The Post Office Can Bring People-Centered Public Banking to Every ZIP Code

Steve HutkinsBlog, News

Inequality.org: The need for a public banking option is urgent. Nearly 10 million households, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color, are unbanked or underbanked in the United States. Unbanked or underbanked households must pay expensive fees for non-bank financial services to access their own money for paying bills, cashing checks, remittances, rent, and ATM withdrawals — costing upwards of … Read More

Ralph Nader and historian Chris Shaw talk postal banking

SteveBlog

Chris W. Shaw is an author, historian, and policy analyst who has written one of the best books about the post office, Preserving the People’s Post Office (available online here).  The book has a great introduction by Ralph Nader, for whom Shaw worked at the Center for Responsive Law. Shaw has written a new book entitled Money, Power, and the People: … Read More

GAO Report: U.S. Postal Service Offering Nonpostal Services through Its Delivery Network Would Likely Present Benefits and Limitations

SteveBlog

GAO: The U.S. Postal Service manages a vast network of mail carriers and vehicles that deliver mail to its customers. Since USPS’s costs are growing faster than its revenues, some have suggested that it provide nonpostal services using this network to generate revenue and enhance its value to communities. For instance, mail carriers could provide check-in services to older people. … Read More

House Advances Bipartisan Postal Banking Amendment

SteveBlog

Campaign for Postal Banking: Postal Banking Campaign keeps moving forward.  Yesterday, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment backing the Postal Service’s expanding its offering of postal financial services. Introduced to a federal appropriations bill, the amendment expresses the House’s support for the Postal Service exercising its existing statutory authority to offer a wider range of postal financial services. The Postal … Read More

Democrats Have a Plan to Save the Post Office – and Kill Payday Lenders

SteveBlog

New York Magazine: Generally speaking, advancing economic justice is neither cheap nor easy. The Democratic Party has assembled a long list of worthwhile economic reforms — almost all of which, for all their considerable virtues, pose either a significant budgetary cost, or policy-design challenge, or political risk (universal child-care costs money; the federal job guarantee is complicated and untested; and Medicare-for-all … Read More

The War on the Post Office

SteveBlog

Truthdig: The U.S. banking establishment has been at war with the post office since at least 1910, when the Postal Savings Bank Act established a public savings alternative to a private banking system that had crashed the economy in the Bank Panic of 1907. The American Bankers Association was quick to respond, forming a Special Committee on Postal Savings Legislation … Read More

Post Office Banking: An Old Idea Getting New Life

SteveBlog

News OK: In big cities and affluent areas, banks can seem as ubiquitous as coffee chains. Making a deposit or stopping in to talk about a loan can be about as simple as grabbing a nonfat vanilla latte with an extra shot, no foam.But many Americans — those living in poor neighborhoods or in rural communities — don’t enjoy such convenience. They rely instead on costly … Read More

Banking on the Post Office

SteveBlog

Capital & Main: Several years ago when my wife Susan and I traveled across Ireland by local bus, we headed toward a national cultural site a few miles beyond the nearest town. The route the bus took crossed a rural peninsula, and finally to the little community.  As we wound through the country roads, old people climbed aboard, and when … Read More

Elizabeth Warren’s Fight Against Payday Lenders Comes to the Post Office

SteveBlog

The Nation: Nine years ago, a Harvard law professor dreamed up a new concept: a government agency devoted solely to protecting consumers from unscrupulous financial companies, the way the Consumer Product Safety Commission protects us from faulty microwaves. Today, Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is in full effect, and has already netted Americans about $10 billion in remedies … Read More

Should We Bring Back The Postal Banking System?

SteveBlog

Law Street: If you are tempted to take out a payday loan you might want to take Sarah Silverman’s advice and try literally anything else.  The trouble is, there are rarely other options and here in the United States there are 40 million Americans who are “unbanked,” without access to the formal financial system.  Shockingly, these Americans spend the same … Read More

Postal Banking Worked—Let’s Bring It Back

adminBlog

Nation Magazine has an article on postal banking by University of Georgia Law Professor Mehrsa Baradaran, the author of the 2015 book “How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy."  It's about how regulated, federally subsidized banks serve the wealthy and the middle class, while a Wild West hodgepodge of unregulated lenders serves everybody else.  Read more.

A Bill of Rights for the Post Office

adminStory

Some people just love to complain about the Postal Service, but the vast majority of Americans are pretty happy with the service they receive at their post office.  In fact, several new surveys show once again that people think the post office is just fine. According to a new Gallup poll, Americans rank the customer service they receive at post … Read More

Ralph Nader: For America’s Unbanked: Re-establishing the Postal Savings Bank

adminBlog

Ralph Nader has a great piece on postal banking: "Fact: Tens of millions of Americans do not have a bank account. As a result, many of these Americans spend a reported $89 billion annually in interest and fees by using predatory services such as payday loan and check cashing services. It's a perpetuating cycle of poverty in which the poor … Read More

Postal Banks Are People’s Banks: 6 Things You Need To Know About Postal Banking

adminBlog

It’s being called “Bernie’s Brilliant Idea,”, and Bernie Sanders’s embrace of postal banking is indeed brilliant, both in timing and substance. But while his insurgent presidential campaign may give a credible boost to USPS financial services, Sanders’s endorsement is far from sufficient. To make postal banking happen requires a broad, mass coalition willing to keep pushing the issue regardless of the … Read More