States moving to state banks like BND

[boutons_deux]

This is a great way to stop the bankrupt/criminal TBTF national banks from screwing their clients.

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Washington State Joins Movement for Public Banking

Bills were introduced on January 18, in both the House and Senate of the Washington State Legislature, that add Washington to the growing number of states now actively moving to create public banking facilities.

The bills, House Bill 1320 and Senate Bill 5238, propose creation of a Washington Investment Trust (WIT) to "promote agriculture, education, community development, economic development, housing, and industry" by using "the resources of the people of Washington State within the state."

Currently, all the state's funds are deposited with Bank of America (BoA). HB 1320 proposes that in the future, "all state funds be deposited in the Washington Investment Trust and be guaranteed by the state and used to promote the common good and public benefit of all the people and their businesses within [the] state."

The legislation is similar to that now being studied or proposed in states including Illinois, Virginia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, California, and others.

The effort in Washington State draws heavily on the success of the 92-year-old Bank of North Dakota (BND), currently the only state-wide, publicly owned US bank. The BND has helped North Dakota escape the looming budgetary disaster facing other states. In 2009, North Dakota sported the largest budget surplus it had ever had.

http://www.truth-out.org/print/67119

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Texas notably absent from such "socialistic" banking.

[Winehole23]

Socialistic?

How so?

[coyotes_geek]

Texas notably absent from such "socialistic" banking.

Not really. A lot of the BND's functions are duplicated in Texas through a variety of programs such as The State Infrastructure Bank, Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation. Texas just doesn't wrap them all together under one institution called a State Bank.

[boutons_deux]

Do the TX pieces offer retail banking, checking accounts, cc/debit cards, small business loans?

How are the TX pieces faring in the Banksters' Great Depression?

[TeyshaBlue]

Yeah, that goal post looks much better right there.

[xrayzebra]

boutons:
Texas notably absent from such "socialistic" banking.

Oh, my. Ever heard of credit unions. Though not
socialistic, they do provide a good service. Oh, and
I belong to one.............

[George Gervin's Afro]

boutons:

Oh, my. Ever heard of credit unions. Though not
socialistic, they do provide a good service. Oh, and
I belong to one.............

I thought you still hid your money under the mattress ray.

[xrayzebra]

GGA, naw, I put it in a coffee can and hid it in my
neighbors yard. I worry about guys like you who want to
feed to the poor and downtrodden......

I got millions hidden, all in government IOU's....

[coyotes_geek]

Do the TX pieces offer retail banking, checking accounts, cc/debit cards, small business loans?

How are the TX pieces faring in the Banksters' Great Depression?

You do realize the Bank of North Dakota isn't a retail bank, don't you? No, there's no Texas program that offers retail banking, checking accounts, cc/debt cards that I'm aware of, but the BND doesn't do any of that either.

[TeyshaBlue]

You do realize the Bank of North Dakota isn't a retail bank, don't you? No, there's no Texas program that offers retail banking, checking accounts, cc/debt cards that I'm aware of, but the BND doesn't do any of that either.

YOU LIE!:lol

Sorry, just in before the boutonski.:toast

[coyotes_geek]

YOU LIE!:lol

Sorry, just in before the boutonski.:toast

GFY!

:p:

[Drachen]

From the BND FAQ.

Retail Banking – While BND does have retail products similar to other financial institutions, these services are limited in scope. Retail deposits only account for approximately 1.5 percent of our total deposits.
Federal Banking Laws and Regulations mandate financial institutions the responsibility to obtain and document appropriate identification and other pertinent information of their customers. Procedures require that all new customers open accounts in person at the Bank.
Demand Deposit and NOW accounts (checking accounts) are limited to North Dakota residents. Savings accounts and Certificates of Deposit are available to all U.S. Citizens.

So it seems that they do have retail accounts.

I am curious does anyone know where texas deposits its revenue? I would think that it would be better to deposit it with itself than with a commercial bank.

[boutons_deux]

Michael Hudson Discusses Why We Need Public Banks to Prevent Cannibalization of the Economy on Real News Network

Michael Hudson continues his discussion of banking on Real News Network by focusing on the role banks played in different economies in the early period of industrialization. He discussed this idea at length in his 2010 article, “From Marx to Goldman Sachs: The Fictions of Fictitious Capital,” which explained the difference between the German and Anglo-Dutch model of banking. The Germans thought finance should serve the development of industry, essentially an equity-oriented approach, while the British and Dutch banks preferred to lend against existing collateral. The result was that both inventors and important projects often had trouble securing funding. As Hudson wrote:


British bankers were prone to insist that companies they controlled pay out most of their earnings as dividends and remain highly liquid rather than providing enough financial leeway for them to pursue a long-term investment strategy. By contrast, the major German banks paid out dividends at only half the rate of British banks, retaining their earnings as a capital reserve invested largely in the stock of their industrial clients. Treating their borrowers as allies rather than merely trying to make a profit as quickly as possible, they expected their customers to invest their profits in expanding production rather than paying them out as dividends.


Hudson explains how public banks could provide an alternative to our current model of extractive finance.



http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/03/michael-hudson-discusses-why-we-need-private-banks-to-prevent-cannibalization-of-the-economy-on-real-news-network.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

[CosmicCowboy]

LOL

Of course, Oil and Gas and the Bakken oil field don't have anything to do with North Dakota's budget surplus. It's all the state bank...:rolleyes

[CosmicCowboy]

We have seen what happens when politicians get to choose who gets loans based on political considerations and not financial considerations. See Solyndra, Ener1, Beacon power, etc.

[boutons_deux]

LOL

Of course, Oil and Gas and the Bakken oil field don't have anything to do with North Dakota's budget surplus. It's all the state bank...:rolleyes

Bnd success goes back decades

[boutons_deux]

Public Banks Are Key to Capitalism

State and municipal governments already have public lending programs, which are generally not seen as distortions of the free market. They exist because private banks are not lending in some sectors that need financing. Montana finances first-time ranchers and farmers (http://agr.mt.gov/agr/Producer/GrantsLoans/beginFarmRanch/); Sonoma County has its Energy Independence Program (http://www.sonomacountyenergy.org/); and San Francisco has half a dozen mortgage lending and small business programs. Globally, public banks lend countercyclically, providing credit when and where other banks won’t. This does not crowd out private banks. Germany and Taiwan, which have strong public banking sectors, are among the most competitive banking markets in the world.

The Bank of North Dakota takes almost no individual deposits, but a national postal bank would, just as postal banks have done routinely in other countries without destabilizing free markets. One-fourth of American families are unbanked or underbanked (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/unbanked-america/?_r=1). With $3 trillion in excess deposits, Wall Street doesn’t want (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/banks-pay-interest-cds-invest/story?id=14812925) these small depositors.

We actually need publicly owned banks for a capitalist market economy to run properly. Banking, money and credit are not market goods but are economic infrastructure, just as roads and bridges are physical infrastructure. By providing inexpensive, accessible financing to the free enterprise sector of the economy, public banks make commerce more vital and stable. Public banking is not a radical idea but has been practiced in the U.S. with excellent results for decades, and around the world for centuries.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/01/should-states-operate-public-banks/public-banks-are-essential-to-capitalism

[TDMVPDPOY]

remember moving to public banking.....then they going to privatize it down the road

[boutons_deux]

Vermont Citizens Push to Form a State Bank, But Will Ratings Agencies Kill the Idea? (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/vermont-citizens-push-form-state-bank-will-ratings-agencies-kill-idea.html)

An article in Vermont Public Radio (http://digital.vpr.net/post/town-meeting-state-bank-proposal-tests-voters-view-risk) describes the issues raised against it. One of the nay-sayers is the state Treasurer, Beth Pearce, argues that a state bank would not be efficient. Vermont’s cash balances range from $20 million to $300 million over the course of a year.

However, I’m not convinced. Every study of bank efficiency has found that banks show increasing cost curves (as in their costs rise as total assets grow) with the break point occurring as low as around $1 billion to as high as $25 billion (ironically, I’ve had difficulty finding any studies since the early 2000s, no doubt because the finding were contrary to the myth that bigger banks are more efficient). And a state bank would not have a costly branch network or individual account/transaction processing, which means it would be efficient at a lower level of activity than a conventional bank.

The biggest potential fly in the ointment is that the ratings agencies may take a dim view of a state bank. As the article explains:

She [Pearce] says if Vermont’s relatively small cash assets were in a state bank that money would be at greater risk; for example if loans go bad.

And if the big credit rating agencies see a public bank as risky, it jeopardizes Vermont’s bond rating.

Pearce says that’s important because a lower bond rating makes it more expensive for the state and lending agencies to borrow money.

A poor bond rating “turns around and affects every Vermonter.” Pearce says. “Whether it’s affordable housing, whether it’s a college education for students, commercial development in the state, commercial energy improvements in the state. Those are the types of things that benefit from our bond rating. I don’t want to put that at risk.”

Public bank supporters say the risk is overstated. They point to VEDA’s success and its high loan repayment record. Gary Flomenhoft [author of a study on state banking] argues that state money in large institutions like TD Bank is also at risk.


Unfortunately, the risk that the ratings agencies will take a dim view is real, because they often act as enforcers for major financial players.

As Matt Stoller wrote in 2011 (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/08/matt-stoller-standard-poor%E2%80%99s-predatory-policy-agenda.html):

In the early 2000s, several states attempted to rein in an increasingly obvious predatory mortgage lending wave. These laws, pushed by consumer advocates, would have threatened the highly profitable mortgage securitization pipeline.

S&P used its power to destroy this threat. Josh Rosner and Gretchen Morgenson told the story in Reckless Endangerment (http://www.amazon.com/Reckless-Endangerment-Outsized-Corruption-Armageddon/dp/0805091203).

Standard & Poor’s was the most aggressive of the three agencies, however. And on January 16, 2003, four days after the Georgia General Assembly convened, it dropped a bombshell. Because of the state’s new Fair Lending Act, S&P said that it would no longer allow mortgage loans originated in Georgia to be placed in mortgage securities that it rated. Moody’s and Fitch soon followed with similar warnings.

It was a critical blow. S&P’s move meant Georgia lenders would have no access to the securitization money machine; they would either have to keep the loans they made on their own books, or sell them one by one to other institutions. In turn, they made it clear to the public that there would be fewer mortgages funded, dashing “the dream” of homeownership.

Can you see the topsy-turvy reasoning? Because Georgia proposed to hold lenders and investors in securitizations accountable for predatory loans, S&P said these higher-quality loans were ineligible to be included in mortgage pools. Why? Because, in the presumably smaller percentage that did wind up being predatory anyhow, the state could seek recourse from lenders. That arguably might lower cash flows to investors. Can’t have investors be responsible for their decisions, now can we?


And S&P’s press release made clear it intended to kill any similar rules in other states:


It ended with a warning: “Standard & Poor’s will continue to monitor this and other pending predatory lending legislation.” In other words, any states that might have been considering strengthening their predatory lending laws as Georgia did should beware.

That press release is here (http://www.mortgagebankers.org/NewsandMedia/PressCenter/32153.htm). S&P was aggressively killing mortgage servicing regulation and rules to prevent fraudulent or predatory mortgage lending.





http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/vermont-citizens-push-form-state-bank-will-ratings-agencies-kill-idea.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capi talism%29

so the corrupt cartel of ratings agencies, already condemned in giving AAA ratings to Wall St junk MBS, and financed by the financial (banks) sector, acts as hit man crippling, killing "socialistic" attempts of Human-Americans to create non-profit, public state banks.

[Winehole23]

American Samoa gets a public bank: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/09/when-banks-abandoned-american-samoa-the-islands-found-a-century-old-solution-that-could-be-the-future-of-finance/

[boutons_deux]

not public banking, but is VT finance/business news

Vermont Senate Approves $15 Minimum Wage

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2018/02/16/vermont-senate-approves-15-minimum-wage

[boutons_deux]

Progressive dreams to try grab wealth back from Capital-sts, predatory banks

A NATIONAL public bank (money as a regulated critical public good so public bank as regulated utility, like water, electricity, and why not Internet) with USPS as branch offices.