Credit unions are not-for-profit, tax-exempt financial institutions that are cooperatively owned by their depositors. The United States is home to 7,600 credit unions, which collectively hold 10 percent of domestic deposits and have more than 90 million members (as of April 2010). More

A growing number of states and cities are considering legislation that would move government bank accounts to small community banks and credit unions. More

In 1994, Congress adopted a policy that bars a bank from buying another bank if the combined entity would hold more than 10 percent of the country's deposits.  The cap has several flaws, including loopholes  that allowed both Bank of America and Wells Fargo, with the approval of the Federal Reserve, to expand beyond the cap when they acquired failing institutions in 2008 and 2009.  Many people are calling for reinstating a cap on bank size that would limit a bank's liabilities to no more than 3 or 4 percent of U.S. GDP. More

The Non Partisan League (NPL), born in 1915, united progressives, reformers, and radicals behind a platform that called for reforms to return control of North Dakota's government and economy to the people. Taking leadership of the state in 1919, the NPL formed the Bank of North Dakota (BND). Today it is the only state-owned bank in the U.S.

The bank was originally formed to create additional competition in the credit industry while providing a local source of capital for state investment and development. At the time the nearest financial centers were based in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and farmers were unable to get long-term financing at reasonable rates. BND was formed to "encourage and promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota." More

Like community-owned sports teams, cooperatives and employee stock ownership plans are organizational models that tend to root businesses in their communities. Both ESOPs and coops are powerful tools that give decision making authority to those who will feel the impact of the decisions they make. When authority and responsibility are linked, decisions will likely be made in the best interests of the local community. More

Surcharges are the fees banks charge noncustomers for use of their ATMs. Surcharges are deducted directly from the consumer's account at the time of the transaction. (When you withdraw $20 and your receipt says $21.50, you have paid a $1.50 surcharge to the bank that owns the ATM.) Surcharging first began in 1996. Today, 93 percent of all banks surcharge noncustomers an average of $1.37 for each ATM transaction. Americans paid an estimated $2.2 billion in surcharges in 2001. More

The delinking of money from place and productive investment is not theinevitable result of technological advances or economic evolution.Money is a human invention and rules that control its dynamic are alsoa human invention. To slow down the speculative and destablizing flowof money, John Maynard Keynes proposed a small financial transaactionstax in 1930. More

In the early 1980s, high unemployment and the rapid exodus of capital from Quebec led the province to offer seed capital and tax incentives for a new kind of venture capital fund that provided equity to small and medium-sized businesses. The Solidarity Fund was created in 1983 and controlled by the Quebec Federation of Labor. In 1988, the federal government enacted its own tax credit for labor sponsored investment funds(LSIFs), using the Solidarity Fund as a model. Since then about 25 such funds have been created: two national and the rest provincial. More than 400,000 Canadians are shareholders in the funds, which generate $500-$700 million a year, equivalent on a per capita basis to $5-$7 billion in the United States. More

Community Reinvestment encourages banks to lend to borrowers in all segments of the community.