Banks are in business to make money. They loan it, compound it, hold it hostage, exchange it, invest it and sometimes buy uniforms for the girls’ junior varsity basketball team. Now, banks are only as flexible as their highly regulated directives allow. We are lucky to have four competently staffed banks in our town, and wouldn’t hesitate to put all our marbles in any of them.
But there are huge banks that believe corporations, because of their sheer amount of contracts and employees, deserve low interest loans, whether those loans are morally right or not.
Forget about them. We acknowledge the brave bank we know of that announced it was divesting from the fossil fuel business, Amalgamated Bank of New York.
They’re not loaning to the Standing Rock Sioux, but they’re not loaning to the oil corps, either, and that is independent, hopeful thinking.