I mentioned a short time ago that I was reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Bully Pulpit. I'm not still reading it. I'm not that slow. One thing I was interested in was the fact that both TR and William Howard Taft advocating postal banking, i.e., allowing people to open savings accounts at post offices. It was a way of allowing people to access banking services without accessing banks, which were unavailable to many in any event. I can't recall Goodwin actually saying that the bill passed, but apparently it did, for according to the folks at Naked Capitalism, the post office was in the banking business, to a limited extent, from 1911 to 1967.
A couple of times I've advocated for a state bank here in Connecticut, much like the state bank in (of all places) North Dakota. It would be a public option, so to speak. Well, apparently there's a movement to bring limited banking services back to the post office. Not only would it bring banking services to underserved communities, but it would also get some money to the post office, which Congress has legislated into a permanent state of bankruptcy. Apparently, the post office at least arguably has the statutory authority to do this without having to go through our dysfunctional Congress.
Still, I can't help but think that we have come to a sad state of affairs when the progressive folks at Naked Capitalism are encouraging their readers to support this plan, part of which involves the post office getting into the payday loan racket. Granted, compared to the highway robbery of the payday lenders, the effective rate of 28% it would be charging is a “screaming bargain”, but it's still about 27 percentage points more than I get for lending my money to my bank, and far more than the world's biggest deadbeats, the big American banks, pay Uncle Sam to borrow money to finance their crimes.
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