Activists Decry Wall Street, Call for NYC Public Bank

By Phyllis Eckhaus

The acoustics weren’t great but the message was crystal clear. Big banks are systematically screwing ordinary New Yorkers by using taxpayer money to underwrite schemes that promote usury, risk destabilizing financial markets, support ICE, endanger tenants, and deprive regular New Yorkers of services and resources.

The “Worst Banks” mock awards ceremony held on February 12 on the sidewalk in front of the Citibank branch at 250 Broadway, was a quintessential New York experience — under scaffolding and interrupted by a steady stream of indifferent pedestrians.

Organized by the Public Bank NYC Coalition, it underscored how much New Yorkers are losing via current law that requires more than $100 billion of taxpayer dollars annually collected by the city to be parked in commercial Wall Street banks — and how much might be gained if the city instead established a public bank that invested that money on the public’s behalf.

Katy Lasell from the New Economy Project presented the Lifetime Aggrievement Award to Citibank, for its “decades-long record of abuse, discrimination, and public betrayal.” She recalled that “Citibank helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis, crashed the global economy, and survived only because taxpayers stepped in to save it. Long before that — and long after — Citi built its profits through redlining, discriminatory lending, and systematic disinvestment in Black and brown communities.”

She declared, “This is a bank that has repeatedly demonstrated that when profits conflict with public interest, the public loses,” spotlighting last year’s scandal when “the Trump administration illegally clawed $80 million in NYC tax payer money out of a Citibank account, while Citibank looked the other way.”

Citibank and Risky Payday Loan Scheme

Lasell then condemned Citibank’s current investments in payday loan apps and the bundling of those likely illegal payday loans into securities — investment vehicles potentially as risky as the subprime mortgage-backed securities that triggered the banking collapse of 2008.

She explained that “Citibank is currently funding the proliferation of illegal payday loans…. Payday loan apps such as DailyPay, MoneyLion and EarnIn have flooded our state with deceptive marketing and illegal, predatory loan products that carry triple digit interest rates up to 850%.” Violating state and federal consumer protections, these apps “are so predatory that AG James is currently suing DailyPay and MoneyLion.”

Yet Citibank — along with Barclays and Morgan Stanley — “announced a securitization deal with DailyPay last year….This $200 million deal creates a new security — a new investment vehicle — out of the short-term debt of America’s working class,” a risky bet that counts on profiteering off predation.

Organizer David Kahn from Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ office echoed the need for a public bank describing Wall Street bank malfeasance as the “inevitable result of a system that allows private institutions to hold public wealth without public accountability.”

The Village’s own District 3 City Council Member Harvey Epstein noted the size of this year’s city and state budgets — $115 and $260 billion respectively — and asked the crowd of activists to “imagine we had those resources on hand” to leverage for the public interest, perhaps to build more affordable housing.

Underwriting ICE Detentions and The Harassment of Rent-Stabilized Tenants

Sadly announcing that “We have to do it,” Vlad Tlali of the New York Immigration Coalition mournfully presented the Inhumanitarian Award to Citizens Bank, citing the institution’s “$120 million in loans to CoreCivic,” among the largest private prison corporations in the country, operating “at least 65 prisons and ICE detention centers.” The former Corrections Corporation of America, CoreCivic “has a history of running these facilities with violence and neglect.”

Worst Slumlord Backer Award was next. Dressed in a rat suit, Jodie Leidecker of the East Village-based Cooper Square Committee detailed how banks routinely provide mortgages to landlords that far exceed the rent-roll value of their properties were the tenants to remain rent-stabilized — in other words, the banks are deliberately banking on the removal of rent-stabilized tenants and the conversion of rent-stabilized units to market-rate. Leidecker noted that tenants living daily with roaches, mold, and “terrible, terrible conditions” are always shocked to learn about the bankers in suits in high-floor offices underwriting their misery.

She presented the award to Flagstar Bank, recently merged with New York Community Bank, citing their repeated underwriting of notorious slumlord Steve Croman. Flagstar also loans millions to multiple landlords on the Public Advocate’s “Worst Landlords” list, including the Pinnacle Group, whose rent-stabilized properties were recently foreclosed upon.

Fossil Fuels and Redlining

Damien Andrade of the New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG) presented a Worst Fossil Fuel Funder Award to Chase Bank which “poured over $53 billion into the oil and gas companies” in 2025 alone. He declared, “Like so many young people across the city, climate change isn’t an abstract issue for me — it’s personal. We’re already living with the consequences of the climate crisis that Wall Street helped create. In my neighborhood of Sunset Park, storms have overwhelmed our sewer systems and flooded our streets. Across New York City, Sandy and Ida have taken lives, destroyed homes, and displaced entire communities.”

“Why,” he asked, “is New York City still trusting our public money to banks that are actively making this crisis worse?”

Julio Herrera of the Black Institute presented the Worst Redliners Award, describing redlining as a killer of the American Dream for communities of color, not only depriving them of housing but also redirecting truck traffic and pollution their way. He described joint winners, Key Bank and Wells Fargo, as the “dons of displacement” and the “emirs of economic disenfranchisement.” Herrera pointedly called them out for “underbanking” communities of color, observing that the single Wells Fargo office in the Bronx is in Riverdale.

Brooklyn City Council Member Alexa Aviles also spoke briefly in support of a public bank, noting that it could underwrite infrastructure and social housing.