My friend, Collin, tweeted yesterday that he had paid down another credit card balance to zero. He was clearly elated by the experience, as he should be. Getting out of debt is an accomplishment to be proud of.
But he should feel good about it for another reason: eliminating the source of profit for the bank, even though it is only a drop in the bucket from their perspective, is a truly effective way to boycott the institutions that the public are currently so irate with (and rightly so).
In the end, wouldn’t it be more effective if all the folks ‘occupying wall street’ were to simply boycott the antagonist institutions by doing exactly what Collin did and pay down their credit cards?