New America Video: Community Banks to the Financial Rescue

Today, with the world's system of anonymous high finance in crisis, small-scale community banks, thrifts, and credit unions -- all regarded until recently as vestigial players in a new world of global consumer finance -- are setting an important example. If federal policies were in place to provide proper support to small-scale financial institutions, Washington could do a lot to alleviate the country's most serious economic problems.

The "vop-ed" below, featuring New America Fellows T.A. Frank and Phil Longman, explains how community banks have avoided the mistakes made by the financial titans -- and what Congress and regulators could do to encourage community banking's virtues.

(This video also appeared on WashingtonPost.com)

For more on this issue, please see the November/December Washington Monthly article by Longman and Frank, or the recent "Big Ideas for a New America" paper by Longman and Financial Services Policy Director Ellen Seidman: To Save America's Finances, Bring Back Community Banking.

For all of New America's work on the financial crisis and its possible remedies, please visit http://www.newamerica.net/issues/economic_growth.

For other proposals from our Big Ideas series, please see http://www.newamerica.net/bigideas.

###

The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.  Headquartered in Washington D.C., New America also has offices in California.

Learn More About: Phillip Longman, Ellen Seidman, T.A. Frank
Related Programs: The Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program, Asset Building Program
Topics: Economic Growth, Next Social Contract, Ownership & Assets