Not since the Great Depression have Americans harbored so much ill-will against what were once called “the monied interests.”
This should worry Wall Street and the big banks.
The latest evidence: Bank of America’s decision this week to drop its plans to charge customers $5 a month for making purchases with their debit cards, in the wake of a customer revolt.
Jay Leno
On change.org, a 22-year-old Washington, D.C., activist named Molly Katchpole started a petition against the BofA fee that gathered 306,000 signatures in less than a month. Politicians chimed in (for better or worse) and even Jay Leno got into the act, saying on Halloween night:
One kid wanted to charge me five bucks to give him candy…I said, “Who are you supposed to be?” He said, “Bank of America!”
BofA reversed itself after rivals Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Sun Trust and Regions Financial said they’d drop customer tests of new debit fees. Analysts say this will cost the banking industry as much as $8 billion in foregone revenue.
In other words, the banks are giving up billions of dollars because people don’t trust them to do the right thing.
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Activists target Chase
Do we really want to keep blasting the tops off mountains, destroying forests and dumping the rubble into waterways, in order to extract and burn coal that is messing up the climate?
For now, the answer to that question is yes, despite vigorous efforts by environmentalists and activists in Appalachia to stop mountaintop removal mining. Some are behind a bill in Congress sponsored by Lamar Alexander, a Republican, to end the practice. Others are calling on big banks–in particular JP Morgan Chase–to stop financing mountaintop mining.
The pressure on JP Morgan Chase is coming from activist groups including the Sierra Club, the Rainforest Action Network and an Appalachian group called Climate Ground Zero which calls itself an “ongoing campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience in southern West Virginia to address mountaintop removal coal mining.” All are stepping up their efforts in advance of JP Morgan Chase’s annual shareholder meeting on May 18. They plan to release a list of the worst funders of MTR mining before then, and chances are Chase will be at or near the top.
What’s wrong with mountaintop removal mining? Lots. Here’s an overview from a [click to continue…]
