In my last post, I discussed the experience of "postal savings" in America—its origins and how its flawed legislative design caused harm during the Great Depression. I showed that some features of the postal savings system adopted for political expediency, such as its fixed interest rates and…
In assessing the New Deal's contribution to economic recovery, I've naturally tended to draw on fairly recent research. That keeps me from being accused of being out of date. But it makes me vulnerable to the charge of overlooking the testimony of experts who studied the New…
On September 17th, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT) went on Facebook Live to announce their introduction of the Postal Banking Act, a bill that would have the US Postal Service provide a "public option" in some retail banking services. Postal banking has been proposed…
It occurs to me that recent discussions of the Fed's new average inflation targeting plan gloss over a subtle distinction between two different kinds of Average Inflation Targeting (AIT). Hence this post explaining the difference, and why I think it matters. The difference between the two sorts…
This essay, the first of a series on government efforts to bank the "unbanked," reviews the history of postal banking and its deleterious role in the Great Depression. Subsequent posts will discuss contemporary proposals for government involvement in retail banking, such as through the U.S. Postal Service…