Ellen Brown: Establishing a Democratic Public Banking System!

On July 27, 2012, the National Association of Letter Carriers adopted a resolution at their National Convention in Minneapolis to investigate establishing a postal banking system. The resolution noted that expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important to the effort to save the public Post Office and preserve living wage jobs , that many countries have a successful history of postal banking, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States itself, and that postal banks could serve the 9 million people who don't have bank accounts, and the 21 million who use usurious check cashers, giving low income people access to a safe banking system. A USPS bank would offer a public option for banking, concluded the resolution , providing basic checking and savings, and no complex wheeling and dealing. The USPS has been declared insolvent, but it is not, because it is inefficient - it has been self funded throughout its history. It is because in 2006, Congress required it to prefund postal retiree health benefits for 75 years into the future, an ominous burden no other public or private company is required to carry. The USPS has evidently been targeted by a plutocratic Congress, bent on destroying the most powerful unions and privatizing all public services, including education. Britain's 150 year old postal service is also on the privatization chopping block, and its postal workers have also vowed to fight. Adding banking services is an internationally proven way to maintain post office solvency and profitability. Serving an Underserved Market, without going broke. Many countries operate postal savings systems through their post offices, providing people without access to banks a safe, convenient way to save. Great Britain first offered this arrangement in 1861. It was wildly popular, attracting over 600,000 accounts and 8.2 million accounts, and 8.2 million in deposits in its first five years. By 1927, there were twelve milion accounts, one in four Britons with 283 million on deposit. Other banks followed.