About Bank Talk

Bank Talk was once a site dedicated to manufactured housing and its reform.  Manufactured Housing News was solely dedicated to non-profit and co-operatively owned manufactured housing communities.  Sometimes, we ventured off into architectural discussion.  Witness our interest in cargotecture.

At a certain point, Manufactured Housing News needed to expand.  It became Housers.  Housers did well.  Traffic increased and commenting picked up.

Finally, it was decided that we needed our own domain name.  Bank Talk was born.

Subject Matter

This is a blog about the alternative financial products that serve the un-banked population in America.  There are more households out there without access to bank accounts that one mioght assume from a first glance.  The FDIC says that about 40 million Americans live in households without a bank account. Industry estmiated are even higher, ranging from 70 million to 110 million, depending upon how the un-banked and under-banked are defined. These consumers use check cashers regularly. Many get credit from unusual sources: refund anticipation loans, payday loans, pawn shops, and their friendly uncle.

The alternative financial services industry is changing rapidly. Bank executives indicate that they plan to cut back on free checking in the near future. Increasingly, the unbanked use prepaid cards for many of the basic services offered to holders of checking accounts. They keep deposits on these cards, use them at ATMs or point of purchase kiosks, and even access them for credit.

Its fun to talk about behavioral economics, and we’ll certainly do some of that.  Our main focus, though, is going to be how money intersects with the lives of regular people.  We’re more empirical than theoretical, more concrete than abstract, more country than city, more Sonny than Cher.

We will be returning to a few favorites time and time again.  Some of our hot topics include:

• The Unbanked
• Refund Anticipation Loans
• The Community Reinvestment Act
• The Earned Income Tax Credit
• Subprime Lending
• Credit Cards
• The Big Banks: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and JP Morgan Chase

There is a lot to talk about.

Bank Talk is written by Adam Rust, the research director of the Community Reinvestment Association of North Carolina.  CRA-NC is a 501 (c) 3, based in Durham, North Carolina.  Adam earned a master’s degree in City Planning from teh University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, but before that he worked in newspapers for ten years.

You can reach Adam, who generally runs the site, by emailing him: adam at cra dash nc dot org.

We hope you will put Bank Talk on your RSS and visit regularly.