A simple plan to get change:
Deprive banking and other financial businesses of the income they gain from credit and debit card services, fees, penalties and interest.
By taking a simple action:
Use Cash instead of credit and debit cards.
Monday, January 25, 2010 at 11:57AM Two great ideas for direct action that will get results:
How to stymie corporate political lobbying and advertising - January 24, 2010
By Martin Carbone
Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 11:18AM ...you will want to Use Cash and get others to do same
New York Times OP-ED COLUMNIST
Bob Herbert
January 23, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010 at 6:20PM We must be doing something right. The New York Times is against it. Chaz
New York Times "Your Money" writer Ron Lieber took a veiled mainstream media shot at the Use Cash Movement in his January 9, 2010 column "The Damage of Card Rewards."
I call it veiled because he cited a "boycott" of credit card use without directly mentioning that any organization, like the Use Cash Movement, was attempting to challenge Big Banking's substitute payment system as a means of profit denying protest.
In the piece, Lieber poses as a guilty consumer all too aware that using credit cards that offer rewards could be "selfish." He acknowledges that his rewards are, in fact, paid for through higher prices merchants must charge all their customers.
He owns up to the fact that credit card use, rewards or no rewards, costs an average American family, paying with credit cards or not, between $427 to $600 per year. At $500 a year that's $59 billion dollars in revenues to Big Banking.
Then, his dubious argument begins: "Bringing that cost down to zero means that everyone would have to quit cards cold turkey."
Whoever said that this was an all or nothing proposition? Nobody, but it serves the rest of Lieber's justification to keep supporting Big Banking and Finance through plastic use.
If Mr. Lieber knows anything about business he might know that if a profit center's annual revenue is $59 billion and their marketing budget is $7 billion, which it is, and it follows that overhead and variable costs are probably 50-60% of sales, it doesn't take much to destroy their profits. Rough guess: less than $10 billion.
"But let's pretend that a boycott is feasible," Lieber continues, "Then what?" According to him some merchants would keep the money they no longer have to fork over to the banks.
What's wrong Mr. Lieber, afraid the free market system doesn't work? Merchants won't use that money to attract more customers?
It get's worse. The next paragraph of this piece of supposed non-yellow, objective journalism begins, "There is no way for consumers to win." Really?! Unless...
"...merchants started giving us all discounts for using cash instead of cards." He goes on to use the all businesses are the same rationale with the phrase, "most businesses find this problematic."
With that he goes after the second part of the Use Cash Movement's base: merchants. He deliberately lumps small businesses in with Big Business. To people like Lieber, all businesses are on the same side and small business is assumed to support all Big Business goals.
Most big businesses, most corporate business, is what he means. If he would use that qualifier he would be right. Chains retailers and restaurants love credit cards. They have their own. They prevent theft. They're easier to handle than lots of cash.
Small businesses, independent businesses, mom and pop businesses, hate credit cards. Plastic payment use costs these businesses thousands of dollars a year. Their merchant fees tend to be higher than the big boys, forcing them pass along even more banking fees in the form of higher prices.
Would small businesses rather give their customers a 5% Discount for Cash or pay 3.5% to Big Banking? No question, I'd rather give that money to my customers, be more competitive with the chain stores, and have my payment immediately. If I'm a small business owner, which I am.
Then he makes offering the discount sound daunting, claiming that merchants might have to put two prices on every item, which is not required in most states.
Anyway, most of the roadblocks to offering a cash discount have been created by Big Banking. For example, you're not allowed to put a surcharge on credit and debit card sales. Why? Because it's a law the credit card companies and banks lobbied for even though it's a prima fascia case of restraint of trade.
Next, Lieber rolls out the almighty expert. This time in the form of, oh so, business and supply side friendly University of Chicago philosophy graduate alumni and savvy plastic user Dave Hanson. Who also taught applied ethics at Gonzaga University. My, what impressive credentials as a news source!
Hanson says he's not cutting up his credit cards. No moral hazard here, an "ethics" teacher says it's okay to use credit cards, so it must be okay.
Again, the argument of credit cards non-use as a means of protest with a financial weight behind it is ignored by Lieber.
Lieber seeks to reframe the issue as a "consumer" ethical dilemma.
Hanson states, "The marginal effect of my individual use of plastic simply won't impact the larger outcome."
And there you have it. No individual moral imperative, though that's not the question, because the system blows. The poor get poorer. You're off the hook.
Subtext to Use Cash participants: You can't fight Big Banking. You can't deny them their 3.5% of everything you spend. You can't send a message by telling the credit card companies that their $7 Billion to get you to use an expensive payment system won't work.
Don't organize "Mr. and Ms. Consumer." You can't boycott, you're too small; you don't matter. You can't protest because those few dollars you deny Big Banking everyday are peanuts and nobody will join you.
Small businesses shouldn't bother to offer the money they would otherwise send to Big Banking, which will not loan them a dime, to the people who really matter to them: their customers.
No. Use Cash as a means to an end is hopeless, you stupid little "consumer."
Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 12:58PM Yes, they want to mollify us. The Fed is going to close some credit card policy holes, but not touch any limits on interest rate. The President is yelling a Wall Street, but accomplishing nothing. The buddy system remains intact. Real reform is a long way off. Keep informed by reading these stories:
Consumers score a win on credit card rules - by Jennifer Liberto, senior writer CNN, January 14, 2010: 11:11 AM ET
Obama tells banks "We want our money back" By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer
Be informed but keep spreading the word and Use Cash. We need to be blunt and continue on the path to sending a message with our market sledge hammer.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 7:16PM by Susan Boskey
“And the banks–hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created–are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) Spring 2009
The Use-Cash Movement
The banking industry is an all-encompassing, global system. I like to use the Barnum and Bailey circus metaphor: If you want popcorn when you go to the “big top” and it costs $15.00, you have no choice but to pay their price. That’s what banking has come to be – the only game in town. As such, those who own the gold make the rules about money. We're all under the big-top!
“Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, (so) that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank... To paraphrase Clemenceau: money is much too serious a matter to be left to the Central Bankers.” Milton Friedman, American Nobel-Prize-winning economist, 1912-2006
A growing number of people worldwide are no longer fooled by this money monopoly and all the ways it works against them. When it come to credit and credit cards, the everyday family has been caught between a rock and a hard spot while the cost-of-living continues to rise and earnings since the 70's, continue to stay flat. For the banking industry, it’s been a perfect storm: They just so happen to provide the perfect product to fill the gap! The rest of the story is history. We all seem to know at least one family suffering under the burden of debt.
Despite coming new regulations designed to curb exploitive credit-card company practices, make no mistake, they are fast seeking to exploit legal loopholes to make up the difference. In fact, First Premier Bank may well be the leader of the pack.
"Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board (FED) to conceal its powers, but the truth is the FED has usurped the government. It controls everything here (in Congress) and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will." Louis T. McFadden, Congressman, 1933
Bank-issued debit cards, though helpful to wean many off credit cards, also have a shadow side. If your debit card has overdraft protection, you could get nicked $35.00 each time you use it when there’s not enough money in the bank account attached to that card. They aim to get you into the debt cycle every chance every-which-way they possibly can.
Deprive them the opportunity.
In a monopolistic banking system one option still remains…..use cash! The Use-Cash Movement blossoms today as a genuine online people’s movement. Writer and small business owner, Chaz Valenza is another “little individual” (as Buckminster Fuller coined) committed to making a big difference.
As the founder and advocate of the Use Cash Movement, Chaz Valenza has stepped up to help educate whoever has ears to hear the many benefits of the Use Cash message he hopes you will also help spread.
Below, I have combined some of my thoughts with his about the benefits. When we use cash we can:
Even though using cash is far from a new or complete solution to the predatory and debt-based banking industry, Chaz has created a useful platform with his educational web site. Additional millions of “little individuals” can now send an effective message of dissent up the financial-food chain simply by changing their money habits!
When it comes to money matters letter writing just doesn't cut it the way getting the bankers “where they live” certainly could.
Plus, just the personal benefits alone make using cash worth the effort of changing one's habits. It helps people to leave behind something priceless; their entitlement mindset! The likes of Chase, Citi-Bank and Bank of America might have to reassess their marketing strategies if you quit taking their fantasy-life bait. Imagine: We no longer made purchases with money we do not have to impress people we do not really care about!
I believe the Use Cash Movement could easily take the truth-about-money conversation to a needed new level towards the total reform of the monetary system.
Use cash to send a message to those who own the gold, to take back the power of money in your own life and to develop healthy money-management strategies. Pssst…pass it on!
Susan Boskey is an alternative financial consultant and author of The Quality Life Plan: 7 Steps to Uncommon Financial Security. Her alternative approach to personal finance is based on the importance of learning the big picture about money and wealth because traditional strategies alone have failed to stop the bleeding. To accomplish similar financial security today as in times past an entirely new model is needed for how to earn, spend, save and invest. There's no turning back once you're in the know. Sign up for a free eCourse to learn more at www.AlternativeFinancialNow.com where you can also purchase the book.
