Big Banks: Too Big to Trust?

Two years after the official end of the Great Recession, Philadelphia has yet to recover. Our schools face cut after cut, we can’t find jobs, and our future looks bleak.

The same Big Banks that helped cause the Great Recession steered our school district into risky and complicated deals known as Qualified Interest Rate Management Agreements (or “swaps”).

These swaps put our schools on the wrong side of declining interest rates and led them to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars:

• The City and School District have lost over $331 million in net interest payments and cancellation fees as a result of these bad “swap” deals from bailed-out banks like Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and other banks.
• The City could potentially lose an additional $240 million from swap deals that still continue today with these Big Banks.

When Big Banks broke the economy, we bailed them out of their own bad investments. So why should they profit from the poor investments that they steered our schools into?

Access the report to learn about these swaps — and what you can do about it — by filling out the form on the right-hand side of this page. →

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