News from the New Rules Project

Those who wonder whether public anger at big banks and the Move Your Money sentiment sweeping the country is substantial enough to impact these giants need only look at the banks' own marketing over the last few weeks to see the proof.

In a spate of new advertisements and PR maneuvers, the nation's largest banks are working hard to win us back. They are, in effect, standing on our doorstep, flowers in hand, trying to convince us they've changed.

They're using words like "local" and "community," because they know quite well that there's a rival for our affections. A recent Zogby poll found that nearly one in ten Americans had moved at least some of their business to small banks or credit unions. More

What journalists and even environmentalists so often fail to do in reporting on Wal-Mart's sustainability announcements is to provide some context.

Context is everything. Consider Wal-Mart's latest announcement: It will push some of the factories that supply its stores to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. That's a good thing in and of itself, but what happens when we measure it against Wal-Mart's overall impact on the production of goods? More

This article was originally published on Huffington Post as part of a partnership with their Move Your Money campaign. 

Bigger banks were suppose to lower costs for consumers. That was the promise made repeatedly in 1994 and again in 1999, when Congress dismantled laws that had long restricted the size and scope of banks, ushering in a wave of mergers that left the industry dominated by a few financial giants.

Just seven years after the Glass-Steagall Act was abolished in 1999, the fees consumers were paying on their checking and savings accounts had skyrocketed, rising from $21 billion to $36 billion. (And these amounts do not include credit card and ATM fees, which also shot up.)  

Today, new data show that big banks still impose much higher costs on their customers than small banks and credit unions do.  Not only are fees lower, but several studies have found that smaller banks and credit unions pay higher interest on savings accounts. 

Moving our money to these local institutions could save us billions of dollars a year.  More