Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders want your Post Office to double as a bank
Kaltbaum Capital Management President Gary Kaltbaum, FoxNews.Com columnist Liz Peek, FBN’s Kristina Partsinevelos and Capitalist Pig Hedge Fund’s Jonathan Hoenig on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) plan to cap credit card interest quotes at 15 percent.
New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders are proposing Open a New Window. They were known as postal banking – a system whereby the Post Office Opened a New Window. It would be legal to provide financial offerings.
In legislation unveiled closing week, which also objectives to cap credit scorecard hobby prices at 15 percent, the pair of self-identified Democratic Socialists said postal banking might want to alleviate low-profit Americans.
“Post workplaces exist in almost every network in our United States,” Sanders wrote in a weblog post. “There are more than 31,000 retail publish workplaces in this United States. A crucial manner to offer decent banking opportunities for low-profit groups is to permit the U.S. Postal Service to engage in primary banking offerings.”
Some of the proposed offerings a postal banking gadget should offer include low-hobby loans, checking and savings accounts, debit cards, check cashing, bill charges, ATM services, online banking services, and electronic money transfers. The degree was framed as a way to prevent decrease-income Americans from falling victim to predatory payday lending practices and having to depend upon Wall Street’s most prominent institutions.
In a record on reforming the Post Office released by the Treasury Department earlier this year, the government came out against a postal banking choice.
“Given the USPS’s narrow understanding and capital limitations, expanding into sectors wherein the USPS does not have a comparative benefit or wherein balance sheet threat would possibly rise, such as postal banking, ought to now not be pursued,” the report stated.
Currently, people can go to the Post Office for money orders. The agency previously supplied Americans with alternatives to opening financial savings accounts – but that coverage ended in the late 1960s.
The debate on postal banking reemerged inside national communication about five years ago when it became counseled through the Post Office’s Office of Inspector General. In reaction, Opens a New Window. To the recommendation, the Post Office said its center function became delivering, now not banking.
Sanders isn’t the only presidential candidate who has encouraged postal banking. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have additionally encouraged the concept.
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The Postal Service, in the meantime, is bleeding crimson ink. Losses between 2007 and 2018 are approximately $69 billion. The ultimate time the organization recorded an income changed into greater than a decade ago. It has also defaulted on more than $ 40 billion in bills owed to pre-fund retiree fitness care charges.
During recent testimony earlier than lawmakers, Postmaster General Megan Brennan said the organization’s Board of Governors is operating on a plan to reform operations – and shore up its budget. Meanwhile, specialists have encouraged closing locations in a few rural areas to put the Post Office on a route toward economic balance.