Name: Dana Kraft's review of The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon
Item: The Unbanking of America
Rating: 1
Author: Dana Kraft

Lisa Servon

An urgent and incisive exposé of our broken banking system--why Americans are fleeing traditional banks in growing numbers What do an undocumented immigrant in the South Bronx, a high-net-worth entrepreneur, and a twenty-something graduate student have in common? All three are victims of our dysfunctional mainstream bank and credit system. The Unbanking of America exposes the ways in which banks have quietly abandoned lower- and middle-class consumers in favor of servicing only the wealthiest. Today nearly half of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck, as income volatility has doubled over the past thirty years. Banks, with their monthly fees and high overdraft charges, take advantage of these fluctuations rather than help their customers manage them. Lisa Servon delivers provocative dispatches from inside a range of banking alternatives--from predatory to responsible--as new players rush in to do what banks once did. She works as a teller at RiteCheck, a check-cashing business in the South Bronx, and as a payday lender in Oakland, California, listening to the stories of the alternative bankers as well as their consumers. And she delivers fascinating, hopeful portraits of the entrepreneurs who are counting on a permanent "unbanking" of America--and designing systems to transform how nonwealthy Americans can gain the access and agency to their own money that they, especially, need.

How the New Middle Class Survives

The Unbanking of America

Dana Kraft

I read this in hopes of learning about the customers of the alternative financial services industry. Unfortunately, I found the info pretty shallow on that front, and on most other subjects it covers as well. There is very little meaningful detail on new fintech companies for example. In the end, I think the reason she wrote this book was to polish her liberal bona fides. The quote below will give you a sense of what I'm talking about.

"Making up more than a quarter of the total US population, the millennial generation, beginning with those born in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan began to strip away the public safety net, totals eighty-three million people and represents the largest generation ever."

Dana Kraft &
The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon

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Dana Kraft &The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon

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Dana Kraft &
The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon