Jim Epstein on How to Get More Americans Banking Without Involving the U.S. Postal Service

By doing away with the need to wait in line and schedule visits
around their limited hours, banks have become a lot less like U.S.
post offices—and that’s certainly a good thing. Yet some
lawmarkers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), want the U.S.
Postal Service (USPS) to get back into the banking business. The
USPS inspector general released a white paper last month arguing
that the organization should use its enormous reach—31,272 retail
branches—to help those “underserved” by traditional banks.

While reducing the number of unbanked Americans is a worthwhile
goal, writes Jim Epstein, it could be more easily achieved if Sen.
Warren and other Washington do-gooders would abandon their
backward-looking schemes and simply get out of the
way. He offers three policies that would better serve the
banking needs of the underserved. And none of them have anything to
do with your local letter carriers. 

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