The Trouble Is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street (n+1 Research Branch Small Books Series, Issue 4)

Letters from across America, collected by n+1 magazine, showing how the banks have failed us and why they must do better. As seen in the New York Times Week in Review, Harper's Magazine, and discussed on NPR's Marketplace.

The Trouble is the Banks collects 150 letters that Americans (and one Canadian) wrote directly to executives and directors of five big banks in fall 2011, at a time when protests were emerging in Occupy Wall Street camps across the United States. These writers speak as citizens to citizens, making an unprecedented portrait of ordinary Americans' experiences of the financial crisis since 2007. Here is the speech of the People, not any authority above them.

From the letters:

"I read today . . . that the average bank executive makes 225 times what the average teacher makes. I ask you, Barbara: How many of me do you really think you are worth to the world?"

"Just wanted to give you a pat on the back for collecting over $4,000 from a friend of mine on a Chase credit card with a $500 limit. It was a great example of the innovation in your industry!"

"We're not disaffected hippies. We're the disaffected middle class. And we're huge."