Back in October, Manchester United legend Eric Cantona issued an impassioned call (or, at least a casually furious recommendation) for people to start a revolution(!) by pulling their money out of the corrupt and failing banks all at once. "What does it mean to be on the street? What does it mean to demonstrate?" he asked, capable of kicking his interviewer in the face at any moment. "We don't pick up weapons, to kill people, to start the revolution. The revolution is really easy to do nowadays," he reasoned.
Since everyone takes their revolutionary financial advice from retired footballers and it's oh-so-easy to do, just how many people did follow through on Cantona's plan to bring down the banks?
About a dozen. From the AP:
A small group of activists in Paris emptied their bank accounts Tuesday after a call by French soccer icon Eric Cantona to protest practices by leading banks and bailouts.
It did not appear to prompt the huge bank runs that some Internet-based anti-capitalist groups had hoped for, however, and bankers and some economists warned against heeding the call. Cantona has also come in for criticism. [...]
About a dozen people marched in costumes Tuesday in Paris and withdrew money from a branch of Societe Generale. They then opened accounts with a nearby branch of Credit Cooperatif bank, considered more ethically responsible because it pledges not to have any subsidiaries in tax havens.
No word on whether Cantona himself actually pulled all of his money out of the bank, but what kind of world do we live in where more than a dozen anarchists, anti-capitalists, and other activitists can't be bothered to spark a revolution(!) by merely making a withdrawal from the bank?
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