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One thing I would add:

According to the New York State Bank bulletin, Amalgamated bank was approved to open a bank on 1212 Fulton Street. There are currently *four* commercial bank branches on Fulton Street. Hardly underserved, no? The picture for the rest of Bedford Stuyvesant, is unfortunately, less rosy. According to the FDIC, there are only 2 banks in operation that are not on Fulton Street.

Brian,

Kudos to Amalgamated for venturing into the underserved neighborhoods of New York City. Fortunately for these neighborhoods, community development credit unions have already been doing this for years! Among these are my institution, Brooklyn Cooperative FCU, which has been serving residents of Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant for the last five years. Banks, contrary to popular belief, are not the only institutions offering an alternative to fringe financial services. In the case of CDCUs, we offer that alternative to marginal communities -- without the profit motive that underlies the decision making of the banks.

Brian,

This was a great interview. The question you asked: what should be done to improve banking services in low income areas? One answer is to strengthen the Community Reinvestment Act. This act was passed in 1977 an effort to prevent redlining, but although it has been helpful, it obviously has not solved the problem of getting better access to financial services and affordable credit in low and moderate income communities.

More info here: http://www.ncrc.org/policy/cra.php

"Boring" is an easy word that gets thrown out by chumps when they want to force others to simply cater to their own narrow self-interests but without going into any details of how or even why. You see that word a lot on Amazon. It's one of those push-button words that's hard to respond to, like the words "immature" or "racist".

Does Amalgamated Bank work with the Chex system? Many people in lower income neighborhoods can't open bank accounts because of poor money management skills, and are shut out by the Chex system. While these people may want to rectify the situation, it is near impossible to do without a bank account, and this becomes a vicious circle.

I'm gonna have to agree with Jonathan.

Here's a little mnemonic device I came up with:

"Money-- its important for poor people too!"

Subprime lending?

John Baker, this may sound boring to you, but it's a critically important issue for a huge segment of American society, and for the general economic health of this country.

Lack of access to banking services drives people in unbanked neighborhoods to predatory payday loan operations, check cashing services (which can charge high fees), and unsuitable mortgage loans. This strips equity out of entire communities.

We are talking about countless billions of dollars being suctioned out of poor neighborhoods, leaving them even poorer.

Banks, which are more regulated than payday loan companies, are much better positioned provide access to credit at reasonable terms. And access to credit at reasonable terms is key for people to climb up the economic ladder. Think about what access to credit allows: home ownership, college, business startups. If you don't have access to banks, you lack access to credit.

Thanks for doing this segment Brian. It is important, and if framed correctly, I'd argue it's even....interesting.

Hey,
I don't mean to be a buzzkill but these discussion topics are getting progressively worse. Brian is a wonderful moderator but the issues of late are boring. Please be more mindful of your listeners.

How funny all the news seems so connected this week!

Amalgamated was an investor in Unocal, a company known for its human rights violations in Burma.

http://www.laborrights.org/projects/corporate/unocal/