Eric Cantona's 'Bank Run' Protest on December 7, 2010

Eric Cantona: Can His 'Bank Run' Protest on December 7th Actually Work?

December 4, 2010

Daily Telegraph - Eric Cantona's call on everyone to withdraw en masse their money from the banks and make them implode would be difficult given daily withdrawal limits, but as Northern Rock and other cases have shown, loss of confidence can wreak huge damage.

The instigators of the bank run plan want to send a message to politicians that they "can't meet both the interests of financial markets and those of its citizens."

The hope is the system will collapse in favour of a new "citizen's bank" that would "put our money away from speculative fever, free of all financial bubbles designed to burst one day, free of operations that transform our loans & assets and use our debt to buy other assets."

"We want banks that lend only the wealth they have. Banks that support projects that benefit citizens rather than the 'market'," they say on the bankrun2010 website.

But they are short on details.

There is considerable disagreement among banking experts as to how much damage they could do on December 7.

Michel Vermaerke, from the Belgian federation of the financial sector warned that "this action can destabilise our fragile financial system."

"There is no need for hundreds of thousands of people to take part," agreed Marc Fiorentino, a financial markets specialist. "In the current climate a queue in front of a bank is sufficient to set off a spiral. We are playing with dynamite."

But Marc Touati, deputy head of Global Equities, believes the risks are "very limited."

"Twenty thousand people is peanuts compared to the number of bank accounts open in France," he said. "So the effect will by nil."

It would take "several million people" to do "critical" damage. He makes the obvious point that if a bank falls, those with small amounts will be the first to suffer.

"Millionaires have accounts scattered round the world and are, as a result, protected," he said.

The other key point is that in reality our "savings" do not sit idly in banks but are lent out or invested elsewhere, so banks are simply in no position to hand out all their depositors savings in one go.

The state would not be able to cover losses. In France, a depositors guarantee fund guarantees each account holder 100,00 euros per year in case their bank collapses. But while the French have 270 billion euros of savings in their current accounts, the fund only has 1.6 billion euros in its coffers.

In other words, like it or not, breaking the banks would be suicidal for all concerned.

Eric Cantona's 'Bank Protest' Becomes Internet Hit

November 23, 2010

Daily Telegraph - A call by ex-footballer Eric Cantona to bring down French banks through mass withdrawals was on Tuesday propelled via the internet into a global bid to end the "corrupt, criminal" banking system.

The occasionally philosophical Cantona first made the suggestion to unions in October as millions took to the streets in France to protest extending the retirement age in a series of ultimately futile protests.

"What is the system?" Cantona reflected in a video interview with French newspaper Presse Ocean. "It revolves around the banks, the system is built on the power of the banks, so it can be destroyed through the banks."

"The three million people in the street, they go to the bank, withdraw their money, and the banks collapse ... That's a real threat, there's a real revolution," he said in the video that has gone viral on the web.

"No weapons, no blood, nothing at all. It's not complicated. Then we'll be listened to in a different way," said the former Manchester United player famed for kung-fu kicking a Crystal Palace fan because of a racist insult.

The suggestion was then highlighted by "civic activists" Geraldine Feuillien and Yann Sarfati, a Belgian screenwriter and French director who named December 7 the global banking system's "day of reckoning."

"We had the idea before, but no one listened to us, because we're no one," Feuillien told AFP.

"Then we saw that the Cantona video was creating a buzz and the reactions showed that it was something people wanted, so we said we'll launch the event, without knowing what the result would be."

She says that since setting up the French site and doing an English version herself, people have spontaneously offered translations in Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese "and others will probably follow as well."

With two weeks to go until the day of protest, 17 countries are involved, including much of Europe as well as the United States, Feuillien said, with thousands of followers on social networking site Facebook.

See: Will Obama Declare an FDR-Style 'Bank Holiday' to Prevent a Bank Run?