Spring Banking Is In The Air

By now we’re sure you’ve heard the Huffington Post’s exhortations to Move Your Money from the large banking interests that just about crippled the United States economy to local neighborhood banks that know and support their own communities.

Nippertown.com recently set up our business banking account and we kept HuffPo’s talking points in mind (we ended up going with Berkshire Bank) and while we were shopping around, we found rates, services and friendliness that beat that of the national banks, hands down.

Perhaps we just have banking on the brain, but synchronistically two other stories caught our eye this week: over at Rural Intelligence, Marilyn Bethany relates the story of moving her bank account to follow a trusted and respected assistant branch manager, who was fired from her job after a takeover by Bank of America, to the locally owned and operated Kinderhook Bank.

And in this week’s Metroland Magazine, Chet Hardin discusses BerkShares, the Berkshires’ highly successful currency program that is getting set to expand into lending.