In this piece for The Atlantic, ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell looks at the history of the anti-monopoly movement in the U.S. — and how today, as economic concentration soars, monopoly could again be just the word we need.… Read More
A report published by ILSR is recognized as “Best Antitrust and Small Business Article” as part of the annual Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship. … Read More
In this episode of the Building Local Power podcast, our guest is Justin Dahlheimer, president of a community bank in west-central Minnesota. Justin and our hosts discuss the benefits of community banking, and how banks lend differently when they have a vested stake in their community.… Read More
A new tool called Bank Local, which was developed with input from ILSR and other experts, makes it easier to assess the impact that banks have on their communities.… Read More
In our op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, we look at how much of our public policy seems to designed to bend the market in the favor of big corporations, and put small, independent businesses at a competitive disadvantage.… Read More
The precipitous decline in the number of community banks in recent years is a national crisis, and there’s a fierce debate underway right now about what’s to blame.… Read More
As this graph shows, giant banks consistently make poorer lending decisions and write-off more bad loans than community banks do, and the financial crisis heightened this trend.… Read More
When the country’s giant banks were teetering on the verge of collapse during 2008’s financial crisis, the U.S. government stepped in to bail them out. The banks were, in a phrase that has since become infamous, “Too Big To Fail.” Would the government do it again? And does the expectation that it would step in give megabanks an unfair competitive advantage over local community banks? Those are the questions at the heart of an eagerly awaited report released at the end of July by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal department. In a conclusion that highlights the need for more regulatory action to reduce concentration in the banking system, the G.A.O. found that the answers to both questions are “yes.”… Read More
Even as their big competitors are awash in capital, many locally owned businesses are struggling to secure the financing they need to grow. This analysis finds that, since 2000, bank lending to large businesses is up 36 percent, while small business loan volume has fallen 14 percent and “micro” business loans — those under $100,000 — have plummeted 33 percent.… Read More
