Hometown Advantage: Community Banking, Wal-Mart’s Urban Impact, Online Sales Taxes + More?
Sent: Fri 2/12/10 7:36 PM FEBRUARY 10, 2010 | ANALYSIS
Small Business Lending: Big Banks vs. Small
Although small and mid-sized banks control only 22 percent of bank assets, they account for 54 percent of all small business lending. Meanwhile, the largest 20 banks, which command 57 percent of bank assets, devote only 18 percent of their commercial loan portfolios to small business.
This article examines why small banks lend more to small businesses, how banking consolidation has harmed local entrepreneurs, and what can be done to get credit flowing in a recession. READ THE ARTICLE
Charts: Small Business Lending by Bank Size
FEBRUARY 12, 2010 | NEWS
New Rules Project Launches Community Banking Initiative
Our new Community Banking Initiative is building the case for a smaller-scale and more locally rooted financial system. We’ll be posting a growing body of reports, articles, and policy models.
We’re also, through a partnership with the Move Your Money campaign, blogging at Huffington Post about the benefits of going local with your banking. See this recent piece:
Move Your Borrowing Along with Your Money
We’d love to hear your feedback.
FEBRUARY 1, 2010 | OPINION
The Case for Online Sales Taxes
By exempting internet retailers like Amazon.com from collecting sales taxes, lawmakers provide a substantial financial incentive for people to bypass local businesses and shop online instead.
Over the years, there have been four primary arguments made in favor of this inequitable policy. None of them stand up. READ MORE
JANUARY 29, 2010 | NEWS
Wal-Mart’s Urban Impact
Wal-Mart insists that it’s urban stores can reinvigorate city neighborhoods and recapture retail spending leaking to the suburbs. But a new study by Loyola University researchers, who tracked the impact of a Wal-Mart store that opened in Chicago in 2006, found otherwise. Within two years, 25 percent of the businesses within a four-mile radius of the store had closed. For more, visit our Key Studies page.
JANUARY 14, 2010 | NEWS
Holiday Sales Increase at Independent Businesses, National Survey Finds
More holiday shoppers deliberately sought out locally owned businesses this year, according to our survey of more than 1,800 independent businesses. The survey also found that local retailers in cities with active “Buy Local” or “Think Local First” campaigns reported stronger holiday sales than those in cities without such campaigns. READ MORE.
DECEMBER 2, 2009 | SPEECH
A New Deal for Local Economies
This lecture, delivered at the Bristol Schumacher Conference in Great Britain, has been republished in a variety of places in the last month. If you missed it, you can read it online or download a printer-friendly PDF.
Other Hometown Advantage Headlines
Big-Box Lifestyle Center Defeated in Colorado
Voters in Eagle, Colorado, soundly defeated a proposed big-box lifestyle center yesterday in an election that saw the highest turnout in town history.
News Stories We’re Following
A plan to turn a former armory in the Bronx into a shopping mall was soundly defeated after independent retailers, labor unions, and community groups joined forces to block it.
Massachusetts may become the first state to mandate that independent auto repair shops have access to the same repair codes and data dealerships are given. Federal legislation is in the works as well.
Office Depot’s new television ad brings a new twist to local-washing.
More cities are demanding that corporations, including big retailers, repay subsidies when they fall short of their job creation promises.
Sam’s Club is laying off 11,000 workers and closing 10 stores.
A large electronics retailer in New Mexico has returned to local ownership after the company that bought it went bankrupt.
Dan Lutts shares ten lessons he learned living unchained for a year.
A new economic development model of integrated worker-owned enterprises is building momentum in Cleveland.
Bills to extend sales tax to large online retailers are moving forward in Virginia and Colorado.
Bills to close a state tax loophole that benefits big chains are under consideration in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and New Mexico.
Photographer Brian Ulrich has focused his lens on the nation’s growing abundance of dark stores.
CVS is manipulating insurance coverage to steer consumers away from independent pharmacies, according to allegations under investigation by the FTC.
Book publisher Macmillan challenged Amazon’s control of e-book pricing as part of a larger war over the book industry’s future. Read reactions from Shelf Awareness, the Authors Guild, Bill Petrocelli, and Fast Company.
Wal-Mart has created a fake community group to push for a second supercenter in the city of Chicago.
