Manufacturing Dissent Since 1996
New interviews throughout the week

How banks abandoned the public good, and chose profit over stability.

Dec 12 2015
878mehrsabadarani

When you have a banking system to entwined with the federal government, when you have the Bank of America meeting with the treasury, the President and the Federal Reserve, and making decisions about the country that end up enriching the industry itself at the cost of the public - that is an undemocratic arrangement.

Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran explains how decades of banking deregulation have lead to a new, harsh financial system that exists to extract wealth from poor customers and support from America's political class, what happens to an industry (and economy) that chooses immediate profit over long-term stability, and why postal banking offers a way to restore upward mobility to a class of people who can't afford credit in the current marketplace.

Mehrsa is author of How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy from Harvard University Press.

Share Tweet Send

 

Mehrsabaradaran
Guest

Mehrsa Baradaran

Mehrsa Baradaran is an associate professor at the University of Georgia School of Law.

 

Related Interviews
Liz Theoharis
Oct 12 2022
Castingoutmoneychangers

The War on the Poor / Liz Theoharis

Tarence Ray
Aug 29 2022
Kentuckyflood

Flooding in East Kentucky / Tarence Ray