Bye Bye Big Banking

After bitching about it so hard that some of my bitching became the bitchinest part of my live show, I am finally making a date to end things with Chase Bank.

I think they suspect it's coming.  I'm certainly not the first person in the country who's listened to the news for the past two years and then realized "Whoa hey there now, my bank beyond sucks. My bank is less like "a good idea" and more like "a desiccant."

This video does a pretty good job capturing the general feeling behind the urge to stop giving my time and money to these people, whose business model is so globally irresponsible.

So bank if you must, but may I suggest finding banks in your area that employ a "Not-For-Profit" business model.  To find one of those magical places, head on over to the good people behind the "Move Your Money" movement.  Nobody's saying that these places will wash your car while you bank, tell you if there's something in your teeth, and have free beer on tap at the ATM.  They might still be dicks, but they're much smaller dicks and can't destroy you quite as deeply.  This last metaphor is of course a light-hearted way of presenting the depth to which giant international banking systems can thoroughly dismantle not only your constructed life (they lent you all the pieces, and they can take 'em back now, can't they!) in it's physical/material sense, but your human value as well.

In a banknut, Chase, Wells Fargo, and B of A are so huge, that by their very nature as "entities," they damage and injure people, places, animals, and things, constantly, and often accidentally, sure, but with predictable regularity. (I PREDICT: ANOTHER OIL SPILL! Nostra-god-damn-damus ova' heah!)  Giving them my money is like saying "Yeah! I'm FOR senseless mayhem in pursuit of debt-based profit!"

So anyway I'm leaving, and this is the first draft of the speech I am writing to deliver at the branch on Vermont when I close down and forever cancel my relationship with Chase Bank.  Chase credit-card however, is, ah...well, just you never mind about that.  Gimme a couple years.

Dear Present Sirs and Madams,
Dear Security Camera File Footage,
Dear People of the Future Who Are Hearing These Words from the Past,
For nearly 100 years, our country and the developing world at large have pursued a system of banking that relies on debt to survive.
No more.
No more I say.  Today is a new day, and it is a day that I say no more. 
No more will my money function as a tiny cog in the greed machine.
No more will I be subject to terms and conditions that may change at the whim of invisible monsters.
No more will I passively bow my head and accept that money is more important than people.  No more will I stand by and throw rocks at a morally unacceptable house my money is helping to build.  Today I took my money out of this broken system and with it I withdrew my humanity.  No convenience is worth knowing that I am indirectly helping to kick families out of their homes, when my tax dollars bailed them out and they STILL charged me for being broke.

Today I say no.  I say no to Wells Fargo, no to CitiBank, no to Bank of America, no to all the For Profit Banks that survive and thrive on the debt of American citizens and I say no most emphatically today to Chase Bank, who implores me to "chase freedom," and "chase what matters," while systematically working to ensure I am never free, and that I never matter.

Thank you for listening America, and may something bless you each and every day.  

If you are mad at the banks, if you don't think they should have as much power as they do -- if you think these things and still give them your money,  I say think.  Think it through.  Think about what you can really do.  I did, and I did it today.