2010-12-01

When Eric Cantona speaks Finance

The Former footballer Eric Cantona has called on a new form of direct protest - a mass cash withdrawal - to bring down the banks. So what would happen if everyone tried to withdraw their savings? From the footballer who once kung-fu kicked an abusive fan, a new form of direct action without any violence. Take your money out of the banks and spark their collapse, says Eric Cantona, in advice to the students and public sector workers holding protests in France and the UK."We must go to the bank. In this case there would be a real revolution," says the French former Manchester United star in a newspaper interview that has been filmed and widely viewed on YouTube. "It's not complicated. Instead of going on the streets and driving kilometres by car you simply go to the bank in your country and withdraw your money, and if there are a lot of people withdrawing their money the system collapses. No weapons, no blood, or anything like that."
So how effective would this form of protest be? In the very unlikely circumstance of everyone heeding Cantona's call, there are obvious practical hurdles preventing that number of people getting to cashpoints or queueing up in branches to withdraw their savings.But setting those aside, the banks would need to find more cash, because only about 5-10% of people's savings are kept in banks' tills. The rest is lent out or invested."Banks only keep a small fraction of their deposits as cash, so the cash machines would run out and cash in the branches would run out," says Richard Wellings, deputy editorial director of the Institute of Economic Affairs."They could go to the Bank of England [for some cash] or they could sell assets to release cash but they probably wouldn't bother because it would just be a temporary blip."Although some branches may have to close, it would be very different from a conventional run on a bank because depositors would know it was related to a protest and not an underlying problem with the bank, so confidence would not be hit in the same way, says Mr Wellings. Furthermore, all deposits up to £50,000 are government-guaranteed, through the protection of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, so that would help strengthen confidence and prevent a panic. All their digital transfers would carry on as normal, this would just affect the physical payments of cash. These could be rationed or temporarily halted. "The only effect it would have is to inconvenience a lot of people when they go to the cash machine and try to withdraw their money but find there's no cash there. But it would not cause the collapse of the banking system. Notwithstanding the big problems, I can't see it having much of an effect in reality." When there is a run on a single bank for reasons of confidence, then the government can step in, as it did for Northern Rock in 2007. But if there was ever a collective panic sparked by a mass withdrawal against all the banks, then the consequences are far more serious. In 2001 during the Argentinian economic crisis, large numbers of people began taking their cash out of the banks, so all bank accounts were frozen for months.
If we will listen to the suggestion of Cantona, we will not be surprised to see soon an international committeeformed by Zidane, Cantona, Roberto Carlo, Maldini and Messi to resolve the finnacial global crash.

2 comments:

  1. ___________________________________________

    Attention! BankRun 2010:

    BankRun 2010 is a mass cash withdrawals from the banks. initiated by retired football player Eric Cantona. It is organised on the Internet by a network of Facebook events and has attracted the attention of the media

    I thought as many others that the movement initiated by Eric Cantona was spontaneous and naive and thought that I could hang myself to it in order to establish La Nouvelle Économie. After a Skype discussion with Géraldine Feuillien I came to the conclusion that it was a movement whose brain manipulator is still unknown but whose purpose is to establish an economic system probably fascist that will emerge by terror rather than a movement that will foster the economic interests of each of us.

    The page of our community contains precious instructions concerning measures to be taken before December 7 to preserve your life savings.

    La Nouvelle Économie

    ___________________________________________

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  2. L'appel à vider les banques inspiré par Eric Cantona a fait un "flop": les milliers d'internautes séduits par l'initiative n'ont pas mis leur menace à exécution, tandis que l'ex-star du foot a effectué "un retrait bancaire symbolique", à l'écart des journalistes.
    Une vingtaine de journalistes ont attendu toute la journée de mardi la venue de l'ancienne star du ballon rond à l'agence BNP Paribas d'Albert (Somme), qui avait préparé à sa demande une somme d'argent à sa disposition. Afin de rester "à l'écart de l'emballement médiatique", Eric Cantona s'est rendu dans une agence bancaire de la ville voisine de Péronne (Somme).
    "Son entourage m'a fait savoir qu'il ne souhaitait pas parler de cette histoire et qu'il voulait se concentrer sur son film", a indiqué à l'AFP un photographe du Parisien qui avait croisé, en fin de matinée, l'ancienne vedette de Manchester United sur le lieu où il tourne actuellement un film.
    "Il n'a jamais appelé à un quelconque mouvement le 7 octobre", a tenu à rappeler l'un de ses avocats, Christophe Bertrand, joint par l'AFP.
    Eric Cantona est très heureux des réactions et commentaires publics, économiques et même politiques que ses déclarations ont provoqués, et espère que ce mouvement permette une prise de conscience et contribue au débat d'idées", ajoute ses avocats dans un communiqué.

    En revanche, la plupart des internautes qui avaient annoncé qu'ils videraient leur compte n'ont pas été au rendez-vous.
    "Nous n'avons rien remarqué. C'est un non-événement", a indiqué à l'AFP la Fédération nationale du Crédit Agricole, qui représente l'ensemble des caisses régionales du groupe.
    A Paris, Lille et Marseille, l'appel n'a pas été suivi, ont constaté des journalistes de l'AFP.
    A Marseille, ville natale d'Eric Cantona, les responsables de trois agences bancaires (LCL, BNP Paribas, Société Générale) du centre-ville n'ont relevé aucune activité inhabituelle.
    A Paris, dans quatre agences du quartier de l'Opéra, les personnels interrogés n'ont pas non plus noté plus de retraits que d'habitude. Même son de cloche à Lille, où deux agences interrogées (Crédit Mutuel et Caisse d'Epargne) ont indiqué n'avoir reçu aucune demande de retrait de la part de leurs clients

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