How & Why to Find a Locally-Owned Bank

The velocity of the dollar.

Macro capitalism has given micro-capitalism a bad name. The purpose of capitalism is to create the velocity of the dollar locally – everyone prospers. Big biz takes that dollar away to “headquarters”. Here’s one way to keep your dollar in your town.

Hudson Bay Co. started in 1670 and was the largest landowner in the world for centuries – they are still in business. For thousands of years big businesses like that were always the exception, and our economies did not revolve around worshiping at the altar of Giant Corporation, Inc.

In the late 1800’s for the first time in history, giant corporations began to regularly spring up, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that the term “big business” became common place in the English lexicon.

Big business is a very new idea that many believe will have the same run that the railroads had. In 1903 the railroads had 97% of all inter-city traffic. Yet with the advent of the internal combustion engine, they were already dead and didn’t know it. In 2011, railroads provide 0.03% of inter-city traffic.
Giant corporations like Hudson Bay will always be around, just like railroads, but with the advent of the internet, nano technology and ease of travel, we are moving back locally. And that’s a good thing.

Capitalism always had the unintended good of “the velocity of the dollar”. I spend a dollar at the bakery, who spends it at the tailor shop, who spends it to buy some shrubs, who spends it at the local restaurant, etc. Everybody prospers. Giant Corporation, Inc. interrupts that process. I spend a dollar at Giant Corporation, Inc.’s local big-box and a good-sized chunk of that dollar is taken out of the local economy back to headquarters.

Here’s a great and easy place for us to start to bring the dollars back into local communities. Bank locally.

You can read why we’re leaving our giant bank and why we didn’t do it sooner here. We’re now beginning the process to look at which local bank we want to work with.

Here’s three easy steps you can take to do the same thing:

1. Find a financially healthy (4-5 star) local bank anywhere in America at this great website hosted by Bauer Financial– select your state and you will see only the banks that are headquartered in that state.
   Within 15 minutes of doing this, I identified 5-6 local banks that we will be interviewing.
2. Before you decide which ones to interview, visit this site hosted by Pro Publica to see all the banks in the U.S. that took a bailout. In just a minute or two you can see if any of your local banks did. I dropped one of my potential choices after visiting this site.
3. Check out your finalist’s sites, interview them to see which one best fits your needs, and keep your dollar speeding around your own town, city and state.

The move to “shop locally” isn’t a fad. We’re just going back to where we lived for thousands of years. Check out ShopCity.com and ShopLocally.com while you’re at it.

Happy banking!