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The Unbanking of America

ebook
Why Americans are fleeing our broken banking system: “Startling and absorbing…Required reading for fans of muckraking authors like Barbara Ehrenreich.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
What do an undocumented immigrant in the South Bronx, a high-net-worth entrepreneur, and a twentysomething graduate student have in common? All three are victims of our dysfunctional mainstream bank and credit system. Nearly half of all Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, and income volatility has doubled over the past thirty years. Banks, with their high monthly fees and overdraft charges, are gouging their lower- and middle-income customers while serving only the wealthiest Americans.
 
Lisa Servon delivers a stunning indictment of America’s banks, together with eye-opening dispatches from inside a range of banking alternatives that have sprung up to fill the void. She works as a teller at RiteCheck, a check-cashing business in the South Bronx, and as a payday lender in Oakland. She looks closely at the workings of a tanda, an informal lending club. And she delivers engaging, hopeful portraits of the entrepreneurs reacting to the unbanking of America by designing systems to creatively serve those outside the one percent.
 
“Valuable evidence on the fragility of the personal economies of most Americans these days.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
 “An intelligent plea for financial justice…[An] excellent book.”—The Christian Science Monitor

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Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Kindle Book

  • Release date: June 11, 2020

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9780544611184
  • File size: 1334 KB
  • Release date: June 11, 2020

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780544611184
  • File size: 1986 KB
  • Release date: June 11, 2020

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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

Languages

English

Why Americans are fleeing our broken banking system: “Startling and absorbing…Required reading for fans of muckraking authors like Barbara Ehrenreich.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
What do an undocumented immigrant in the South Bronx, a high-net-worth entrepreneur, and a twentysomething graduate student have in common? All three are victims of our dysfunctional mainstream bank and credit system. Nearly half of all Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, and income volatility has doubled over the past thirty years. Banks, with their high monthly fees and overdraft charges, are gouging their lower- and middle-income customers while serving only the wealthiest Americans.
 
Lisa Servon delivers a stunning indictment of America’s banks, together with eye-opening dispatches from inside a range of banking alternatives that have sprung up to fill the void. She works as a teller at RiteCheck, a check-cashing business in the South Bronx, and as a payday lender in Oakland. She looks closely at the workings of a tanda, an informal lending club. And she delivers engaging, hopeful portraits of the entrepreneurs reacting to the unbanking of America by designing systems to creatively serve those outside the one percent.
 
“Valuable evidence on the fragility of the personal economies of most Americans these days.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
 “An intelligent plea for financial justice…[An] excellent book.”—The Christian Science Monitor

Expand title description text