How Wisconsin Could Turn Austerity into Prosperity: Own a Bank

[midnight]

As states struggle to meet their budgets, public pensions are on the chopping block, but they needn’t be. States can keep their pension funds intact while leveraging them into many times their worth in loans, just as Wall Street banks do. They can do this by forming their own public banks, following the lead of North Dakota—a state that currently has a budget surplus.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/how-wisconsin-could-turn-austerity-into-prosperity-own-a-bank



We need to keep public education, public hospitals, public roads, public jobs.... and now we need to get a public bank.....

[Carolina]

1. K&R

[drm604]

2. I'm glad to hear that there are 7 states considering this.

I hope the idea spreads.

[truedelphi]

3. I know he is despised on this board,

But Rep Issa, who with Kucinich chaired the 2008 investigation into the Paulsom/KashKari
shenanighans over at the Federal Reserve, suggested this same thing way back then.

Issa made the same statement again and again - we did not as a nation need to create a new body of laws to "TARP" over the bad debts of the elite financial players, but instead all we needed to do was to dust off the laws that were created as a response to the Savings and loan debacle of the late eighties. (I have come to believe that "TARP" refers to the wool that was pulled over the collective working American body at the time of the "financial crisis.")

Those S & L-era laws decreed that the payments to made to shore up the economy went to STATE-chartered banks, one in each designated region, and the money would flow directly to them, and they would, as the law would require them to do it, distribute the money offered them to the people on Main Street and the farmers, in each region.

Kucinich was in full agreement. Unfortunately none of this was heeded by those in control.

Tim Geithner has lied to Congress again and again on this issue, He has stated repeatedly that new legislation had to be created to handle this situation, and that there was now way to r4equire those receiving the TARP monies to loan that money out, because if stipulations were made requiring the financial elite to loan the money out, then, the financial elite would refuse the loans.

And so here we are, some two and half years later. Main Street and the small farms have been hard hit. The financial elite is having a great old time, and their latest trick is to bid
up commodities.

Oh and BTW, Geithner's lies to Congress, fully recorded on C Span and still available for viewing on YOUTube, those are impeachable offenses that should have been charged to Mr Geithner. And nine to thirty trillion has been handed over to the financial elite - only we are told not to worry about these hand outs - all of them have been paid back through the mechanism of the financial elite offering up "collateral" on those loans.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

4. Pretty soon, the government will have a monopoly on fucking up every aspect of our lives...

Personally, I think it's great to have a one-stop culprit responsible for fucking up all of our lives.
At least it makes complaining to (and bitching about) the responsible parties a little easier!
:applause: :applause:

[drm604]

5. This wouldn't give the government a monopoly on anything.

Read the article. Very few individuals or businesses have deposits with the Bank of North Dakota. They bank with regular banks like in the rest of the country.

ND has a budget surplus. Don't you think that's a good thing?