“How the Other Half Banks”: Author Says America’s Two-Tiered Banking System is a Threat to Democracy
(DEMOCRACY NOW) Interview, October 30, 2015 — The nation’s financial crisis taught us that when it comes to Wall Street giants, political leaders consider some banks “too big to fail.” After initial misgivings, Democrats and Republicans joined together to commit over $700 billion to rescue major firms from collapse. Now a new book looks at the inverse of this policy: when it comes to serving communities on the local level, some banks are just too small to rescue. In “How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy,” University of Georgia law professor Mehrsa Baradaran explores how poor communities have been denied the normal banking opportunities that help sustain households and grow economies.