earned money out of trouble? Maybe, but to do that while still taking advantage of the interest, federal deposit insurance, and many conveniences afforded by checking and savings accounts is not a simple matter. By closing an account or two, you can get away from Big Banking and its high-profile abuses, but finding a place to open a new, clean-and-green account is not that easy.

You don't have to be a Wall Street tycoon to play a hand in global ruin and local plunder. A modest checking or savings account at a major bank can get you in on some pretty ugly activities. Before trying to find a new, innocent home for your paycheck or tax refund, we'll take a look at what your current business partner may have been up to.

Big banks behaving badly

America's largest banks take in colossal sums of money every day, and they have before them a world of profitable opportunities in which to invest that wealth. Commercial banks and savings institutions have taken full advantage, chalking up a sixth straight year of record profits in 2006. But follow those profits to some of their sources, and the view is not so pleasant:


-- According to a 2007 report by the Dutch nonprofit Netwerk Vlaanderen, international banking groups led by Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wachovia and Bank of America (America's four biggest banks) supplied lines of credit totaling more than $8 billion between 2004 and 2006 to companies involved in production of cluster bombs -- probably the most vicious form of non-nuclear weaponry. The banks' customers included GenCorp, Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, Textron, Thales and EADS.

-- In February, Texas electric utility TXU became the target of history's largest-ever leveraged buyout, which had crucial backing by banking powerhouses JPMorgan Chase, Citgroup and Morgan Stanley. Intense pressure from environmental groups convinced the banks and buyers to announce that they would reduce the number of new coal-fired plants planned by TXU from eleven to three. Their eco-consciousness, however, was short-lived; they announced in mid-March that if the deal goes through, TXU will contract with Mitsubishi to build two nuclear plants near Dallas and build three additional nukes by 2020!

-- Wells Fargo & Co., with more than 3,200 bank branches in 23 states, has provided hundreds of millions in loans to Alpha Natural Resources. Alpha strip-mines coal in the Appalachians, favoring the extreme technique known as "mountaintop removal". Wells Fargo is heavily invested in oil and gas in the western United States, it has funded Burlington Resources' oil exploration on indigenous lands in the Amazon of Peru and Ecuador, and it funded a report supporting logging in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Oh, and Wells Fargo was also named one of the country's "100 Best Corporate Citizens for 2007" by Business Ethics magazine.

-- A predatory feature of life in low-income America, the "payday loan" industry has ballooned by more than tenfold since 1993. The Tennessean in Nashville fingered four of the nation's top ten banks -- Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wachovia and Wells Fargo -- as having played a crucial role in the rise of payday-loan shops, which saddle their customers (who average $25,000 in income) with interest rates reaching 200 percent, 300 percent, or even 500 percent on an annualized basis. Amazingly, such rates are legally recognized. The state of California, for example, limits interest on payday loans to 459 percent annually!

Who's in your wallet?
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/49657/

[lakeguy]

1. yeah, that's why i take those 0% offers and drop them

in the bank at about 5%. i pay them off before the intro rate expires and do it again. make about 3k a year after taxes doing that.:evilgrin:

that paultry sum isn't even felt by the big corps but i do what i can...

[skids]

2. ...not to mention the criminally low savings account interest

People who carry a balance in a savings account at one of these places with less than 4% annual interest (and 4% is being lenient) are basically handing these banks free money. Your savings deflate with the dollar over time and the bank walks away with the difference, you none the wiser.

Oh right, people don't carry savings account balances in this country anymore, I forgot.

(I still keep a "big bank" account but it has next to nothing in it. I use it for the debit card, my "fall guy" card for online ordering, to insulate my real accounts at a friendly credit union from ID theft.)

[Javaman]

3. I belong to a local blue credit union here in austin.

one of the best things about it, is in order to join you have to donate at least 20 bucks for the planting of trees. :)

Austin Telco Credit Union.