The inevitable culmination of the Occupy movement has finally arrived: The protesters at Occupy San Francisco just announced that they are becoming bankers, by filing papers to form a credit union (for real — not satire):
Members of Occupy SF announced their ambitious plans to turn protesters into bankers by creating the People’s Reserve Credit Union. According to Occupy SF’s Facebook page:
The goal of this project is to encourage San Francisco residents, businesses, as well as nonprofit and city agencies to keep their money out of the big banks and to redistribute that money locally. Initial services will include micro-loans for the working poor and homeless, and subsidized student loans at low interest rates.
The credit union is being created with the help of San Francisco’s Glide Community Church and Supervisors John Avalos and Eric Mar. The group filed its paperwork and has already crafted a thoughtful mission statement: The credit union will serve as a replicable model for other financial institutions to reinvest wealth in their local communities. They will support microenterprise, provide educational loans, and foster community improvement projects.
My suggestion for the People’s Reserve Credit
Union logo: a “dollar and sickle” in anarchist black.The difference between the People’s Reserve Credit Union and the other banks is that other banks are eeeeeevil whereas the People’s Reserve Credit Union is good.
Welcome to the real world, Occupiers. The world of regulations and accounting and laws and audits and trying to meet payroll. This should be entertaining.
Of course, there are plenty of credit unions around the country already, and they usually make up for their small size by parking members’ deposits in ultra-safe financial instruments, to minimize the risk of failure during unstable economic times, since they don’t have the resources to diversify, as big banks do.
Will the People’s Reserve Credit Union invest safely, and follow reassuring business practices? Er, not exactly:
They plan on only hiring people PART TIME.
Why?
To avoid all the benefits a business must pay to a full time employee!
And they intend to hire homeless folks!
My suggestion:
Don’t put a dollar in there that you can’t afford to lose!
Well, this will be interesting to watch. It ought to be a much more tangible learning experience than college for most of them. If they truly practice what they’ve been preaching, then every time someone makes a deposit, they will redistribute that wealth equally among all shareholders. Because, you know, otherwise some might have more than others!
And I’m not sure how they would make any loans (or pay interest on accounts) since one of their issues was the elimination of all debt. Then we have the notion of homeless folks as part-time employees with access to and control over other people’s money…
What could possibly go wrong?
The field occupation exercise showed their social theories don’t work very well in the real world, this ought to provide similar empirical evidence about the practicality of their financial theories.
I wonder how much Warren Buffett, Michael Moore, et al will deposit? You know, to support them with something more than lip service.