JULIA'S MANIFESTO.
I used to be involved with economic education as university outreach, which inter alia involved equipping teachers with materials to develop financial literacy in their students, in order that the students (including collegians) not be fleeced.
The Council for Economic Education provided a lot of that material. They worked closely with the Federal Reserve and with the traditional banking companies, which provided materials, and sometimes contributed money and speakers. That was sometimes a sore point with me, as I perceive the traditional banks as discouraging small savers, such as youngsters, and anyone without at least a thousand bucks to park for a long time. Yes, I understand there are transaction costs, and quantitative easing has made the passbook account a joke, but still, if the kids can't put a few bucks away each month without having them dissipated in maintenance fees, they'll likely keep their coins in a piggybank or a used spaghetti sauce jar. "Those stashes are temptation to thieves, they represent money sitting idle, and a relationship with a deposit-insured bank is a step away from the check-cashing and payday-loan institutions that too often are the poor person's only contact with the financial system." The banksters don't like those manifestations of the poverty industry, or perhaps they'd just as soon not take the risk that a kid will cash out that $100 that has built up over a year for Christmas shopping and start building it up again.
What happens, though, if it's more than the banks discouraging the risky customers, what if those check-cashing and payday loan companies are in fact beating out the banks for the business? That's the thesis of Lisa Servon's The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives. Here we are halfway through the year and I'm rolling out Book Review No. 2. (I still haven't perished, despite not publishing: perhaps there's something in concentrating on building that railroad or learning how to bid a game that can be made with some overtricks rather than worrying about how many book reports I put up (or about national affairs?)
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(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.)
The Council for Economic Education provided a lot of that material. They worked closely with the Federal Reserve and with the traditional banking companies, which provided materials, and sometimes contributed money and speakers. That was sometimes a sore point with me, as I perceive the traditional banks as discouraging small savers, such as youngsters, and anyone without at least a thousand bucks to park for a long time. Yes, I understand there are transaction costs, and quantitative easing has made the passbook account a joke, but still, if the kids can't put a few bucks away each month without having them dissipated in maintenance fees, they'll likely keep their coins in a piggybank or a used spaghetti sauce jar. "Those stashes are temptation to thieves, they represent money sitting idle, and a relationship with a deposit-insured bank is a step away from the check-cashing and payday-loan institutions that too often are the poor person's only contact with the financial system." The banksters don't like those manifestations of the poverty industry, or perhaps they'd just as soon not take the risk that a kid will cash out that $100 that has built up over a year for Christmas shopping and start building it up again.
What happens, though, if it's more than the banks discouraging the risky customers, what if those check-cashing and payday loan companies are in fact beating out the banks for the business? That's the thesis of Lisa Servon's The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives. Here we are halfway through the year and I'm rolling out Book Review No. 2. (I still haven't perished, despite not publishing: perhaps there's something in concentrating on building that railroad or learning how to bid a game that can be made with some overtricks rather than worrying about how many book reports I put up (or about national affairs?)
( Collapse )
(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.)