IslamicFinance.de

When the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park gathered thousands of dollars in surplus donations, its decision-makers agreed upon a deliberate strategy of placing those sums with the customer owned Peoples Federal Credit Union (Peoples).
In doing so, OWS adjusted itself with the principles of Bank Transfer Day. This is a separate movement the objective of which is to create a shift in banking attitudes among the American people in favour of taking deposits out of banks ‘too big to fail’ and transferring them to credit unions and bank like cooperatives that are much smaller and community oriented.
A problem reportedly came up when megabank Goldman Sachs, having realised that institutionally it had made a USD $5,000 charitable donation to this community oriented institution and desired to withdraw its donation. In the first place, Goldman Sachs would have needed to spend additional time and effort to identify an alternative community based financial institution to receive the donation as certain amounts of charitable grants are a requirement of the federal Community Reinvestment Act and TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Programme), to which Goldman Sachs is subject. Secondly, there would be a negative effect on Goldman Sachs reputation.