A few years back when Occupy was all the rage, the move your money campaign (https://ilsr.org/tag/move-your-money/) taught me to think about my personal values and how that interacted with my personal banking. I mean, banking sounds so neutral doesn't it? It seems like something we do outside of our daily living, where we make all of our moral decisions.
Then I realized that banking is a value-laden activity. Now it seems obvious, but before I was oblivious to this fact. I'd like to make the case for moving your money to a credit union, as our family has done. More below.

My family and I live in a small village - 3,500 people - far enough outside of Ottawa to be rural.
There are four banking options.
The first two are branches of the big Canadian banks, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Scotiabank.
The second is Banque Nationale, the biggest Quebec bank - we live fairly close to the Ontario and Quebec border.
The fourth is a credit union, Desjardins, which is huge in Quebec and with which the Ontario credit unions are affiliated.

Credit unions are a form of co-operative organization. Here is a c99 series on Co-ops 101: http://caucus99percent.com/content/resilience-co-ops-101-introduction-co...
I believe the organizational form of the co-operative must and will be the centre-piece of a new economy; one based on real capitalism,
one rooted in co-operation (rather than the cut-throat, beggar-thy-neighbour, crony capitalism we have now),
and vested in strong local economies.

The corporation has no place in the human future: it is a sociopathic invention by pathologically greedy people to rob society blind.

Co-operatives are based on seven principles:

1. voluntary and open membership,
2. democratic member control,
3. member economic participation,
4. autonomy and independence,
5. education, training, and information,
6. co-operation among co-operatives, and
7. concern for community

Even without elaborate on these, one can easily see how such principles would lead to a different way of organizing and acting than that of a corporation.

The large corporations have completely lost contact with the local communities for which they are supposed to provide banking services. Their main profits come from gambling on the global financial casino created by the destruction of financial regulations since the Carter presidency.

According to Amy Cortese's book Locavesting (about which, more soon),

99 percent of the trading on global stock markets now have nothing to do with creative capital raising for value creating companies.

Canadian banks are still more closely regulated but follow the same trend.

I wanted to remove my small personal finances from this casino.
http://moveyourmoney.org.uk/
One, I do not believe that global banks are moral enterprises worth supporting.
I believe we will experience a far bigger financial crash than that of 2008, and soon. I do not believe the big banks will ever return to lending to value creating enterprises.
Two, I believe that a credit union, as a co-operative form of banking invested in the local and regional community, is far more resilient and worth supporting.

And so we moved our small personal finances from BMO to Desjardins' Nouvel-Horizon branch in the village of Casselman. Here's my bank :=) Really, it is my bank.

(www.desjardins.com)
We are not only clients, but members with a voting share and a small profit share.
We made the arrangements two weeks ago to bring over our mortgage in July when the term expires. w00t!
There's a huge difference in mindset between being a client of a big bank and a client-member of a credit union. I know that my deposits will form part of the security for loans to local individuals and companies in this area. I feel like more of an economic stakeholder in the local economy of this area.

Well, what do you think? Could you do something similar? Comments are most welcome.
Peace be with us, if we do the moral math on our personal banking,
gerrit