Bank Transfer Day

If you're not already aware, last Saturday was "Bank Transfer Day," on which everybody is urged to pull their money out of the Too Big to Fail Banks -- Wells Fargo, Bank of America, CitiBank -- and put those funds else. Most people are choosing to transfer their money to local, nonprofit Credit Unions.

I actually pulled my money out of Bank of America some time ago, and it now appears that a lot of people are doing the same. Something like $60 Billion was deposited into credit union accounts last month alone -- more than was deposited in credit union accounts for all of 2010.

And it may be that the banks have started to take notice. Just this afternoon I received a call from a local bank wondering if I was happy with their customer service and thanking me for being a customer. This vastly amused me, since I don't have an account with this bank (I sometimes do refinancings for them, so I think that I somehow got on their customer list by mistake).

And, of course, I have no way of knowing if the weird phone call I received had anything to do with people all over the nation pulling money out of their bank accounts. But I've never received a call like that from a bank before -- not even a bank that actually had any of my money -- and I'd certainly like to think that the banks are finally recognizing that the American people are putting them on notice.