There is a lot of finger pointing going on right now over the state of the economy. Governments blame the financial industry, banks blame the defaulted citizenry, and the citizens blame both. But the actual truth is that we all participated in this mess that we are now finding ourselves in. While it is true that investment banks never could have gone this far astray without government deregulation, it is also true that Wall Street could never have propagated these highly leveraged instruments without the money coming in from Main Street. That’s you, and that’s me.
When you put your money in one of the big banks, you are financing everything that they then do with that money. When you buy a stock on Wall Street, you are personally financing that company. If you have a pension or a mutual fund, even if you do not know what it is invested in, you are financing all of those companies with your energy.
The bottom line is that we, the folks on Main Street, have been financing Wall Street, its brokers and investment banks, all along. And we need to take responsibility for that. We also need to help our leaders make the changes that they need to make if we expect them to withdraw power from Wall Street. If we are to make a difference in these times and do our part, we must begin to align our actions with our beliefs, and we must re-engineer how the money works so that the criminal enterprises don’t get the vote of the people with their hard-earned dollars.
Things you can do:
- Take your money out of the big banks and put it into a credit union or a small local bank
- Invest in your own community
- Do not buy stock in a company whose agenda is not in alignment with your beliefs
