Commentaries
Now raising intellectual capital
from Rolfe Winkler:
Move your money
Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson are organizing a big bank boycott. They want depositors to take their money out of Too-Big-To-Fail banks and put them in smaller, high quality banks.
They've launched a new website and have teamed up with Chris Whalen to give folks other options. Whalen's firm, Institutional Risk Analytics, has a proprietary system that grades banks using FDIC data. Enter your zip code and Whalen provides a list of high quality banks in your area.
It's a potentially powerful combination. Huffington has wide reach due to her media ubiquity and popular website. Johnson, once a portfolio manager for George Soros's Quantum Fund, is a successful veteran of high finance who's spoken out against the danger of derivatives and will head Soros' $50 million Institute for New Economic Thinking. Leveraging Whalen's data means the two can do more than simply ask folks to move their money. They can provide better options.
(You can read more about it in this column published at HuffPo.)
I applaud the effort and plan on taking them up on it. Some of my savings currently reside at a TBTF bank, earning nothing, and I plan to move the account shortly.
-
The Wall
