Filling in the blanks on community banks.

• Author: Delk, David
• Position: Letter to the editor

Thank you for the article "Community Banking: Put Your Money Where Your House Is" (July/August issue). While efforts to create state public banks on the North Dakota model have not been fruitful, a newer movement to create local municipal banks is now afoot. Unfortunately, these efforts were missed in this otherwise excellent article.

In cities across America, people are forming local municipal banks, declaring that banking should be a public utility, a public resource, instead of being a vehicle to generate fees and interest for the too-big-to-fail banks. Such efforts are at various stages of development in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Seattle, Santa Fe, Portland (Oregon), Oakland, Boston, and elsewhere. In Baltimore, one of the two mayoral candidates is making the formation of a municipal bank a major portion of his platform.

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