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French Bank-Run, Dec. 7, 2010
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| Kamka |
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/b.../07cantona.html
| quote: | PARIS — A Web-based movement is hoping the words of a former French soccer star are enough to drive a protest against bank bailouts and bonuses, and to hurt financial institutions where it counts: in their deposits.
Two months ago, the former French soccer star Eric Cantona called for a bloodless “revolution” against banks with a plan to do just that. Since then politicians have frowned and commentators have discussed whether the idea has merit.
On Tuesday, it will become clear whether bank customers are angry enough to act. That is the day depositors in France and beyond have been asked to withdraw their money in protest. While banking chiefs will be watching their tills, most doubt any protest will be widespread.
Mr. Cantona called for the bank protest in an interview with the newspaper Presse Océan in Nantes in October, around the time of strikes and demonstrations in France against the overhaul of the pension system by the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“Demonstrating in the street, what does that do?” Mr. Cantona asked. “What’s the system? The system revolves around the banks, so it can be destroyed via the banks.”
“The three million people on the streets with their placards, they go to the bank, they take out their money, and the banks collapse,” he added. “That would be a real revolution. The system would collapse, no weapons, no blood, nothing.”
“They would listen to us in a different way.”
Mr. Cantona’s ideas went viral and Internet and social media campaigns expanded on his call. |
What do you think about this initiative?
Here is their website:
http://www.bankrun2010.com/ |
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| slingshot |
| lol, in protest to what? austerity measures? greed at the corporate level? there is no reasonable scenario a central banker or political regime could cook up in a developed economy, or in this case a monetary union, that could rival the devastation that would ensue following a nation wide bank run. populist politics are destructive. it's a shame that when times are tough all of the nutbars with extremist views see it as an ideal time to push an irrational and self-defeating agenda. in times like these we should collectively pool our brains together to reach rational and attainable solutions instead of divide towards the extremes. |
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| VDub |
Same as all of our boycott a certain gas company days...
Nobody ever does it but it would be great if they did... |
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| exraver |
What money? Your house is mortgaged, your car is leased, your credit cards are maxed out. Last 30 years western society have been living in credit, you own NOTHING.
If anything, if you take out measly few grand, banks will be only glad, less overhead for them. |
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| feelgood |
| quote: | Originally posted by exraver
What money? Your house is mortgaged, your car is leased, your credit cards are maxes out. Last 30 years western society have been living in credit, you own NOTHING.
If anything, if you take out measly few grand, banks will be only glad, less overhead for them. |
this. |
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| slingshot |
do you guys have any idea of what a reserve ratio is? or how a bank actually functions? or how banks lend between themselves and the central bank over night to maintain these ratios?
these suggestions would be similar to telling a pitcher to pitch into the outfield instead of at the batter because the ball would than be further away from the batter and harder to it. the logic in your statements is the same.
apparently some of you aren't familiar with what the great depression was, and more importantly what some of its causal factors were.
by partaking in a wide spread bank run, you would effectively be ing yourself over, ing your neighbor over, ing your grandma over, and ing western society over. a bank run at the scale proposed is the financial equivalent of detonating an atomic bomb on yourself. why would you want to do that? think of the logic here. |
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| Kamka |
| quote: | Originally posted by slingshot
do you guys have any idea of what a reserve ratio is? or how a bank actually functions? or how banks lend between themselves and the central bank over night to maintain these ratios?
by partaking in a wide spread bank run, you would effectively be ing yourself over, ing your neighbor over, ing your grandma over, and ing western society over. a bank run at the scale proposed is the financial equivalent of detonating an atomic bomb on yourself. why would you want to do that? think of the logic here. |
You seem to be posing these questions to me lol, not sure why though. I am not behind this initiative and I'm not connected to them in any way... I simply found this an interesting topic to discuss and that's why I posted it here... :) |
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| jon jon |
| quote: | Originally posted by slingshot
we should collectively pool our brains together to reach rational and attainable solutions |
hah! |
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| VDub |
| quote: | Originally posted by jon jon
hah! |
We can't even agree on what techno is... |
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| slingshot |
| quote: | Originally posted by jon jon
hah! |
it's pretty sad that self interest completely trumps workable and mutually beneficial solutions. it's even more sad that acceptance of this has become the status quo in western society. |
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| jon jon |
| but that's exactly why people are protesting in the first place... the banks run |
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| slingshot |
| quote: | Originally posted by jon jon
but that's exactly why people are protesting in the first place... the banks run |
but it's a self defeating protest. it creates more problems with far graver implications than it does solutions.
what the people should be protesting is tighter bank regulation and they need to do this by putting pressure on their political leaders. the basel III accords were a huge piece of global financial regulation and the process got minimal attention from the main stream media, yet this is precisely the outlet and mechanism that could REALLY induce some positive change in the financial regulatory system. instead we get a watered down cocktail of regulation that needs to be much stronger and most, if not all mainstream media focuses it's attention to completely pointless things (in the context of forward societal progression) such as the location of a mosque in Manhattan?
I guess the main point that I'm trying to make is that western society is, without question, the most delusional it's been in the better part of a half century. at least with the cold war we had a constant threat that forced us to think collectively, at least for the sake of our salvation, and we were able to make some serious advances both technologically and politically because of it. but now without any sort of a threat present, self-interest becomes the dominant theme within our society and it becomes self defeating. the wheels begin to come off so to speak. |
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