About this 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
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
Ratings and reviews
5.0
1 review
William “Bill” Bugdon
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January 23, 2023
As a teller at a check cashing store in Atlantic City NJ, I'd love to say that the book is spot on with regard to those who use alts, the positive role of check cashers as well as the abusive practices that main stream financial institutions, banks, employ. By the way, I was in banking for nearly 30 years and I can attest to the fact that banks are predatory and abusive to the poor and middle classes.
About the author
LISA SERVON is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania and a former dean of the New School. Her work on consumer financial services has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic online, and The New Yorker online, among many others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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