With $10 trillion in assets at their collective disposal, big banks like Chase and Wells Fargo could do a lot of good. Yet, despite being “too big to fail,” these banks fail people every day. Whether it’s the persistent use of predatory practices, their enduring discrimination, or their insistent investment in exploitative and extractive industries, these formidable financial institutions have a corrosive influence on our country.
Yet, in spite of this, local governments put their assets—the collective wealth of communities collected through taxes—in the hands of these institutions. In New York City alone, $100 billion in the city’s money is handled by private banks every year. While the city’s assets sit in the corporate coffers of these Wall Street staples, the banks are free to invest them at their discretion. Their sole goal: pump up their profits. The result is that public dollars may be invested in projects that act against the public good, such as speculative real estate, private prisons, and fossil fuels.
To address these and other overlapping injustices, New York City’s New Economy Project, a community-based organization dedicated to advancing economic justice, has coordinated the Public Bank NYC coalition since 2018 with the end goal of investing city dollars in projects that would address community needs. Over four years, the coalition has come to comprise dozens of community organizations from across the city, working on projects as diverse as climate justice, affordable housing, and worker empowerment. Its primary focus is to advance city- and state-level legislation that will allow its visions to manifest.
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