Globally, 40 percent of banks are publicly owned, and they are concentrated in countries that also

[midnight]

escaped the 2008 banking crisis.

"The only US state to own its own depository bank today is North Dakota. North Dakota is also the only state to have escaped the 2008 banking crisis, sporting a sizable budget surplus every year since then. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the lowest foreclosure rate, and the lowest default rate on credit card debt."

"Borrowing from its own central bank interest-free might allow a government to eliminate its national debt altogether. In Money and Sustainability: The Missing Link, Bernard Lietaer and Christian Asperger, et al., cite the example of France. The treasury borrowed interest-free from the nationalized Banque de France from 1946 to 1973. The law then changed to forbid this practice, requiring the treasury to borrow instead from the private sector. The authors include a chart showing what would have happened if the French government had continued to borrow interest-free, versus what did happen. Rather than dropping from 21 percent to 8.6 percent of GDP, the debt shot up from 21 percent to 78 percent of GDP."


"Krauss' solution was to do as Iceland did: Just walk away. He proposed "a strategic default until the bank negotiates at better terms." Osterweil called it "radical," since the city would lose it favorable credit rating. But Krauss had a solution to that problem: the city could form its own bank, and use it to generate credit from public revenues just as Wall Street banks do now."



"Public banking may be a radical solution, but it is also an obvious one. This is not rocket science. By developing a public banking system, governments can keep the interest and reinvest it locally. According to Kennedy and Creutz, that means public savings of 35 percent to 40 percent. Costs can be reduced across the board; taxes can be cut or services can be increased; and market stability can be created for governments, borrowers and consumers. Banking and credit can become public utilities, feeding the economy rather than feeding off it."


http://truth-out.org/news/item/12605-its-the-interest-stupid-why-bankers-rule-the-world

[ReasonableToo]

1. It would be nice if we looked around our own country and the world...

...and started learning FROM SUCCESS!

public banking; public utilities, renewable energy, single payer healthcare system ... all good

privatized education, for-profit medicine, for-profit utilities ... dangerous

[midnight]

2. Yes... It is time to start implementing best practices, and stop bailing out private banks...

[mick063]

3. There was talk of OWS starting up a bank.

As well as other financial services.

The concept was to completely bypass the plutocrats.


I thought this was an excellent idea. Wish there was some way to follow up on it.

[midnight]

5. I was searching for an article that I read about this topic via Occupy Wall Street, but

could not find one....

I found an article Naomi Klein wrote about the movement and how it's target "Wall Street" is a fixed target and therefore gives this movement a fixed presence. And this fixed presence will bring a spot light on the damage of the banks...


"We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.

Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.

The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.

These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly."

http://takethesquare.net/2011/10/18/naomi-klein-occupy-wall-street-is-the-most-important-thing-in-the-world-now/

[Joe Shlabotnik]

4. As a criteria for joining the G7

Canada was told by the IMF and World bank to stop issuing its own currency through the Bank of Canada, and instead borrow the money from commercial banks. As a result, since 1975 our national debt has exploded.

We still have the bank of Canada, but no politician has the guts or desire to start issuing currency again, which could fund federal infrastructure projects and initiatives at next to zero interest.

The cost of admission to the global elite club is having bankers write your laws. (And multinationals write your trade deals too)

[midnight]

6. Bankers writing laws is as criminal as ALEC writing our laws....