- Joined
- Aug 8, 2005
- Messages
- 69,477
- Reaction score
- 53,922
- Location
- Los Angeles
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Undisclosed
Cities and states typically store this short-term cash in bank accounts or plain-vanilla investments. Big banks like Wells Fargo or JPMorgan Chase use the funds to generate profits, through loans or trades, or whatever else they can conjure. They, for example, fund private prisons that house immigrant families. They fund pipelines that carry fossil fuels and are displacing Indigenous Americans from their land. And big banks continue to act badly with relative impunity ― wrist-slap fines ultimately paid by shareholders, and no executive seeing the inside of a jail cell.
File this under Excellent Ideas That Should Definitely Happen But Probably Won't.
Last week, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, introduced legislation to create a Postal Bank, empowering the nation's vast network of post offices to offer checking and savings accounts, and to provide low-interest short-term loans.
There are three things to really like here:
-- It would be cool having an alternative to private banks that all too often prove themselves no friend of customers (hi, Wells Fargo!).
-- Banking services would be a financial lifeline for the U.S. Postal Service, which has been defenestrated by email and digital communications.
-- This could spell doom for bottom-feeding payday lenders.
"I think this is such an elegant fix for complex problems," Gillibrand told me, "particularly payday lending."
Read up on Savings and loans crisis, starring Charles Keating, happened in part for the same reason the banks had their real estate mortgage crisis. Wall Street is full of crooks, to think otherwise is risky.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?