Forum Post: Goldman Sachs vs. People's Credit Union.

As has been reported elsewhere donations for OWS are being stored in the People's Credit Union a community organization that is set up to help under privileged areas. Up until recently that credit union was also a recipient of $5,000 from Goldman Sachs. Recently, however it seems that Goldman Sachs opted to withdraw their funds based, according to [1] on the association with OWS.

One of the interesting caveats to the story, and what makes it larger than the 5k is that the money, in fact is not a charitable donation but federal funds. Under the terms of the Bailout Goldman Sachs became a "Commercial Bank" which makes them subject to the Community Reinvestment Act which mandates that they invest some of their billions in low income areas. The 5k donation to Peoples was, according to [2] part of their small-scale effort to satisfy the letter of the law. So what we have here is not just Goldman Sachs punishing one credit union but an apparent case of them using federal funds to make it happen.

1. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/goldman-bullies-teeny-credit-union-that-occupywallstreet-uses.html
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/27/goldman-sachs-occupy-wall-street?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fcommentisfree%2Frss+%28Comment+is+free%29&utm_content=Google+Reader