[Peace-discuss] the U of I, banks vs. credit unions, and Occupy Wall Street

[Robert Naiman]

The U of I Alumni Association has recently informed me that whereas in the
past, I could have had a University of Illinois-branded credit card through
Bank of America, now I can only do this through the U of I Employees Credit
Union (see below.)

I thought this was interesting because, as I'm sure many of you are aware,
there has been some buzz around a national push, loosely associated with
Occupy Wall Street, to get people to take their money out of banks and put
it in credit unions.

So that made me curious about what went into the U of I decision, and
whether it was "political" at all, in a good way; and whether that could be
built upon to do other things.

Could the University of Illinois - and other universities - "divest" from
Wall Street banks, as a matter of policy?

Probably an outright ban on economic relations would be very hard to
implement.

But there are other ways to do it. When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
adopted a policy against doing business with companies that were involved
in apartheid South Africa, they didn't do so by means of an outright ban.
They did it through a bid preference. If you were a company that *didn't*
do business in South Africa, you got a 2% bid preference in securing
contracts. That way, if there was no plausible alternative to a bad
company, Massachusetts could do business with the company. This dodges
arguments that adopting the policy is going to incur huge costs. It also
says you're going to implement the policy going forward; you don't have to
cancel existing contracts.

Note that when Governor Quinn was State Treasurer, he adopted a policy that
the State of Illinois is only going to hold its money in banks that invest
in the local community. So, relative to our immediate political context,
the idea that public institutions should take responsibility for the
actions of banks where their money is held is not "radical."

What do you think?



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: UI Alumni Association Member Services <uiaambrsvcs at xmr3.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 2:20 PM
Subject: Program Termination
To: naiman.uiuc at gmail.com


**



On December 31, 2009, the MasterCard and American Express affinity and
sponsorship agreements among the University of Illinois Alumni Association
and the University of Illinois and Bank of America expired without renewal.
Under the terms of the agreements, Bank of America was permitted to
continue to use licensed University images, logos and marks on existing
cards until their expiration dates. The University of Illinois Alumni
Association continues to earn royalties on these cards through December 31,
2011. Bank of America may reissue cards without University of Illinois
logos and marks to its customers; however, after December 31, 2011, these
cards will no longer financially benefit the Alumni Association in any way.



You may continue to use any of these cards, other cards with University of
Illinois, UIC or UIS images, logos and marks or generic replacement cards
issued by Bank of America under the terms of your cardholder agreement with
Bank of America. The University of Illinois Alumni Association and the
University of Illinois do not endorse, sponsor or derive any financial
benefit from their use.










To apply for the new, official Visa card of the University of Illinois
issued by the University of Illinois Employees Credit Union, go to
www.illinoiscards.org.



Loren R. Taylor

President & CEO


University of Illinois Alumni Association
Building Relationships for Life
www.uiaa.org
------------------------------
If you would prefer not to receive further messages from this sender,
please click on the following Internet link and confirm your request:
Click here for www
link<http://www.xmr3.com/rm/1870944-5041802-2-3711-US2-D778/naiman.uiuc@gmail.com/HCSC611>-or-
please click on the following e-mail link and send a message with or
without any text:
Click here for e-mail <K-0-1870944-5041802-2-3711-US2-61A1A988 at xmr3.com>
You will receive one additional e-mail message confirming your removal.



-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org

Urge Congress to Support a Timetable for Military Withdrawal from
Afghanistan
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/feingold-mcgovern
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20111207/e399b0e6/attachment-0001.html>