Postal Banking

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: 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The United States has two personal banking systems. One of these systems is carefully regulated. It benefits from substantial government subsidies, and it offers extensive protections to consumers.  The other system serves the poor.  “One of the great ironies in American life is that the less money you have, the more you have to pay to use it,” writes Mehrsa … Read More