Move your money?

Local banks react to Internet initiative against large banks

By FRITZ MAYER

REGION — Most people are familiar with the continuing outrage against some of the biggest banks because of their federal bailouts and the fact that they helped lead the nation and the world to near financial catastrophe. What some might not have heard about is a budding movement to encourage consumers to move their money out of the big banks that caused the problems and into smaller community banks that are not too big to fail.

Four of the targeted banks were named on the Internet website The Huffington Post as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. In connection with the movement to move money, the website www.moveyourmoney.info was created where consumers can enter their zip codes and find highly rated community banks in their neighborhoods.

The whole thing was cooked up by Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post, and Robert Johnson, an economist who served on the Senate Banking Committee.

There is, as yet, no indication that the big banks are even remotely worried about the move-your-money threat, but there is evidence that it has sparked interest among the populace; the website attracted more than 8,000 “fans” on the social networking site Facebook within the first week of its existence.

And the story has not escaped the attention of local bankers.

Wayne Zanetti, president of First National Bank of Jeffersonville, said, “I love it.” He said the story illustrates some of the differences between the huge financial banks and local banks like Jeff. “We’re in the community, we reinvest in the community, we make donations and sponsor events. A lot of banks say ‘we’re your neighbors,’ but we are your neighbors and we act like neighbors,” he said.

Asked if he thought this movement could make a difference to the bottom line of the big banks, Zanetti said that sometimes small movements snowball into bigger ones and do have an impact.

Glenn Sutherland, president and CEO of Catskill Hudson Bank, heard about the story on the news and went to the website, entered his zip code and said, “I was pleased to find that our bank was listed.” He didn’t comment directly about whether this story would have any impact on the big banks, but he did say that during the whole banking crises his bank continued to have funds available for loans, and has increased the bank’s loan portfolio.

Mark Graziadio, vice president of marketing for the Honesdale National Bank, said the bank was aware of the story, but was not necessarily promoting it. He said that the bank does recognize that smaller community banks did not help cause the financial crises but are helping to pay for the fix, with, for instance, significantly increased payments to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

But, he said, he didn’t think anything was served by finger-pointing. However, the bank is promoting the way it does business in an effort to convince consumers to give the bank a try.