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Daily Yonder Q&A: How Public Banks Can Keep Revenue Local and Support Small Communities
by Claire Carlson, The Daily Yonder September 23, 2022 This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. A public bank is a financial institution that is managed by the government in the public interest, which is...
Big City Mayoral Races Shine A New Light On Public Banking
NEXT CITY, by Oscar Perry Abello September 27, 2022 Public banking is already making headlines in one big city mayoral race slated for next year, and it’s bound to come up in at least one more. (photo: Philadelphia City Hall, by Jose Fontano / Unsplash) New Mexico...
Hear Us: Public Banking for Racial Justice
June 8, 2022 | Next City Op-Ed, by Lebaron Sims – More than a decade after the Great Recession, America is again experiencing a supply-side recovery. Whether via the $700 billion bailout of 2008 or the unchecked exponential growth of 2022, commercial banks and financial corporations eat first – while most Americans, especially the working-class Black and Brown communities most affected by crisis, struggle without support. Then and now, that contrast is particularly sharp in New York City, a global center of finance, the home of countless banks, and an early epicenter of the pandemic. Members of Public Bank NYC (PBNYC), a coalition of organizations and other stakeholders committed to financial justice in New York City, had another vision, rooted in racial equity and environmental justice.
REPORT: Public Banking Key to Building Community Wealth in New York City
May 26, 2022 | DEMOS – Wall Street has a long history of putting profits over people. The big banks perpetuate structural racism in housing, labor, and climate. Instead of serving the public good, they prioritize shareholder returns over the needs of people and communities. A public bank in New York City would help combat the racist and extractive banking system and build community wealth. Each year, the City of New York moves tens of billions of public dollars through Wall Street banks—the same banks that persistently redline NYC’s neighborhoods of color, that finance private prisons, fossil fuel extraction, and other destructive industries.
Wells Fargo Rejected Half Its Black Applicants in Mortgage Refinancing Boom
March 10, 2022 | by Shawn Donnan, Ann Choi, Hannah Levitt and Christopher Cannon
When Mauise Ricard III paid a $560.43 application fee to Wells Fargo & Co. on Valentine’s Day in 2020 to refinance his mortgage on a four-bedroom brick colonial in a leafy suburb of Atlanta, he had every reason to expect an easy ride. The Microsoft Corp. engineer is married to a doctor and has a credit score north of 800, putting him in America’s credit elite. The loan officer at the bank even told him he was probably eligible for a fast-track appraisal.
Could Massachusetts get into the banking business? Maybe.
April 27, 2022 | by Jon Chesto – A bid to create a state-owned bank to help finance business growth is gaining momentum on Beacon Hill, with key decision likely this week. Launching a state-owned bank was once considered a fringe idea — even here, in left-leaning Massachusetts. Not anymore. As the chairs of the Legislature’s financial services committee decide this week whether to endorse the proposal, it will be hard to ignore the momentum of the past year. A public bank topped the legislative agenda at the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, and a group of mayors in Greater Boston came out in favor.
How Philadelphia is laying the groundwork for a public bank
March 22, 2022 | by Allissa Kline – In the latest step forward for a nationwide movement that has been gaining steam, the Philadelphia City Council voted on March 3 to establish a public financial authority — a move that supporters see as a precursor to chartering a public bank that would eventually serve as a depository for municipal funds. “The city has limited resources to replace the missing wealth of Black and Brown family members and friends, but it can substitute for its effect by guaranteeing loans and providing other credit enhancement products,” Philadelphia Councilmember Derek Green wrote in a recent op-ed.
Housing Briefs: Wells Fargo Denied Most Refinance Apps for Black Homeowners
NEXT CITY, March 17, 2022 | by Roshan Abraham – A Bloomberg investigation found that Wells Fargo had approved refinanced mortgages for only 47% of Black homeowners who applied in 2020, compared to 72% of White homeowners. Following the federal reserve’s lowering of interest rates in 2020, many homeowners refinanced their homes to pay lower interest rates on their mortgages, but the disparity between who applied and who was granted these lower interest rates increased the country’s already cavernous racial wealth gap. According to Bloomberg’s look at federal data, the racial wealth gap between White and Black Americans increased by a mind-boggling $20 trillion during the pandemic.
Philadelphia City Council OKs creation of nation’s first municipal bank
March 3, 2022 | by Ryan Sharrow – City Council passed the measure 15-1 to create the Philadelphia Public Financial Authority, a move that positions the city to launch the nation’s first municipal bank. The bill was introduced in December by Democrat Derek Green, a former banker who is a councilman-at-large. Green said the goal of the Public Financial Authority “is not to compete against current businesses or organizations, or duplicate existing services, but to offer credit enhancement products, that will provide greater opportunities for co-operatives, entrepreneurs of color, and other business organizations to access additional credit to help build cash flow and job growth.”
Philadelphia Bill Would Establish First Ever Municipal Public Bank Entity
NEXT CITY, Feb. 17, 2022 | by Oscar Perry Abello – The stated mission of the proposed Philadelphia Public Financial Authority is to support Black-owned businesses and other businesses in neighborhoods that have historically lacked access to credit. That resolution took as a model the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, established in 1919 and still a thriving, profitable institution with $10 billion in assets today. By law, all of the state government’s deposits are held at the Bank of North Dakota. With that as its deposit base, the bank partners with private banks and credit unions all over the state to finance economic development, making loans to support everything from huge infrastructure projects to small local businesses.
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Wells Fargo Rejected Half Its Black Applicants in Mortgage Refinancing Boom
March 10, 2022 | by Shawn Donnan, Ann Choi, Hannah Levitt and Christopher Cannon
When Mauise Ricard III paid a $560.43 application fee to Wells Fargo & Co. on Valentine’s Day in 2020 to refinance his mortgage on a four-bedroom brick colonial in a leafy suburb of Atlanta, he had every reason to expect an easy ride. The Microsoft Corp. engineer is married to a doctor and has a credit score north of 800, putting him in America’s credit elite. The loan officer at the bank even told him he was probably eligible for a fast-track appraisal.
SEED NM 2022 Symposium: Bob Mang on how business guilds can regenerate communities
SEED NM 2022 Symposium: Bob Mang on how business guilds can regenerate communities
Bob Mang, Re-Genesis Inc, Co-Founder (Retired) and AFLEP Board member, talks about rural economic development and how business guilds can regenerate communities.
Episode: Everyone deserves a public bank
“I had the good fortune to work on this initiative before Bernie kidnapped all my time. This is one of those no-brainer initiatives that only the 1% could oppose. It has the potential to save the state millions of dollars by vastly reducing the cost of its bonds to improve infrastructure funding. in a public bank, our state funds can be used to build our local economy and our local infrastructure.”
– Paul Gibson
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