Tag: Credit Unions

Pick Your Poison: Abandoning Regulated Banking in Search of Financial Inclusion

~ Karen Petrou ~ 1 Comment

By Karen Petrou

  • Transaction and savings accounts are critical to financial security and inter-generational economic equality.
  • Nonbank offerings might increase financial inclusion, but pose risks to safeguarding savings, personal privacy, and consumer protection unless or until consumer-finance standards symmetrically apply to banks and nonbanks offering like-kind products to vulnerable households.
  • Public-utility, postal, or CBDC alternatives to bank accounts are a long way off and may not effectively safeguard high-risk households. 
  • Expanding low-cost, no-risk bank accounts is a critical near-term policy option.
Continue reading “Pick Your Poison: Abandoning Regulated Banking in Search of Financial Inclusion” →

Do Credit Unions Give Credit Where Equality is Due?

~ Karen Petrou ~ Leave a comment

By Karen Petrou

U.S. credit unions in 2019 are far from the proverbial church-basement financial clubs – now, credit unions are a $1.5 trillion sector of the U.S. financial industry.  Given the extent of the U.S. equality crisis, $1.5 trillion dedicated to affordable, sustainable financing would not only adhere to the 1934 statutory mission that binds credit unions to this day, but also make a heck of a difference for low-and-moderate income households.  Do credit unions in fact adhere to their mission and thus earn the sweeping tax and regulatory benefits taxpayers provide to encourage them to do so?  A new Federal Financial Analytics study* finds that credit unions sadly fall far short. Continue reading “Do Credit Unions Give Credit Where Equality is Due?” →

More Ways to Make an Equality Bank Make a Difference

~ Karen Petrou ~ 1 Comment

After we last year proposed “Equality Banks,” ideas flooded in on possible charters.  We also heard from those who so distrust any venture involving private finance that they believe only a public bank suffices to ensure fair delivery of equality-essential deposit, loan, and payment products.  In this blog post, we build on prior work to lay out an array of charter options suitable for different types of Equality Banks owned by different types of financial or private investors.  We reiterate our worries about public banks, adding to our prior evaluation of state and municipal efforts with an analysis of “low-income” credit unions and of the only equality-focused federal public bank to date.  Each of these well-intentioned initiatives in fact made U.S. inequality a little bit worse, providing important lessons as progressive Democrats ready a raft of proposals not only to craft public banks, but also even to make the Postal Service or Federal Reserve become one. Continue reading “More Ways to Make an Equality Bank Make a Difference” →