Press Release
Dear media,
For a short time, the international press reported the call for a bankrun that we launched on Facebook to invite all those who wish to follow us to withdraw their money from their accounts on the 7th of December, 2010.
Since the publication of our call, people around the world mobilized to translate the text into their language to recreate the event in their country, to promote our initiative by all possible means and invite their contacts to do the same. Our call has met with a success that we did not dare to hope for. We are very happy about it and thanks to the personal investment of all those who, like us, want to enjoy a healthy banking system, equitable, affordable and accountable, we hope that over the weeks we can convince enough people in the world to finally be heard by our respective Governments.
For clarification purposes, we do not speak on behalf of any political party or from any labour union or religion. Our action is a civic involvement that keeps its distance from any form of hate or conspiracy theories that could be made on behalf of our movement, by others during their interventions on any areas of discussion, which is beyond our control. We only speak for ourselves and for no other organisations. We do not seek to harm anyone in particular. It's towards a corrupt, criminal and deadly system that we decided to oppose, as far as our ability our determination and respect for the law are concerned.
Why have we launched this action?
First of all, we wanted to raise public awareness on the functioning of the monetary system.
The overwhelming majority of holders of a bank accounts, savings accounts or even a pension plan, are unaware the way money is created or what the banks are doing with the money that 'they are given. They know nothing about the principle of money as debt. They do not know the reality behind words like "asset bubbles", "Treasury bills", "Hedge Funds" or "securitization". Hence the media in general make little effort to inform in an objective, transparent and accessible way to all. The only thing the public really understands is that most major financial crimes and insider trading remain mostly unpunished, but they are the first to pay the consequences.
Not only do we deplore how many questions posed by ordinary citizens on the economic situation remain without clear answers in your columns, but we also regret your lack of zeal in denouncing the measures that have allowed the global economic situation get to the point where it is today: a situation that has bought our heads of states and Governments to their knees before the rating agencies, trembling with fear at the idea that our currencies are deteriorating.
Our politicians can't meet both the interests of financial markets and those of its citizens. So, it is time to remind them who they were elected to serve.
Strikes and demonstrations are no longer useful because whatever we do, we are not heard. And whatever they do, we are not consulted. So we decided to hit the system at its core - THE BANKING SYSTEM
Are we aware of the economic consequences that would result from the success of our action?
We are especially aware of the consequences that the deregulated and uncontrollable global financial system will have on our jobs, our health, our education, our pensions, our industries, our environment, our future, our dignity, the dignity of the citizens of countries that the system has enslaved by debt that they will never be able to repay to better appropriate their resources. This is the fate that awaits people if we in the West do not take ourselves in hand.
We are aware of the role this system plays in the prosperity of industrial empires whose interests depend on armed conflicts, diseases, food shortages and poverty prevailing in the countries that provide labour and natural resources at minimal cost. We are aware that this system will never have anything to gain from a world of peace and prosperity and that continuing to entrust our hard and honestly earned money to this sick system, we make ourselves accomplices of its thefts, for its crimes, its wars and the misery war generates.
What do we want?
We, the citizens of the 21st century, heirs of generations who have sacrificed so that we may live free and dignified, demand the creation of a CITIZENS BANK- serving citizens, a bank that would put our money away from speculative fever, free of all financial bubbles designed to burst one day, free of operations that transform our loans & assets and use our debt to buy other assets.
We want banks that lend only the wealth they have. Banks that help small and medium enterprises to relocate jobs, & bank lending at zero rate. (*) Banks that support projects that benefit citizens rather than the "market". Banks where we can deposit our money, which will then create a peaceful conscience within ourselves. Banks we will not have to be worry about. Banks whose success will sound the death knell of the merchants of death, disease and slavery. On the ruins of the old system, we want to build a banking system that will no longer sacrifice more human dignity on the altar of profit.
We, the people have finally been awakened by poverty and despair afflicting the most vulnerable among us - pensioners, welfare recipients or working poor - and is now threatening what remains of the middle class & entrepreneurs. Even these are exploited as milking cows, and we now simply want the cancellation of the public debts generated by the sick system that we no longer want. We do not want our taxes, our efforts, our resources to continue to feed this bottomless pit. We want to regain the power to coin money and free ourselves from the guidelines imposed on us by the European Union, which was built against the consent of the majority of people consulted by referendum, not to mention those whose country of origin have no organized popular consultation.
(*) What the Islamic banks to successfully achieve by refusing usury for religious reasons, we can do for civic reasons.
To conclude
We draw your attention to the fact that even if we manage to relocate jobs, advanced technologies and machines have replaced human labour in a growing number of areas. They can produce more, faster, cheaper, and for these reasons, they create fear to those who wonder how they will earn their living tomorrow. This is unfortunate because since the invention of the wheel, technology is meant to improve the living conditions of mankind. If progress was meant to serve citizens rather than serve the market, we could make a quantum leap in technology development today paralyzed by special interest groups that are the primary beneficiaries of this system.
We already have the knowledge to free humanity of its needs in fossil and nuclear fuels and to produce and deliver drinking water throughout the planet at a lower cost, to produce fruits and vegetables, from ice fields to the desert. Poverty only exists on our planet because of the lack of political will of industrialized countries, subject to market forces. Pollution and waste of resources are the sad consequences of this obsolete system which we must put an end to.
We, the inheritors of chaos, we have a world to rebuild. A world where work is no longer seen as slavery, and lack of work as a tragedy because we have been able to rethink how mankind of tomorrow will ensure its survival, education, well-being and old age.
We thank the footballer Eric Cantona for having instilled the idea that we have taken literally. The die is cast. Time will tell whether we were right. (07/11/2010)
BANKRUN 2010
