I love this idea. There are retail post offices in every community in America while banks increasingly try to screw you at every turn and while Trump overturns citizen protections inspired by the Great Recession and the practices that banks were doing that caused it.

 

 

Why Cleveland Wants to Bring Back Postal Banking

 

"In the United States, the post office is for mailing letters, and the bank is for cashing checks. That’s not the case in France, Italy, Japan, China, Brazil, India, and New Zealand, all of which offer financial services like money transfers through their post offices. And it wasn’t always true in the U.S.: For half a century, the the U.S. Postal Service offered a Postal Savings System, which at one point held 10 percent of the entire commercial banking system’s asset stash....

 

Postal banking advocates are focusing on Baltimore, the Bronx, and Cleveland because there’s political support for the idea in those regions, plus plenty of potential customers...in the Cleveland area, around a quarter of residents are un- or underbanked..."

 

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/06/cleveland-post-office-banking-cash-check-predatory-lending/590557/

This needs to be brought back after it was killed decades ago, but it won't be in Ohio as long as pay-day lenders are a huge influence on the guaranteed Republican majority in the Ohio house and senate.  If Cleveland did re-institute Postal Banking, the pay-day people would be on the horn the next day forcing state lawmakers to make a bill blocking municipalities from instituting this.

 

If we get a president and congress that is Democratic after 2020, then 100% this will be a thing nationwide.

The state legislature pretty much neutered the pay day lending industry in Ohio last year.  They still operate but their they really cant sell their bread and butter products anymore I thought.

A lot of those auto title loan places shut down -- even on the South Side.