[FRIAM] (not) leaving Twitter

[Steve Smith]

On 11/17/22 3:28 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:
> Hmm, credit unions were designed to not be in competition with banks, 
> and so they don't get very big,h and don't have access to deeper 
> pockets of funding, and don't get gobbled up by bigger banks, and 
> don't get closed because their service areas underperform.

I don't pretend to understand the ins-n-outs of big-finance 
logic/regulations.   I am merely operating on a naive belief that access 
to consumer-level-finance could generally be served well as a 
*commodity* offered either by State-Run banking (e.g. Nebraska) or 
co-ops which is what I take Credit Unions to be.    If there is excess 
profit to be had in the game why not feed it back into the community (of 
coop members or locality) rather than into Wall Street?

With LANB in place I felt I had much of the best of both worlds... a 
*very* local but also stable, well-run full-service bank.  I don't 
believe that *most* communities have anything close to this.

I have kept a Credit Union account with an early IRA still held at 
nearly 0% interest for decades.   When I finally fulfilled my mortgage 
at Enterprise last year I considered refinancing through them for 
various tax-evasion reasons (and moving my regular consumer-banking 
there too) but only half-heartedly.   I didn't put my money where my 
mouth was... so I am now supporting Enterprise who I presume to be as 
much of an egregious Bankster as any of them, but also too lame (lazy) 
to really figure it all out.

> So when big banks look at their branch performance, they could run all 
> the branches head to head against each other, but the branches should 
> really be tiered into comparable peer groups.  A branch should score 
> according to its performance against branches in similar locations, 
> and according to its contributions to improving the economy around its 
> location. Otherwise the big bank is just strip mall mining and leaving 
> finance deserts behind.


We have enough food/service/??? deserts without adding *finance* deserts 
to the list...

I've looked (weakly) for opportunities to "invest" in programs where 
local microlending is key to their portfolio but have not found 
much...   there are places who are happy to have *donations* which is a 
good reminder that maybe I should just quit pretending to be a 
capitalist... if I have cash I can afford to lose (e.g. recent 
thread-bend on crypto-losses) I suppose I *should* just gift it to folks 
I believe are making my community a better place and stand back and 
watch the magic (black or white or grey) happen?

    https://farmersmarketinstitute.org/you-can-help/how-to-give/

- Steve


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