How the Other Half Banks

Mehrsa Baradaran

Related Links

• At MarketWatch, read an in-depth interview with Mehrsa Baradaran on the origins of her research and why access and legal rights are not sufficient tools for reducing inequality in situations of entrenched economic hardship
• Watch Professor Baradaran and other experts at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (November 2020) panel discussion “What’s Next? The State of the American Economy”
• Read a Center of American Progress report by Danyelle Solomon, Mehrsa Baradaran, and Lily Roberts on how postal banking would address long-term structural inequity in the American economy
• Read Baradaran’s contribution to the New York Times special project on inequality, “The America We Need,” in which she destroys the neoliberal myth that profit incentives produce the best outcomes for society
• At The American Prospect, read Baradaran’s argument that the American ideals of justice (and peace) for all cannot be realized until America’s racial wealth gap—in areas including housing, banking, and income—is conquered
• Read a Huffington Post interview with Baradaran on the necessity of reparations as a public policy response to the entrenched economic inequities between Black and white Americans
• Consider Baradaran’s argument, in an interview with ProMarket, that “we’ve never had a purely capitalist economy—we’ve had state subsidies for some and exclusion for others”
• On WBUR (Boston, MA)’s On Point, listen to Baradaran discuss what can be done during and after the COVID-19 pandemic to save America’s small businesses
• At The American Prospect, read Baradaran on how responses to the COVID-19 pandemic should inform America’s ongoing challenges in areas like public health and climate change
• At The Real News Network, read an interview with Baradaran on why the Trump administration’s “Qualified Opportunity Zones” are in fact a scam (one that’s been around for a while, “from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton to Donald Trump”) that chiefly benefits billionaires
• At Fortune, read Baradaran’s response, considering the implications for the underbanked, to news that online super-retailer Amazon.com’s new “Amazon Paycode” program will allow for cash transactions via a partnership with Western Union
• Read a summer 2019 Newsweek feature, informed by Baradaran’s research, on postal banking proposals and how they could aid the poor, while potentially creating problems for existing community banks
• Read a Forbes feature in which Baradaran and others weigh in on how banking can be made safer for everyday Americans
• At the Huffington Post, read about Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)’s April 2018 introduction of S.2755, “A bill…to provide that the United States Postal Service may provide certain basic financial services,” which has been endorsed by Baradaran, and follow the bill’s progress at congress.gov
• Read a Mother Jones report (August 2018) on Sen. Gillibrand’s postal banking plans
• In a Huffington Post report, read Baradaran’s response to India’s attempts to push poor people towards financial services, and her arguments for why the United States must use a different approach
• Watch Baradaran at the New America Foundation’s panel discussion “Inclusion by Default: Toward a Financial System That Works for All”
• Read Baradaran’s Washington Post overview of postal banking as an alternative to payday lending (base article)
• Read Baradaran in Democracy on the “broken social contract” that has resulted from the deregulation of banking
• In The Nation, read Baradaran’s arguments in favor of a return to postal banking
• On APM’s Marketplace, listen to Baradaran discuss the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s summer 2016 proposal to crack down on payday lending (also covered at Slate)
• On WBUR’s On Point, listen to Baradaran talk with Tom Ashbrook about Google’s May 2016 announcement that they will ban ads for payday loans (in addition Google’s extant bans on ads for guns, fireworks, and tobacco)
• Read Baradaran’s response to an Atlantic prompt, “Who Gets Excluded from the Modern Economy?”
• Listen to Baradaran discuss banking for lower income Americans with the Who Makes Cents podcast
• Watch Baradaran discuss the increasing inequality of the U.S. banking system on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal
• Watch Baradaran’s in-depth discussion with Democracy Now! about inequality in banking opportunities and the scourge of payday loans
• Listen to Baradaran discuss the limited financing options available to the poor on APM’s Marketplace, KUER’s RadioWest, KPFK’s Uprising with Sonali, KPFA’s Saturday Morning Talkies (starts at 01:15:15), and the Slate Money podcast
• Via Americans for Financial Reform, watch Baradaran brief the U.S. Senate about the problems of under-banked citizenry, the downsides of a regulatory approach (against payday and other forms of high-interest lending), and the appeal of postal banking
• Via C-SPAN’s BookTV, watch Baradaran discuss How the Other Half Banks at Athens, GA’s Avid Bookshop
• On WBUR’s On Point, listen to Baradaran discuss recent advances in smartcard- and smartphone-based banking—and how this “Uberization” can help, or hurt, the financially strapped (starts at 29:08)
• Listen to Professor Baradaran’s discussion with Ralph Nader on his Pacifica Radio Network show
• Read a Quartz interview with Baradaran
• Read more about postal banking in the Washington Post
• Read Baradaran’s thoughts on prepaid debit cards, which have been touted as a way to increase financial solvency for those with uneven incomes—but, it turns out, can be hugely problematic to use
• Read Salon’s Q&A with Baradaran
• Read excerpts from How the Other Half Banks at the Atlantic and American Banker
• In the Atlantic, read about Senator (and 2016 U.S. presidential candidate) Bernie Sanders’s support for “postal banking”
• Read details of Professor Baradaran’s call for postal banking in the Harvard Law Review and the New York Times
• On the Irish radio program Moncrieff, listen to Baradaran discuss banking’s origins as a very localized public service—and how that changed with deregulation and globalization
• At Deseret News, read Baradaran’s take on income volatility, payday lending, and what “rational behavior” means given limited choice
• Listen to Baradaran discuss with Georgia Public Broadcasting’s On Second Thought Radio how the failure of small, local banks—or the merging of these small banks into larger corporate entities—impacts local communities
• Watch Baradaran introduce How the Other Half Banks at HUP’s YouTube channel
• Read Baradaran’s “short history of postal banking” at Slate
• Browse a selection of HUP works on capitalism and its discontents

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