Small community owned banks for the public good.

[eridani]

http://www.alternet.org/politics/140531/are_small_banks_america%27s_next_cash_crop/

Spademan thinks he has found the solution to Hage's dilemma. He hopes to lock speculators out of the Common Good Bank business by writing founding documents that require new shareholders to be depositors, and by adopting by-laws that allow each shareholder one vote on how to organize the company's operations. Most corporations grant one vote to each share of stock, a strategy that gives wealthy shareholders more power and allows speculators to rewrite the company's business practices if they purchase a large-enough stake.

Here Spademan borrows from a business model that has thrived in the United States since the Great Depression: the credit union, a democratically governed financial co-op that is owned by its customers.

Michael Sills is the CEO of Evansville Federal Credit Union in Evansville, Indiana, a small collective with about 7,500 members, all with an interest in improving life in Evansville.

"One of our employees here was at church, and she talked to Ruth, who is a social worker here in town, about establishing a house for women who have been through alcohol or drug rehab, a kind of transitional house," Sills said. "So we enlisted our customers and our members to help donate money and do bake sales and car washes--those kinds of things--to generate the money. I think there was a bowl-a-thon, too." Evansville's substance-abuse-recovery home is the kind of project that might not get funding from ordinary financial institutions.

[Raineyb]

1. This sounds like something that needs to spread out more widely.

It certainly sounds better than the current model of throwing more money at huge behemoths who ignore the needs and wants of its customers.

[IrateCitizen]

2. This is something that WILL spread out more widely...

Especially as those huge behemoths continue to be propelled along by little more than their inertia before coming to a final, ignominious end.

One of the more intriguing possibilities with these kinds of institutions is their role in establishing and maintaining local currencies....