When you have a banking system to entwined with the federal government, when you have the Bank of America meeting with the treasury, the President and the Federal Reserve, and making decisions about the country that end up enriching the industry itself at the cost of the public - that is an undemocratic arrangement.

Law professor Mehrsa Baradaran explains how decades of banking deregulation have lead to a new, harsh financial system that exists to extract wealth from poor customers and support from America's political class, what happens to an industry (and economy) that chooses immediate profit over long-term stability, and why postal banking offers a way to restore upward mobility to a class of people who can't afford credit in the current marketplace.

Mehrsa is author of How the Other Half Banks: Exclusion, Exploitation, and the Threat to Democracy from Harvard University Press.