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The Post Office as Bank for the Unserved
Doc of the day: Providing Non-Bank Financial Services for the Underserved, U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General, Report Number:RARC-WP-14-007 (January 27, 2014) [pdf. 33 pages].
Millions of Americans do not have a bank account, or use costly services like payday loans and check cashing exchanges just to make ends meet. The entire underserved population comprises more than a quarter of all U.S. households — some 68 million adults. They are an economically diverse mix of working and middle class families, poor and unemployed people hurt by the recent economic crisis, young people, immigrants, and others who are trying to make it paycheck to paycheck. Together, they represent a huge market. In 2012, they spent about $89 billion just on interest and fees for alternative financial services.
The Postal Service is well positioned to provide non-bank financial services to those whose needs are not being met by the traditional financial sector. It could accomplish this largely by partnering with banks, who also could lend expertise as the Postal Service structures new offerings. The Office of Inspector General is not suggesting that the Postal Service become a bank or openly compete with banks. To the contrary, we are suggesting that the Postal Service could greatly complement banks’ offerings.
Also see: The Post Office Should Just Become a Bank How Obama can save USPS and ding check-cashing joints, by David Dayen, New Republic (January 28, 2014).
Re-Imagining Government: Affordable Banking
February 25, 2014 / Leave a comment
The Center for Effective Government weighs in on the recent report by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General that recommends that the US Post Office should “provide non-bank financial services to those whose needs are not being met by the traditional financial sector.”
Re-Imagining Government: Affordable Banking, by Scott Klinger, Center for Effective Government (2/25/2014).
What does this have to do with government information, you might ask? As the Center says:
To me, this sounds a lot like what many library managers are doing: relinquishing traditional library roles to others (the private sector, of course, but also to other libraries [e.g., HathiTrust will do everything for us, right?], and even to the federal government itself [i.e., why should we get government information when it all is online at GPO, etc.?]). Aside from the un-sustainability of this service-without-collections model, the unintended consequences of such policies are that libraries lose control of information that they fail to select, acquire, manage, and preserve. They can no longer guarantee to their user communities that such information will be available in 10 years or even tomorrow. And they shortchange their user communities by settling for whatever services (or lack of services) those “other” see fit to provide and whatever restrictions (DRM) those others see fit to impose.
Seeing a movement against this trend anywhere is heartening. At FGI we love this Post Office idea. In another analogous comment, the Center points out:
Ah…, remember when libraries used to select, acquire, organize, and preserve information instead of pointing to it and hoping someone else would provide access? Remember when libraries provided services and collections and it was obvious to their funding agencies what their communities got for that funding?
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