well, if Asteroid 2005 YU55 did hit earth......video

Which they are fairly sure it won't this year But dudes and dudettes if it did? Grab a 6 pack, a few doobies and enjoy the show via Pink Floyd We only share this out of our sense of eternal optimism!Add to Technorati Favorites

Bank transfer day, did it happen and do they care?

Bank transfer day was to be the day when millions of Americans would move their money from major banks to Credit Unions.  For those unfamiliar with credit unions, they are member owned, meaning you, the account holder, is an owner of the bank.  For the most part they also can not engage in the riskier behaviors the major banks engage in.  That being said, a number of large credit unions did go bust by loading up on high risk mortgages.  In fact, at the end of 2010, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)  had designated 368 credit unions as either a serious supervisory concern or at high risk of failure. Forty-one credit unions have closed since 2009. (From cutting edge news)


So we ask the question did 'Bank Transfer Day" happen and if so what are the unintended consequences"?

Apparently it did happen. To what extent we do not yet know. From the Wall Street Journal:

Thousands of people flooded into credit unions and small banks over the weekend as part of "Bank Transfer Day," an effort to prod depositors to abandon giant banks. But at least some of the big banks won't mind losing those customers.

On Saturday, the Boeing Employees' Credit Union in Seattle signed up a one-day record 659 new members. At the grand opening of a Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union branch in Pflugerville, Texas, the parking lot was so full that customers had to leave their cars across the street.

But the sentence we highlighted in bold and underlined poses the more important question.  Are actions like Bank Transfer day effective or do they result in unintentional consequences, i.e. Just make the Major Banks happy? From the WSJ article: