Economy
How a Simple Piece of Legislation Transformed a City's Entire Economy
Sioux Falls used to be a sleepy agriculture town. Now, it's one of the country's leading banking centers.
This article is part of an America 360 series on Sioux Falls.
When the international banking giant Citibank moved its credit card operations to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1981, it altered the small midwestern city overnight. With a population of barely 80,000 at the time, Sioux Falls still had a local economy built on agriculture and meat-packing. But when state leaders, desperate to attract outside businesses during the economic recession of the early 1980s, changed South Dakota's usury laws to eliminate the cap on interest rates and fees, Citibank came calling.