The hidden costs of banking while poor (with Mehrsa Baradaran and Cate Blackford)

The average family earning $25,000 a year in the U.S. spends about $2,400 on financial transactions. Whether it’s the astronomical interest rates of a payday loan or the costs that come with being unbanked, the extractive practices of the financial services industry are effectively keeping the poor in poverty. Lawyer and author Mehrsa Baradaran and economic mobility expert Cate Blackford join Nick and Steph this week to explain why banking while poor is so expensive, and what states can do to rein in the people who profit from it. This episode was originally released in February 2020.

Mehrsa Baradaran is a professor of law at UC Irvine. She writes about banking law, financial inclusion, inequality, and the racial wealth gap. Her scholarship includes the books How the Other Half Banks and The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap. 

Twitter: @MehrsaBaradaran

Cate Blackford was the Director of Outreach and Donor Development at the Bell Policy Center when we recorded this episode, but she is now the Public Policy Director at Maine People’s Alliance. She was the Co-Chair of the 2018 Proposition 111 campaign in CO to limit the interest lenders could charge on payday loans and eliminate fees from payday lending products, which passed with 75% of the vote. 

Twitter: @catetiller 

Further reading: 

Capitol One to end overdraft penalties as CFPB takes aim at ‘exploitative junk fees’: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/01/capital-one-overdraft-fees/ 

How the Other Half Banks: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674983960

The Color of Money: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237476

If the U.S. Government Treated Poor People as Well as It Treats Banks: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/if-the-us-government-treated-poor-people-as-well-as-it-treats-banks/410614/

CO’s Prop 111 explained: https://coloradosun.com/2018/10/22/proposition-111-colorado-2018-explained/

Briefed by the Bell - Predatory Economy: https://www.bellpolicy.org/2018/09/10/predatory-economy/

How Do Payday Loans Work? https://www.incharge.org/debt-relief/how-payday-loans-work/

Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com/

Twitter: @PitchforkEcon

Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics

Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer