{"id":7030,"date":"2014-02-15T10:17:15","date_gmt":"2014-02-15T15:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=7030"},"modified":"2014-02-15T10:17:15","modified_gmt":"2014-02-15T15:17:15","slug":"can-becoming-a-bank-save-the-post-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2014\/02\/15\/can-becoming-a-bank-save-the-post-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Becoming a Bank Save the Post Office?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/video\/becoming-bank-save-post-office-172637414.html?.tsrc=appleww&amp;format=embed&amp;player_autoplay=false\" height=\"351\" width=\"450\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The United States Postal Service has a serious dilemma: How can it survive in the age of email, online banking and a very competitive shipping industry?<\/p>\n<p>The Post Office recently raised the price of a first-class stamp to $0.49 from $0.46 but three extra pennies to send a letter in the mail will have little effect on helping the agency turn a profit. The postal service trimmed its loses in the first quarter of its fiscal year yet the agency still posted a $354 million loss. Total mail volume in the quarter, which ended Dec. 31, fell to 42 billion pieces, down from 43.5 billion in the same period a year ago. The Post Office has lost money in 19 of the last 21 quarters.<\/p>\n<p>Money-saving strategies like ending Saturday mail delivery was rejected by Congress; other major financial decisions that the USPS wants to make are tied to a dysfunctional federal government that cannot agree on much these days.<\/p>\n<p>How about this: allowing the Postal Service, which has branches in many low-income neighborhoods, to offer traditional and non-traditional banking services? That was the recommendation of the U.S. Postal Service Inspector General, who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uspsoig.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/document-library-files\/2014\/rarc-wp-14-007.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">outlined such a proposal in a recent white paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/blogs\/daily-ticker\/should-post-office-branches-offer-banking-services-143929899.html?.tsrc=appleww\" target=\"_blank\">Read More at Yahoo News<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Sm-video-news-image.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6987\" alt=\"Sm-video-news-image\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Sm-video-news-image.gif\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States Postal Service has a serious dilemma: How can it survive in the age of email, online banking and a very competitive shipping industry? The Post Office recently raised the price of a first-class stamp to $0.49 from $0.46 but three extra pennies to send a letter in the mail will have little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-video-gallery","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7031,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7030\/revisions\/7031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}