What we are seeing today in national media and from global 1% social outlets----are lots of explanations designed to make 99% WE THE PEOPLE think there is not enough precious metal to back all that US national debt----sorry those Social Security, Medicare, GI benefits et al simply cannot be backed by the US Treasury------it was a ponzi scheme.
US President Nixon created FIAT MONEY policy for the US FED so they could MOVE FORWARD with ROBBER BARON global Wall Street frauds.......this was the COMPLEX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS FOR LEVERAGE-----the GOLD STANDARD was ended after the last ROBBER BARON frauds of the ROARING 20s.
The point is this------the US has been operating fine on a combination of GOLD/SILVER and FIAT MONEY. We don't need to END PRINTING MONEY----which is FIAT MONEY----we simply need to return to regulated banking that will not allow global 1% banking LAISSEZ-FAIRE corrupt the entire national monetary system.
FIAT MONEY means those public trusts, pensions, GI benefits, economic stimulus to return housing to those US citizens can and will be ABSOLUTELY ABLE TO BE DONE.
Our 99% of black citizens tied to American slavery promised that 40 ACRES AND A MULE-----are to be included in these massive global 1% banking frauds............THIS IS THE US ECONOMIC STIMULUS-------stop allowing global 1% pols tied the economic stimulus to infrastructure building only.
All The Gold In The World
by Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/24/2015 - 17:35
For the companies exploring for gold, a deposit that has more than one gram of gold for every tonne of earth is an exciting prospect. In fact, in our 2013 report summarizing the world’s gold deposits, we found that the average grade of gold deposits in the world is around that amount: about 1.01 g/t.
Think about that for a moment. One gram (0.035 oz) is equal to the mass of a small paper clip. This small amount of gold is usually not even in one place – it is dispersed through a tonne of rock and dirt in smaller amounts, most of the time invisible to the naked eye. For some companies that have the stars align with easy metallurgy, a deposit near surface, and open pit potential, this gram per tonne deposit may even somehow be economic.
It’s hard to believe that such a small amount of gold could be worth so much, and that is why great visualizations can help us understand the rarity of this yellow metal. Luckily, the folks at Demonocracy.info have done the heavy lifting for us, putting together a series of 3D visualizations of gold bullion bars showcasing the world’s gold that has been mined thus far. Note: these visualizations are a couple of years old and optimistically have the value of gold pegged at US$2,000 per oz, presumably for the ease of calculations.
Lastly, we finish off with an image of all of the world’s mined gold in one cube with dimensions of 20.5m. If it was all melted, it would fit within the confines of an Olympic Swimming Pool.
_____________________
'Public Bank Berhad - Official Site---PAKISTAN
www.pbebank.com
Public Bank, a complete one-stop financial portal, offering a range of accounts, credit cards, loans, deposits and other financial aids for our personal and ...'
This article shows GERMANY with WOLFAM MORALES-----and below we see another tied to OAKLAND CA---------all PRETENDING to be pushing for our REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE issue------PUBLIC BANKING. What they are doing is installing what MOVING FORWARD sees as a ONE WORLD ONE CENTRAL BANK------that replaces our US FED as that FEDERAL RESERVE BANK and creates a global central bank----calling is PUBLIC BANK. OAKLAND CA is hyper ONE WORLD tied to SAN FRANCISCO and SILICON VALLEY so nothing good is happening in OAKLAND CA or the other source of PUBLIC BANKING propaganda -----NORTH DAKOTA.
We CANNOT get to public banking before we get rid of all global 1% pols -------reverse breaking of GLASS STEAGALL and deregulated banking policies. Global 1% are pretending they are addressing this while simply MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE ONLINE BANK ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK policies.
This is why we see here----PAKISTAN----GERMANY------US all giving 99% of global citizens these TALKING POINTS.
Public Banking Works is ..
The founders of Commonomics USA also helped found the Public Banking Institute. We provide public policy expertise on public banking, postal banking, cooperative economics, and other matters involving public finance. Our projects include the Cost of Wall Street GIS Mapping Project, Public Banking Workshops, and the Campaign for Postal Banking.
Learn More About Public Banks
What is Public Banking?
A public bank is a simple and proven concept. It is essentially a nonprofit organization, owned by the government and chartered by the state to accept deposits and make loans. Many people don't realize this, but governments are already in the lending business -- most have a portfolio of loans (provided to small business, farmers/ranchers, homeowners, etc.) scattered among different governmental organizations. A public bank will consolidate these loans and serve as a way to fund them with a lower cost of money. For example, the North Dakota Treasurer places all tax and fee revenue in the ND state bank and uses the credit to provide low cost funding for consolidation of student loans, housing and other infrastructure, commercial loans, and projects that generate cash but are not included in government budgets.
Campaign Overview
The Public Banking Works campaign is primarily focused on California and includes the charter cities of Oakland and Santa Rosa. Resolving the lack of banking services provided to the cannabis industry is a priority, as is ensuring that affordable credit is extended to small businesses, students and infrastructure projects.
Oakland City Council
Oakland City Council unanimously passed Councilmember Kaplan’s Resolution calling for the City Administrator to look into the process of establishing a public bank for the City of Oakland.
The Resolution, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Kaplan, Kalb, and Guillen, directs the City Administrator to look into the scope and cost of conducting a feasibility study for public banking in Oakland and possibly the larger region. It also directs City Staff to solicit input from community stakeholders about the feasibility study, including suggestions of potential contractors and funding sources; and makes it clear that the study should cover the legality and feasibility of banking the cannabis industry.
_____________________________________________
OAKLAND CA ----home of SILICON VALLEY------top global corporate welfare and global banking-------ditching WALL STREET? Oh, I understand---they are ditching a US sovereign Wall Street banking and installing ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK------no need for a US FED when there is no US sovereignty says SILICON VALLEY and OAKLAND CA------
Who is OAKLAND CA? It is home of our $ trillions subprime mortgage loan frauds----home of our $trillions for-profit higher education frauds-----home of BOGUS GREEN ENERGY TECHNOLOGY CREDIT frauds-------and yes, that would be PELOSI, BOXER, FEINSTEIN-----and those far-right wing California Governors----like BROWN.
With this gang of global 1% banking criminal cartel pols and players STILL IN PLACE----we of course KNOW this is NOT real left social progressive public banking.
MOVING FORWARD MEANS ENDING US STOCK MARKET WALL STREET----ENDING US FEDERAL RESERVE BANK-----AND INSTALLING ONE WORLD ONE CENTRAL BANK SELLING THIS AS PUBLIC BANKING.
We notice the photo attached to this article has a local 99% citizen giving that #RESIST fist------she is either a global banking 5% player or a citizen not knowing she is pushing VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY BAD BANKING POLICY.
This is ONE WORLD ONLINE DIGITAL CURRENCY no money currency for you!
March 19, 2017
Will Oakland Become First U.S. City To Ditch Wall Street And Establish A Public Bank?
Proponents say an Oakland bank could rake in billions of dollars from the marijuana industry.
By Gabrielle Canon Oakland, Berkeley, And East Bay News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
It started with a conversation over dinner. In 2011, retired local principal Susan Harman was in Washington, D.C., protesting Citizens United, and she happened to be seated next to public-banking advocate Ellen Brown. It didn’t take long for Harman to be convinced that a public bank would be the best way to challenge Wall Street’s influence — and she immediately took the idea home to Oakland.
“I was an instant convert,” Harman said. “It just seemed like the most radical and smartest thing I ever heard.”
Now, she’s a leading member of the advocacy group Strike Debt Bay Area, an outgrowth of the Occupy movement that has continued to protest financial corruption, and has been fighting for public banking ever since.
It hasn’t been easy — especially after Gov. Jerry Brown killed an initial state-level campaign — but six years later and Harman might finally witness a public-bank reality in her hometown.
Oakland is now considering establishing one of the first city-owned banks in the country. Officials argue that the bank could provide affordable financing for city initiatives, small businesses, and low-income residents.
Oakland’s bank could also accept the billions of dollars in capital from California’s cannabis industry, which cannot deposit money at commercial banks due to pressure from the feds.
“Public banking is a great way for us to put our money where our values are,” Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan told the Express.
She emphasized that people are tired of fighting to keep Wall Street banks in line, especially now that the Trump administration has begun to roll back regulations. “I think that has been so frustrating that it has increased the appetite for a community-responsive alternative,” Kaplan said.
But the councilmember admitted that it has been difficult to cut ties to big corporate banks, despite the swelling public support for divestment. Oakland must put its money somewhere, and the big banks that apply to do business with the city all have tarnished track records.
Ideally, a public bank’s charter and mission would be to serve the public, unlike corporate banks, which are responsible only to shareholders. As a result, Kaplan says, the bank’s directive would be governed by the people, rather than profits, and it could finance a variety of opportunities, from low-interest college loans to investment in alternative energy infrastructure — all while saving the city money.
Two weeks after the November 2016 election, Kaplan and Councilmember Dan Kalb introduced a resolution that began the process of assessing what it would take to establish the bank.
Now, City Administrator Sabrina Landreth is evaluating two bids from organizations willing to conduct a feasibility study, and is scheduled to present her decisions, along with how much a study will cost, on April 25.
While the idea is only in early stages of development -- and there are still many unanswered questions — this could be a big win for public-banking advocates, who have high hopes that city-run banks will spur larger regional and state-level public banks.
Oakland is one of several of cities, including Santa Fe, Philadelphia, Manchester, and New Hampshire, that are assessing the potential of a public bank. While there aren’t currently any city-owned banks in the United States, local governments around the country are looking at The Bank of North Dakota as a model. That state-run bank, which has thrived for nearly 100 years, helped North Dakota escape the credit crunch caused by the Great Recession, and, in the last two decades, added $385 million to its general fund in returns.
Santa Fe has already completed an initial feasibility study, which it published in January 2016, and found that, though there are risks, building a public bank would be both feasible and fiscally advantageous.
And advocates say that Oakland is better situated to succeed, due to what could amount to billions of dollars in capital from California’s newly legalized cannabis industry.
The Canna-Biz Factor According to California’s legislative analyst, the marijuana market is projected to grow to close to $7 billion over the next three years — and some estimates have projected the number closer to $20 billion.
Still, 70 percent of businesses in the marijuana industry have been unable to open bank accounts. This has left businesses that sell pot with limited options — and has created a huge issue for the state, which is now attempting to figure out how to tax industry sales and mitigate public-safety issues that are certain to arise from people carrying around huge amounts of cash.
“Oakland may end up very quickly becoming the economic center for this new [marijuana] industry.”
“We have a problem,” explained state Deputy Treasurer Tim Schaefer, who currently serves in California’s Cannabis Banking Working Group. “Banks won’t play, business is exploding, and more and more people are walking around with big bags of currency.”
Advocates are hoping a public bank could be the solution to that problem, and some say Oakland could be the epicenter of the industry, flushing the city with new economic opportunities.
“Like Napa is the center of the wine industry, with warehousing and distribution, all that can be built with low-cost credit provided by the public bank,” argued Marc Armstrong, co-founder of the Public Banking Institute, and education and advocacy organization Commonomics USA, which sponsored a bid to perform the feasibility study. “Oakland may end up very quickly becoming the economic center for this new industry.”
In fact, he said large inflows of capital from the cannabis industry could help start and secure the bank, ultimately providing more opportunity for community investment.
Kaplan agreed. “If we have all the growers and dispensaries and retailers sharing a bank, we have a better opportunity for capitalization, that then makes everything else we are trying to do easier,” she explained.
Take It To The Bank?
Still, even as the public-bank pitch continues to gain public support, several obstacles remain — both financial and legal, and including how a public bank might handle the threat of federal blowback.
“A public bank — while a very seductive idea on the surface — quickly decomposes into a set of very thorny questions,” Schaefer explained. The city would still be on the hook to provide suspicious-activity reports to the feds, and comply with federal regulations. This could attract attention from the Trump administration, which has promised to crack down harder on recreational-marijuana states. Because Oakland is also a sanctuary city, it could become a higher priority target, as well.
If the bank is capitalized with cannabis cash, and is at odds with federal law, it could also make it more difficult for the bank to obtain a charter. California financial institutions still must be shored up by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and most need a master account number from the Federal Reserve.
“A public bank — while a very seductive idea on the surface — quickly decomposes into a set of very thorny questions."
Even putting cannabis-related issues aside, in order to obtain a California charter needed to start the bank, Oakland would need to make a strong case that it’s got a solid business plan, and has the capital to finance it, or a good management team to execute it.
“If the bank doesn’t want to earn profits, that’s fine. But it has to cover its costs,” explained Dr. James Barth, a professor who teaches finance at Auburn University, and also serves as a senior fellow at the economic think tank The Milken Institute. He explained that the bank could quickly become insolvent if risk and return aren’t adequately considered during funding decisions.
Specifically, he explained, if the bank takes on unprofitable loans intended to help the community, the riskier loans might be more prone to default and could run the bank into the ground. “Then, who would pick up the tab?” he asked.
“You don’t want to be the bank of last resort,” Armstrong agreed. He says the bank should not be expected to provide loans to those who are turned away from private institutions. “That is a recipe for failure, because you have a higher default rate that way.”
Armstrong added that the city also cannot assume credit will be doled out like grants. “That’s not the nature of what the bank does. The bank issues loans, which then have to be paid back. Otherwise it would be raided to fund operating expenses for the city, and that would be a real problem.”
“If the bank doesn’t want to earn profits, that’s fine. But it has to cover its costs."
There are also questions of how a bank would be governed, or how priorities might be set. Even the Bank of North Dakota, oft-cited as a model for successful public banking, came under scrutiny last year for financing the police crackdown on Dakota Access Pipeline protestors, at then-Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s request.
Also, the management team chosen to run the bank will be required to have strong backgrounds in finance but also be dedicated to the mission of public service. With little precedent, these dual qualifications might be hard to find.
Escape From Wall Street Despite the risks, and obstacles remaining, proponents are optimistic that the city will be able to navigate the challenges to build something that is better than the status quo.
“It is extremely painful to sit through two-and-a-half hours of the finance-committee meeting and hear report-after-report on the state threatening to take money away, and the feds threatening to take money away, and various expenses the city has that it can’t afford, and to know that a public bank could solve those problems,” Harman said. “It’s excruciating.”
Kaplan agrees that there’s work to be done, but insisted that that’s why she has called for the report. She is eager to ensure the process is underway. “When you think about the potential — the different useful positive things in people’s lives that you could do with this, that is a big part of what drives me to say this is worth working on.”
Even if the bank is feasible, though, there’s still a long legislative process ahead. Advocates are already growing frustrated by the time city officials have taken to assess the bids for only the feasibility study. “There are two submissions, limited to 15 pages,” said Harman, who was incredulous. “It shouldn’t take sixty days to read 30 pages and make a decision.”
Kaplan says she requested the next report be delivered at a public meeting, to ensure it gets done on time. “I know the advocates are very concerned about whether the administration is foot-dragging on this or not,” Kaplan said. “We are not going to let it drop.”
"There will be a chain of public banks, and we can escape from Wall Street.”
In the meantime, advocates have planned events for later this spring to keep up the momentum. Strike Debt Bay Area has partnered with Armstrong’s Commonomics to create a new advocacy group, called “Friends of the Public Bank of Oakland,” which is continuing to build a coalition of support from both individuals and East Bay organizations.
No matter what happens, Harman says she is committed to seeing this through. “When we do it, other cities will do it. And then there will be a chain of public banks, and we can escape from Wall Street.”
__________________________________________
Here are more far right wing US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE cities MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD BANK. Remember, SANCTUARY CITIES is another term for US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES having absolutely no intention of protecting our 99% global labor pool but operating here in US as they do overseas.
This is all happening because of the greed of Wall Street but these areas all drove the global Wall Street frauds of these few decades.
ONE WORLD ONE WORLD BANK AND ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK WITH ONLY DIGITAL CURRENCY MEANS 99% OF US AND GLOBAL CITIZENS WILL NEVER TOUCH CURRENCY AGAIN.
Hint, San Diego Free Press saying it is PROGRESSIVE is far right wing global 1% economic progressive, not left social progressive this is why an article written as propaganda can fool 99% WE THE PEOPLE.
Oh, look----all those hyper-global 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE states are doing the same
'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'.
Cities and States Prefer Public Banks To Wall Street
March 7, 2017 by John Lawrence
Profits Can Stay In State, Provide Local FundingBy John Lawrence
Profits Can Stay In State, Provide Local Funding
By John Lawrence
Alarmed by the corruption and greed of Wall Street, many US cities and states are studying the feasibility of establishing public banks. Public banks are owned by cities, states or other jurisdictions and serve to keep funds local instead of being deposited on Wall Street. The funds are then used to support local economic activities like small business loans and student loans.
Washington state has already cut its ties with Wells Fargo because they funded DAPL. Now they want to get rid of Wall Street as a place to park their money making use of the local economy and profiting the people of Washington instead of the bankers of Wall Street. 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.
Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt and The Public Banking Solution writes:
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. 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.
Santa Fe, NM Considers Public Bank as Trump Threatens to Take Away Funding for Sanctuary Cities
The Mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico has declared his city to be a sanctuary city in which case Trump has threatened to deny Federal monies to the city. The Mayor noted that Santa Fe had welcomed immigrants for over 400 years. A public bank could replace that funding:
If McEvers [interviewer from NPR] had asked what possible sources of funding might replace the money Trump is threatening to take away, Gonzales might have answered that Santa Fe was in the advanced stages of considering the creation of a publicly owned bank. In late October, three City Council members introduced a resolution to take the “final steps to determine” whether a public bank would be feasible. Earlier in 2016, a local advocacy group named Banking on New Mexico released a five-year model projecting that a Santa Fe bank could reduce debt service costs by $1 million a year and earn an annual profit, netting the city over $10 million in the bank’s first five years. While that wouldn’t completely offset funds the new administration is threatening to withhold, it would put the city in better shape to absorb the loss and begin the process of building an autonomous local economy that over time could transcend much of the need for federal dollars.
Oakland, CA Gets Serious About Public Banking
Two Council members have introduced a resolution to the Oakland City Council which says in part:
Resolution Directing The City Administrator To Prepare An Informational Report With The Cost Estimates Of Commissioning A Study Analyzing The Feasibility And Economic Impact Of Establishing A Public Bank For Or Including The City Of Oakland, And Providing Funding Options For The Feasibility Study, Including The Option Of Allocating To The Study Any Remainder Of The Money That Was Budgeted For The Goldman Sachs Debarment Proceedings.
WHEREAS, a public bank can have investment priorities that focus on the creation of jobs in Oakland that spur local economic growth by providing affordable credit to small and medium-sized businesses that have been historically ignored by the larger, more established banks; and
WHEREAS, a public bank can have investment priorities that center on providing loans for low and moderate income housing to help relieve the current housing crisis facing Oakland; and
WHEREAS, a public bank can have investment priorities that provide loans for energy conservation, installation of solar panels and measures for conserving water in Oakland; and
WHEREAS, Wall Street banks seek short-term profits for their private shareholders by investing in stocks, derivatives, credit default swaps and other speculative financial instruments; and
WHEREAS, there is a desire for local funding solutions that reinvest public funds in the local community; and
WHEREAS, public banking operates in the public interest, through institutions owned by the people through their representative governments; and
WHEREAS, public banks are able to return revenue to the community and can provide low-cost financing in support of City policies; and
WHEREAS, on September 8, 2016, Wells Fargo bank was fined $185 million for fraudulently opening up accounts without customers’ consent, which then damaged customers’ credit scores and caused customers to be charged illegal banking fees; and
WHEREAS, on May 20, 2015, Citigroup Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to plead guilty to felony charges for conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the foreign currency exchange spot market; and
WHEREAS, on May 20, 2015, Citigroup Inc. agreed to pay a criminal fine of $945 million and JP Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay a criminal fine of $550, for illegally manipulating the foreign exchange market; and
WHEREAS, on May 20, 2015, the Federal Reserve announced that it was imposing a separate set of fines on Citigroup, Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. of $342 million for their illegal practices in the foreign exchange markets; and
WHEREAS, on March 9th, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wall Street banks had paid in total more than $100 billion in fines and penalties for mortgage-related fraud, and
WHEREAS, said Wall Street banks’ criminal conduct and wrongful behavior should not be rewarded with future business dealings with Oakland; and
WHEREAS, the City of Oakland is tasked with holding and protecting the fundamental interest of the public as well as the financial well-being of the City; now, therefore be it
RESOLVED: That the Oakland City Council directs the City Administrator, or his/her designee, to prepare an informational report with the cost estimates of commissioning experts in public banking to conduct a study analyzing the feasibility and economic impact of establishing a public bank for the City of Oakland;
Please note that these are only a few of the “Whereas’s”. There’s more.
Profits to the People
Currently, the Bank of North Dakota (BND) is the only public bank in the country. All other states and cities deposit their revenues and pension funds with Wall Street with the profits going to Wall Street. That’s why so many states are in dire straits while North Dakota’s fiscal situation is just fine.
According to a January 19, 2017, New York Times article:
[A]lmost everywhere the fiscal crisis of states has grown more acute. Rainy day funds are drained, cities and towns have laid off more than 200,000 people, and Arizona even has leased out its state office building…
“It’s the time of the once unthinkable,” noted Lori Grange, deputy director of the Pew Center on the States. “Whether there are tax increases or dramatic cuts to education and vital services, the crisis is bad.”
Is it any wonder that President Pussy Grabber and his Republican cohorts are calling for the privatization of everything? Their mantra is that government is incompetent when the true fault lies in the fact that states and municipalities are being bled to death by Wall Street. Wall Street banks borrow money from the Fed at zero percent interest and then loan it to municipalities at 5% interest. That profit could go to the municipalities. The antidote for that is to establish a public bank from which profits will flow to the people as they have in North Dakota. Local control of local money should be the mantra.
There is a move in Congress to let states go bankrupt the way many US cities have. For instance, San Bernardino, CA; Stockton, CA; Orange County, CA; Jefferson County, AL; and Detroit, MI have all declared bankruptcy with the result that concomitant pension fund and contractual obligations to unions and others have gone by the wayside.
While those and other cities have been drained by the Wall Street banking crisis which resulted in increased borrowing costs and loss of revenues, BND and North Dakota have churned along quite nicely, thank you very much. They have provided low-cost affordable loans to small businesses and students, thus totally averting the worst effects that most cities and states which rely on Wall Street have suffered.
BND provides back-up for local private banks by offering check clearing services and liquidity support. They invest in North Dakota municipal bonds to provide economic development. In the last ten years, the BND has returned more than a third of a billion dollars to the state’s general fund. North Dakota is one of the few states to consistently post a budget surplus.
Washington State Representative Bob Hasegawa, a prime sponsor of the Washington legislation, called the proposal for a publicly-owned bank “a simple concept that will reap huge benefits for Washington.”
In a letter to constituents, he explained, “The concept (is) to keep taxpayers’ money working here in Washington to build our economy. Currently, all tax revenues go into a ‘Concentration Account’ held by the Bank of America. BoA makes money off our money and we never see those profits again. Instead, we can create our own institution and keep taxpayers’ dollars here in Washington, working for Washington.”
Dennis Ortblad writes in the Seattle Times:
“In fact, we propose a public bank in Washington that lends primarily to public institutions — such as school districts, affordable housing programs, public utilities — in order to reduce the state’s or a municipality’s reliance on the expensive bonds and fees in Wall Street markets.”
While President Pussy Grabber, Betsy DeVos and Repubs in general want to privatize everything, a public bank would help to shore up public enterprises like the public school system and local infrastructure. BND has a sterling credit record and earned for the state $130 million in 2015 alone, with total assets of $7.4 billion (its 12th consecutive year of record profits for the people of the state). That $130 million would have gone to Wall Street in any other state.
The US banking system including its central bank, the Federal Reserve, is privately owned. Is it any wonder that during the banking crisis of 2008, the first and only order of business was to bail out the banks, not homeowners who were overdue in their mortgages? They were hung out to dry despite the fact that many were told the bank would “help” them either by lowering interest rates, refinancing or forgiving principal in “underwater” mortgages. A public banking system is beholden not to private interests but to the people of the state or city in which it’s registered.
In an article, Seattle Votes to End $3 Billion Relationship with Wells Fargo Because of the Bank’s Dakota Access Pipeline Financing, Sydney Brownstone writes:
The Seattle City Council has unanimously voted to end the city’s relationship with Wells Fargo over the bank’s financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), its financing of private prison companies, and a regulatory scandal involving the bank’s creation of two million unauthorized accounts.
All nine council members voted to take $3 billion of city funds away from the bank after Seattle’s current contract expires in 2018. The vote occurred just hours after the Army notified Congress that it will be granting an easement allowing DAPL builders to drill under the Missouri River following a presidential memo from Donald Trump.
That $3 billion could find a home in a Seattle or Washington state public bank when one becomes available. All they have to do is mimic North Dakota’s public bank which has been working well for over 100 years. The Public Banking Institute is working on a model which could be replicated in cities and states throughout the US. All city council members would have to do is to vote to replicate the model.
One Seattle City Council member who is determined to bring about a public bank is Kshama Sawant. She is an American socialist politician, activist, and member of the Socialist Alternative.
SAWANT IS A FAR-RIGHT WING EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POVERTY LIBERTARIAN MARXIST FROM A GLOBAL 1%.
A former software engineer, Sawant became a socialist activist and part-time economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States. Sawant ran unsuccessfully for the Washington House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. Sawant was the first socialist to win a city-wide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916. Socialist Alternative describes itself as “a community of activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; fighting for living wage jobs and militant, democratic unions; and people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war,
Sawant ran unsuccessfully for the Washington House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. Sawant was the first socialist to win a city-wide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916. Socialist Alternative describes itself as “a community of activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; fighting for living wage jobs and militant, democratic unions; and people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women, and men fighting sexism and homophobia.”
A public bank could cut the cost of building public schools in Washington in half. Half the cost of building new schools is in interest paid to banks and bondholders. That would all come back to state or city coffers depending on whether the schools were financed by a state or city public bank.
From the Washington Public Bank Coalition website:
How Our State Can Solve Its Budget Crisis: Create a Public Bank
Cut spending, fire teachers, raise taxes—these are the solutions always proposed to offset Washington State’s budget deficits. The state’s budget crises do not arise from too much spending or too little taxation on the poor and middle class. Instead, since 2000, corporate tax breaks in Washington State have more than doubled. The state simply isn’t getting enough tax revenue from corporations (see: realwashingtonstatebudget.info).
Also, since the 2008 financial market collapse, banks have cut back on lending. When small local businesses can’t secure low-interest loans, there are layoffs and business closures in the private sector, which also cause state revenues to plummet. To solve this problem, since 2010, 17 states, including Washington State, have drafted legislation to establish public banks based on the successful Bank of North Dakota.
A Public Bank for Cities in San Diego County
There is a local movement to create a public bank in San Diego. A group has been meeting regularly and is studying the possibilities for several cities within San Diego County. They are meeting with local officials people and hope to use the Oakland Resolution cited partially above as a first step in getting the ball rolling.
Notwithstanding some setbacks and some attrition of the ranks, our courageous group continues to fight for banking reform and the creation of public banks throughout California. We have been encouraged by the recent success in Oakland with the unanimous approval of the Public Banking Resolution by their City Council. It gives us hope! We need referrals to the mayors, city Council members and finance directors for the 18 incorporated cities in San Diego County to stop our money from flowing to Wall Street!
_________________________________________
Below we see right after the global 99% finally understood the extent of the global banking 1% systemic frauds against US et al------the United Nations came out in 2009 that MOVING FORWARD would be that GLOBAL RESERVE BANK-------tied to WORLD BANK-----partnered with United Nations. This is what all the TALKING POINTS today in US on PUBLIC BANKING has as a goal------it has nothing to do with our US sovereign banking system----it will have nothing to do with citizens' banking---we will not even be able to see money----if we think a US Wall Street predatory, criminal, and crony was bad----we don't want to MOVE FORWARD to GLOBAL RESERVE BANK----THAT 'PUBLIC BANK' now pushed by far-right wing global 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and morphing into far-right wing LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS-----
The Case for an Increased United Nations-World Bank partnership
SIPA’s IO/UNS specialization hosted a panel discussion on the evolving relationship between the UN and World Bank.
'That recommendation appears in a U.N. report released this week, which suggests the dollar's outsize role in international finance has ended -- and says that it's time to invent a successor currency that would be managed by a "Global Reserve Bank."'
If we think the global 1% are celebrating on Broadway with HAMILTON the success of US FED in fleecing all US wealth and public assets----wait for the next show a few decades into HAMILTON THE WORLD CENTRAL RESERVE BANK!
By Declan McCullagh CBS News September 9, 2009, 3:46 PM
United Nations Proposes New "Global Currency"
(AP)
The United Nations would like the dollar, euro, yen, and other national currencies to be succeeded by a new "global currency."That recommendation appears in a U.N. report released this week, which suggests the dollar's outsize role in international finance has ended -- and says that it's time to invent a successor currency that would be managed by a "Global Reserve Bank."
Countries could "agree to exchange their own currencies for the new currency, so that the global currency would be backed by a basket of currencies of all the members," says the 218-page report from the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.
Keep in mind that this is a U.N. report written by bureaucrats without any actual legal ability to create the global equivalent of the Federal Reserve. Anyone who remembers how a U.N. agency once called for a global e-mail tax of one cent per 100 e-mail messages -- but didn't exactly get it -- can attest to that.
The U.N. report grew out of the financial problems that swept the world in the last year or two, which it diagnoses as arising from too much speculation in commodity markets, a bubble in stock markets and housing markets, and trade imbalances between countries like China and the United States. Its prescription? "More stringent financial regulation" and "diversification away from dollars" as part of a new system of constant exchange rates. (Supachai Panitchpakdi, UNCTAD's secretary-general, also wants "vigorous" global actions, including "managing" energy prices through taxes, to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions.)
The diversification-away-from-dollars idea is a close cousin to what the Chinese government has been saying recently. China, of course, can now claim the dubious honor of being the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasurys worth a total of $776.4 billion as of June 2009. According to a U.S. government report from 2007, China was the top foreign owner of Freddie and Fannie bonds too.
One aspect of the U.N. report that stands out is that, in all of its 218 pages of analysis and charts, it doesn't seriously contemplate a new currency that's based on something other than paper money, which can be devalued as fast as governments can run their printing presses or add zeros to their banknotes. The two classic options are gold and silver -- which are resistant to governmental inflationary urges -- though I prefer economist David Friedman's suggestion of a bundle of commodities. Then again, returning to money that's backed by something tangible may not require the ongoing services of an entire U.N. bureaucracy.
US President Nixon created FIAT MONEY policy for the US FED so they could MOVE FORWARD with ROBBER BARON global Wall Street frauds.......this was the COMPLEX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS FOR LEVERAGE-----the GOLD STANDARD was ended after the last ROBBER BARON frauds of the ROARING 20s.
The point is this------the US has been operating fine on a combination of GOLD/SILVER and FIAT MONEY. We don't need to END PRINTING MONEY----which is FIAT MONEY----we simply need to return to regulated banking that will not allow global 1% banking LAISSEZ-FAIRE corrupt the entire national monetary system.
FIAT MONEY means those public trusts, pensions, GI benefits, economic stimulus to return housing to those US citizens can and will be ABSOLUTELY ABLE TO BE DONE.
Our 99% of black citizens tied to American slavery promised that 40 ACRES AND A MULE-----are to be included in these massive global 1% banking frauds............THIS IS THE US ECONOMIC STIMULUS-------stop allowing global 1% pols tied the economic stimulus to infrastructure building only.
All The Gold In The World
by Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/24/2015 - 17:35
For the companies exploring for gold, a deposit that has more than one gram of gold for every tonne of earth is an exciting prospect. In fact, in our 2013 report summarizing the world’s gold deposits, we found that the average grade of gold deposits in the world is around that amount: about 1.01 g/t.
Think about that for a moment. One gram (0.035 oz) is equal to the mass of a small paper clip. This small amount of gold is usually not even in one place – it is dispersed through a tonne of rock and dirt in smaller amounts, most of the time invisible to the naked eye. For some companies that have the stars align with easy metallurgy, a deposit near surface, and open pit potential, this gram per tonne deposit may even somehow be economic.
It’s hard to believe that such a small amount of gold could be worth so much, and that is why great visualizations can help us understand the rarity of this yellow metal. Luckily, the folks at Demonocracy.info have done the heavy lifting for us, putting together a series of 3D visualizations of gold bullion bars showcasing the world’s gold that has been mined thus far. Note: these visualizations are a couple of years old and optimistically have the value of gold pegged at US$2,000 per oz, presumably for the ease of calculations.
Lastly, we finish off with an image of all of the world’s mined gold in one cube with dimensions of 20.5m. If it was all melted, it would fit within the confines of an Olympic Swimming Pool.
_____________________
'Public Bank Berhad - Official Site---PAKISTAN
www.pbebank.com
Public Bank, a complete one-stop financial portal, offering a range of accounts, credit cards, loans, deposits and other financial aids for our personal and ...'
This article shows GERMANY with WOLFAM MORALES-----and below we see another tied to OAKLAND CA---------all PRETENDING to be pushing for our REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE issue------PUBLIC BANKING. What they are doing is installing what MOVING FORWARD sees as a ONE WORLD ONE CENTRAL BANK------that replaces our US FED as that FEDERAL RESERVE BANK and creates a global central bank----calling is PUBLIC BANK. OAKLAND CA is hyper ONE WORLD tied to SAN FRANCISCO and SILICON VALLEY so nothing good is happening in OAKLAND CA or the other source of PUBLIC BANKING propaganda -----NORTH DAKOTA.
We CANNOT get to public banking before we get rid of all global 1% pols -------reverse breaking of GLASS STEAGALL and deregulated banking policies. Global 1% are pretending they are addressing this while simply MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE ONLINE BANK ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK policies.
This is why we see here----PAKISTAN----GERMANY------US all giving 99% of global citizens these TALKING POINTS.
Public Banking Works is ..
The founders of Commonomics USA also helped found the Public Banking Institute. We provide public policy expertise on public banking, postal banking, cooperative economics, and other matters involving public finance. Our projects include the Cost of Wall Street GIS Mapping Project, Public Banking Workshops, and the Campaign for Postal Banking.
Learn More About Public Banks
What is Public Banking?
A public bank is a simple and proven concept. It is essentially a nonprofit organization, owned by the government and chartered by the state to accept deposits and make loans. Many people don't realize this, but governments are already in the lending business -- most have a portfolio of loans (provided to small business, farmers/ranchers, homeowners, etc.) scattered among different governmental organizations. A public bank will consolidate these loans and serve as a way to fund them with a lower cost of money. For example, the North Dakota Treasurer places all tax and fee revenue in the ND state bank and uses the credit to provide low cost funding for consolidation of student loans, housing and other infrastructure, commercial loans, and projects that generate cash but are not included in government budgets.
Campaign Overview
The Public Banking Works campaign is primarily focused on California and includes the charter cities of Oakland and Santa Rosa. Resolving the lack of banking services provided to the cannabis industry is a priority, as is ensuring that affordable credit is extended to small businesses, students and infrastructure projects.
Oakland City Council
Oakland City Council unanimously passed Councilmember Kaplan’s Resolution calling for the City Administrator to look into the process of establishing a public bank for the City of Oakland.
The Resolution, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Kaplan, Kalb, and Guillen, directs the City Administrator to look into the scope and cost of conducting a feasibility study for public banking in Oakland and possibly the larger region. It also directs City Staff to solicit input from community stakeholders about the feasibility study, including suggestions of potential contractors and funding sources; and makes it clear that the study should cover the legality and feasibility of banking the cannabis industry.
_____________________________________________
OAKLAND CA ----home of SILICON VALLEY------top global corporate welfare and global banking-------ditching WALL STREET? Oh, I understand---they are ditching a US sovereign Wall Street banking and installing ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK------no need for a US FED when there is no US sovereignty says SILICON VALLEY and OAKLAND CA------
Who is OAKLAND CA? It is home of our $ trillions subprime mortgage loan frauds----home of our $trillions for-profit higher education frauds-----home of BOGUS GREEN ENERGY TECHNOLOGY CREDIT frauds-------and yes, that would be PELOSI, BOXER, FEINSTEIN-----and those far-right wing California Governors----like BROWN.
With this gang of global 1% banking criminal cartel pols and players STILL IN PLACE----we of course KNOW this is NOT real left social progressive public banking.
MOVING FORWARD MEANS ENDING US STOCK MARKET WALL STREET----ENDING US FEDERAL RESERVE BANK-----AND INSTALLING ONE WORLD ONE CENTRAL BANK SELLING THIS AS PUBLIC BANKING.
We notice the photo attached to this article has a local 99% citizen giving that #RESIST fist------she is either a global banking 5% player or a citizen not knowing she is pushing VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY BAD BANKING POLICY.
This is ONE WORLD ONLINE DIGITAL CURRENCY no money currency for you!
March 19, 2017
Will Oakland Become First U.S. City To Ditch Wall Street And Establish A Public Bank?
Proponents say an Oakland bank could rake in billions of dollars from the marijuana industry.
By Gabrielle Canon Oakland, Berkeley, And East Bay News, Events, Restaurants, Music, & Arts
- George Baker
- Activist Susan Harman is urging the city of Oakland to leave Wall Street and establish its own public bank — a move that, after years of discussion, actually might happen.
It started with a conversation over dinner. In 2011, retired local principal Susan Harman was in Washington, D.C., protesting Citizens United, and she happened to be seated next to public-banking advocate Ellen Brown. It didn’t take long for Harman to be convinced that a public bank would be the best way to challenge Wall Street’s influence — and she immediately took the idea home to Oakland.
“I was an instant convert,” Harman said. “It just seemed like the most radical and smartest thing I ever heard.”
Now, she’s a leading member of the advocacy group Strike Debt Bay Area, an outgrowth of the Occupy movement that has continued to protest financial corruption, and has been fighting for public banking ever since.
It hasn’t been easy — especially after Gov. Jerry Brown killed an initial state-level campaign — but six years later and Harman might finally witness a public-bank reality in her hometown.
Oakland is now considering establishing one of the first city-owned banks in the country. Officials argue that the bank could provide affordable financing for city initiatives, small businesses, and low-income residents.
Oakland’s bank could also accept the billions of dollars in capital from California’s cannabis industry, which cannot deposit money at commercial banks due to pressure from the feds.
“Public banking is a great way for us to put our money where our values are,” Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan told the Express.
She emphasized that people are tired of fighting to keep Wall Street banks in line, especially now that the Trump administration has begun to roll back regulations. “I think that has been so frustrating that it has increased the appetite for a community-responsive alternative,” Kaplan said.
But the councilmember admitted that it has been difficult to cut ties to big corporate banks, despite the swelling public support for divestment. Oakland must put its money somewhere, and the big banks that apply to do business with the city all have tarnished track records.
Ideally, a public bank’s charter and mission would be to serve the public, unlike corporate banks, which are responsible only to shareholders. As a result, Kaplan says, the bank’s directive would be governed by the people, rather than profits, and it could finance a variety of opportunities, from low-interest college loans to investment in alternative energy infrastructure — all while saving the city money.
Two weeks after the November 2016 election, Kaplan and Councilmember Dan Kalb introduced a resolution that began the process of assessing what it would take to establish the bank.
Now, City Administrator Sabrina Landreth is evaluating two bids from organizations willing to conduct a feasibility study, and is scheduled to present her decisions, along with how much a study will cost, on April 25.
While the idea is only in early stages of development -- and there are still many unanswered questions — this could be a big win for public-banking advocates, who have high hopes that city-run banks will spur larger regional and state-level public banks.
Oakland is one of several of cities, including Santa Fe, Philadelphia, Manchester, and New Hampshire, that are assessing the potential of a public bank. While there aren’t currently any city-owned banks in the United States, local governments around the country are looking at The Bank of North Dakota as a model. That state-run bank, which has thrived for nearly 100 years, helped North Dakota escape the credit crunch caused by the Great Recession, and, in the last two decades, added $385 million to its general fund in returns.
Santa Fe has already completed an initial feasibility study, which it published in January 2016, and found that, though there are risks, building a public bank would be both feasible and fiscally advantageous.
And advocates say that Oakland is better situated to succeed, due to what could amount to billions of dollars in capital from California’s newly legalized cannabis industry.
The Canna-Biz Factor According to California’s legislative analyst, the marijuana market is projected to grow to close to $7 billion over the next three years — and some estimates have projected the number closer to $20 billion.
Still, 70 percent of businesses in the marijuana industry have been unable to open bank accounts. This has left businesses that sell pot with limited options — and has created a huge issue for the state, which is now attempting to figure out how to tax industry sales and mitigate public-safety issues that are certain to arise from people carrying around huge amounts of cash.
“Oakland may end up very quickly becoming the economic center for this new [marijuana] industry.”
“We have a problem,” explained state Deputy Treasurer Tim Schaefer, who currently serves in California’s Cannabis Banking Working Group. “Banks won’t play, business is exploding, and more and more people are walking around with big bags of currency.”
Advocates are hoping a public bank could be the solution to that problem, and some say Oakland could be the epicenter of the industry, flushing the city with new economic opportunities.
“Like Napa is the center of the wine industry, with warehousing and distribution, all that can be built with low-cost credit provided by the public bank,” argued Marc Armstrong, co-founder of the Public Banking Institute, and education and advocacy organization Commonomics USA, which sponsored a bid to perform the feasibility study. “Oakland may end up very quickly becoming the economic center for this new industry.”
In fact, he said large inflows of capital from the cannabis industry could help start and secure the bank, ultimately providing more opportunity for community investment.
Kaplan agreed. “If we have all the growers and dispensaries and retailers sharing a bank, we have a better opportunity for capitalization, that then makes everything else we are trying to do easier,” she explained.
Take It To The Bank?
Still, even as the public-bank pitch continues to gain public support, several obstacles remain — both financial and legal, and including how a public bank might handle the threat of federal blowback.
“A public bank — while a very seductive idea on the surface — quickly decomposes into a set of very thorny questions,” Schaefer explained. The city would still be on the hook to provide suspicious-activity reports to the feds, and comply with federal regulations. This could attract attention from the Trump administration, which has promised to crack down harder on recreational-marijuana states. Because Oakland is also a sanctuary city, it could become a higher priority target, as well.
If the bank is capitalized with cannabis cash, and is at odds with federal law, it could also make it more difficult for the bank to obtain a charter. California financial institutions still must be shored up by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and most need a master account number from the Federal Reserve.
“A public bank — while a very seductive idea on the surface — quickly decomposes into a set of very thorny questions."
Even putting cannabis-related issues aside, in order to obtain a California charter needed to start the bank, Oakland would need to make a strong case that it’s got a solid business plan, and has the capital to finance it, or a good management team to execute it.
“If the bank doesn’t want to earn profits, that’s fine. But it has to cover its costs,” explained Dr. James Barth, a professor who teaches finance at Auburn University, and also serves as a senior fellow at the economic think tank The Milken Institute. He explained that the bank could quickly become insolvent if risk and return aren’t adequately considered during funding decisions.
Specifically, he explained, if the bank takes on unprofitable loans intended to help the community, the riskier loans might be more prone to default and could run the bank into the ground. “Then, who would pick up the tab?” he asked.
“You don’t want to be the bank of last resort,” Armstrong agreed. He says the bank should not be expected to provide loans to those who are turned away from private institutions. “That is a recipe for failure, because you have a higher default rate that way.”
Armstrong added that the city also cannot assume credit will be doled out like grants. “That’s not the nature of what the bank does. The bank issues loans, which then have to be paid back. Otherwise it would be raided to fund operating expenses for the city, and that would be a real problem.”
“If the bank doesn’t want to earn profits, that’s fine. But it has to cover its costs."
There are also questions of how a bank would be governed, or how priorities might be set. Even the Bank of North Dakota, oft-cited as a model for successful public banking, came under scrutiny last year for financing the police crackdown on Dakota Access Pipeline protestors, at then-Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s request.
Also, the management team chosen to run the bank will be required to have strong backgrounds in finance but also be dedicated to the mission of public service. With little precedent, these dual qualifications might be hard to find.
Escape From Wall Street Despite the risks, and obstacles remaining, proponents are optimistic that the city will be able to navigate the challenges to build something that is better than the status quo.
“It is extremely painful to sit through two-and-a-half hours of the finance-committee meeting and hear report-after-report on the state threatening to take money away, and the feds threatening to take money away, and various expenses the city has that it can’t afford, and to know that a public bank could solve those problems,” Harman said. “It’s excruciating.”
Kaplan agrees that there’s work to be done, but insisted that that’s why she has called for the report. She is eager to ensure the process is underway. “When you think about the potential — the different useful positive things in people’s lives that you could do with this, that is a big part of what drives me to say this is worth working on.”
Even if the bank is feasible, though, there’s still a long legislative process ahead. Advocates are already growing frustrated by the time city officials have taken to assess the bids for only the feasibility study. “There are two submissions, limited to 15 pages,” said Harman, who was incredulous. “It shouldn’t take sixty days to read 30 pages and make a decision.”
Kaplan says she requested the next report be delivered at a public meeting, to ensure it gets done on time. “I know the advocates are very concerned about whether the administration is foot-dragging on this or not,” Kaplan said. “We are not going to let it drop.”
"There will be a chain of public banks, and we can escape from Wall Street.”
In the meantime, advocates have planned events for later this spring to keep up the momentum. Strike Debt Bay Area has partnered with Armstrong’s Commonomics to create a new advocacy group, called “Friends of the Public Bank of Oakland,” which is continuing to build a coalition of support from both individuals and East Bay organizations.
No matter what happens, Harman says she is committed to seeing this through. “When we do it, other cities will do it. And then there will be a chain of public banks, and we can escape from Wall Street.”
__________________________________________
Here are more far right wing US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE cities MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD BANK. Remember, SANCTUARY CITIES is another term for US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES having absolutely no intention of protecting our 99% global labor pool but operating here in US as they do overseas.
This is all happening because of the greed of Wall Street but these areas all drove the global Wall Street frauds of these few decades.
ONE WORLD ONE WORLD BANK AND ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK WITH ONLY DIGITAL CURRENCY MEANS 99% OF US AND GLOBAL CITIZENS WILL NEVER TOUCH CURRENCY AGAIN.
Hint, San Diego Free Press saying it is PROGRESSIVE is far right wing global 1% economic progressive, not left social progressive this is why an article written as propaganda can fool 99% WE THE PEOPLE.
Oh, look----all those hyper-global 1% ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE states are doing the same
'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'.
Cities and States Prefer Public Banks To Wall Street
March 7, 2017 by John Lawrence
Profits Can Stay In State, Provide Local FundingBy John Lawrence
Profits Can Stay In State, Provide Local Funding
By John Lawrence
Alarmed by the corruption and greed of Wall Street, many US cities and states are studying the feasibility of establishing public banks. Public banks are owned by cities, states or other jurisdictions and serve to keep funds local instead of being deposited on Wall Street. The funds are then used to support local economic activities like small business loans and student loans.
Washington state has already cut its ties with Wells Fargo because they funded DAPL. Now they want to get rid of Wall Street as a place to park their money making use of the local economy and profiting the people of Washington instead of the bankers of Wall Street. 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.
Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt and The Public Banking Solution writes:
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. 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.
Santa Fe, NM Considers Public Bank as Trump Threatens to Take Away Funding for Sanctuary Cities
The Mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico has declared his city to be a sanctuary city in which case Trump has threatened to deny Federal monies to the city. The Mayor noted that Santa Fe had welcomed immigrants for over 400 years. A public bank could replace that funding:
If McEvers [interviewer from NPR] had asked what possible sources of funding might replace the money Trump is threatening to take away, Gonzales might have answered that Santa Fe was in the advanced stages of considering the creation of a publicly owned bank. In late October, three City Council members introduced a resolution to take the “final steps to determine” whether a public bank would be feasible. Earlier in 2016, a local advocacy group named Banking on New Mexico released a five-year model projecting that a Santa Fe bank could reduce debt service costs by $1 million a year and earn an annual profit, netting the city over $10 million in the bank’s first five years. While that wouldn’t completely offset funds the new administration is threatening to withhold, it would put the city in better shape to absorb the loss and begin the process of building an autonomous local economy that over time could transcend much of the need for federal dollars.
Oakland, CA Gets Serious About Public Banking
Two Council members have introduced a resolution to the Oakland City Council which says in part:
Resolution Directing The City Administrator To Prepare An Informational Report With The Cost Estimates Of Commissioning A Study Analyzing The Feasibility And Economic Impact Of Establishing A Public Bank For Or Including The City Of Oakland, And Providing Funding Options For The Feasibility Study, Including The Option Of Allocating To The Study Any Remainder Of The Money That Was Budgeted For The Goldman Sachs Debarment Proceedings.
WHEREAS, a public bank can have investment priorities that focus on the creation of jobs in Oakland that spur local economic growth by providing affordable credit to small and medium-sized businesses that have been historically ignored by the larger, more established banks; and
WHEREAS, a public bank can have investment priorities that center on providing loans for low and moderate income housing to help relieve the current housing crisis facing Oakland; and
WHEREAS, a public bank can have investment priorities that provide loans for energy conservation, installation of solar panels and measures for conserving water in Oakland; and
WHEREAS, Wall Street banks seek short-term profits for their private shareholders by investing in stocks, derivatives, credit default swaps and other speculative financial instruments; and
WHEREAS, there is a desire for local funding solutions that reinvest public funds in the local community; and
WHEREAS, public banking operates in the public interest, through institutions owned by the people through their representative governments; and
WHEREAS, public banks are able to return revenue to the community and can provide low-cost financing in support of City policies; and
WHEREAS, on September 8, 2016, Wells Fargo bank was fined $185 million for fraudulently opening up accounts without customers’ consent, which then damaged customers’ credit scores and caused customers to be charged illegal banking fees; and
WHEREAS, on May 20, 2015, Citigroup Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to plead guilty to felony charges for conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the foreign currency exchange spot market; and
WHEREAS, on May 20, 2015, Citigroup Inc. agreed to pay a criminal fine of $945 million and JP Morgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay a criminal fine of $550, for illegally manipulating the foreign exchange market; and
WHEREAS, on May 20, 2015, the Federal Reserve announced that it was imposing a separate set of fines on Citigroup, Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. of $342 million for their illegal practices in the foreign exchange markets; and
WHEREAS, on March 9th, 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wall Street banks had paid in total more than $100 billion in fines and penalties for mortgage-related fraud, and
WHEREAS, said Wall Street banks’ criminal conduct and wrongful behavior should not be rewarded with future business dealings with Oakland; and
WHEREAS, the City of Oakland is tasked with holding and protecting the fundamental interest of the public as well as the financial well-being of the City; now, therefore be it
RESOLVED: That the Oakland City Council directs the City Administrator, or his/her designee, to prepare an informational report with the cost estimates of commissioning experts in public banking to conduct a study analyzing the feasibility and economic impact of establishing a public bank for the City of Oakland;
Please note that these are only a few of the “Whereas’s”. There’s more.
Profits to the People
Currently, the Bank of North Dakota (BND) is the only public bank in the country. All other states and cities deposit their revenues and pension funds with Wall Street with the profits going to Wall Street. That’s why so many states are in dire straits while North Dakota’s fiscal situation is just fine.
According to a January 19, 2017, New York Times article:
[A]lmost everywhere the fiscal crisis of states has grown more acute. Rainy day funds are drained, cities and towns have laid off more than 200,000 people, and Arizona even has leased out its state office building…
“It’s the time of the once unthinkable,” noted Lori Grange, deputy director of the Pew Center on the States. “Whether there are tax increases or dramatic cuts to education and vital services, the crisis is bad.”
Is it any wonder that President Pussy Grabber and his Republican cohorts are calling for the privatization of everything? Their mantra is that government is incompetent when the true fault lies in the fact that states and municipalities are being bled to death by Wall Street. Wall Street banks borrow money from the Fed at zero percent interest and then loan it to municipalities at 5% interest. That profit could go to the municipalities. The antidote for that is to establish a public bank from which profits will flow to the people as they have in North Dakota. Local control of local money should be the mantra.
There is a move in Congress to let states go bankrupt the way many US cities have. For instance, San Bernardino, CA; Stockton, CA; Orange County, CA; Jefferson County, AL; and Detroit, MI have all declared bankruptcy with the result that concomitant pension fund and contractual obligations to unions and others have gone by the wayside.
While those and other cities have been drained by the Wall Street banking crisis which resulted in increased borrowing costs and loss of revenues, BND and North Dakota have churned along quite nicely, thank you very much. They have provided low-cost affordable loans to small businesses and students, thus totally averting the worst effects that most cities and states which rely on Wall Street have suffered.
BND provides back-up for local private banks by offering check clearing services and liquidity support. They invest in North Dakota municipal bonds to provide economic development. In the last ten years, the BND has returned more than a third of a billion dollars to the state’s general fund. North Dakota is one of the few states to consistently post a budget surplus.
Washington State Representative Bob Hasegawa, a prime sponsor of the Washington legislation, called the proposal for a publicly-owned bank “a simple concept that will reap huge benefits for Washington.”
In a letter to constituents, he explained, “The concept (is) to keep taxpayers’ money working here in Washington to build our economy. Currently, all tax revenues go into a ‘Concentration Account’ held by the Bank of America. BoA makes money off our money and we never see those profits again. Instead, we can create our own institution and keep taxpayers’ dollars here in Washington, working for Washington.”
Dennis Ortblad writes in the Seattle Times:
“In fact, we propose a public bank in Washington that lends primarily to public institutions — such as school districts, affordable housing programs, public utilities — in order to reduce the state’s or a municipality’s reliance on the expensive bonds and fees in Wall Street markets.”
While President Pussy Grabber, Betsy DeVos and Repubs in general want to privatize everything, a public bank would help to shore up public enterprises like the public school system and local infrastructure. BND has a sterling credit record and earned for the state $130 million in 2015 alone, with total assets of $7.4 billion (its 12th consecutive year of record profits for the people of the state). That $130 million would have gone to Wall Street in any other state.
The US banking system including its central bank, the Federal Reserve, is privately owned. Is it any wonder that during the banking crisis of 2008, the first and only order of business was to bail out the banks, not homeowners who were overdue in their mortgages? They were hung out to dry despite the fact that many were told the bank would “help” them either by lowering interest rates, refinancing or forgiving principal in “underwater” mortgages. A public banking system is beholden not to private interests but to the people of the state or city in which it’s registered.
In an article, Seattle Votes to End $3 Billion Relationship with Wells Fargo Because of the Bank’s Dakota Access Pipeline Financing, Sydney Brownstone writes:
The Seattle City Council has unanimously voted to end the city’s relationship with Wells Fargo over the bank’s financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), its financing of private prison companies, and a regulatory scandal involving the bank’s creation of two million unauthorized accounts.
All nine council members voted to take $3 billion of city funds away from the bank after Seattle’s current contract expires in 2018. The vote occurred just hours after the Army notified Congress that it will be granting an easement allowing DAPL builders to drill under the Missouri River following a presidential memo from Donald Trump.
That $3 billion could find a home in a Seattle or Washington state public bank when one becomes available. All they have to do is mimic North Dakota’s public bank which has been working well for over 100 years. The Public Banking Institute is working on a model which could be replicated in cities and states throughout the US. All city council members would have to do is to vote to replicate the model.
One Seattle City Council member who is determined to bring about a public bank is Kshama Sawant. She is an American socialist politician, activist, and member of the Socialist Alternative.
SAWANT IS A FAR-RIGHT WING EXTREME WEALTH EXTREME POVERTY LIBERTARIAN MARXIST FROM A GLOBAL 1%.
A former software engineer, Sawant became a socialist activist and part-time economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States. Sawant ran unsuccessfully for the Washington House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. Sawant was the first socialist to win a city-wide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916. Socialist Alternative describes itself as “a community of activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; fighting for living wage jobs and militant, democratic unions; and people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war,
Sawant ran unsuccessfully for the Washington House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. Sawant was the first socialist to win a city-wide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the School Board in 1916. Socialist Alternative describes itself as “a community of activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; fighting for living wage jobs and militant, democratic unions; and people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women, and men fighting sexism and homophobia.”
A public bank could cut the cost of building public schools in Washington in half. Half the cost of building new schools is in interest paid to banks and bondholders. That would all come back to state or city coffers depending on whether the schools were financed by a state or city public bank.
From the Washington Public Bank Coalition website:
How Our State Can Solve Its Budget Crisis: Create a Public Bank
Cut spending, fire teachers, raise taxes—these are the solutions always proposed to offset Washington State’s budget deficits. The state’s budget crises do not arise from too much spending or too little taxation on the poor and middle class. Instead, since 2000, corporate tax breaks in Washington State have more than doubled. The state simply isn’t getting enough tax revenue from corporations (see: realwashingtonstatebudget.info).
Also, since the 2008 financial market collapse, banks have cut back on lending. When small local businesses can’t secure low-interest loans, there are layoffs and business closures in the private sector, which also cause state revenues to plummet. To solve this problem, since 2010, 17 states, including Washington State, have drafted legislation to establish public banks based on the successful Bank of North Dakota.
A Public Bank for Cities in San Diego County
There is a local movement to create a public bank in San Diego. A group has been meeting regularly and is studying the possibilities for several cities within San Diego County. They are meeting with local officials people and hope to use the Oakland Resolution cited partially above as a first step in getting the ball rolling.
Notwithstanding some setbacks and some attrition of the ranks, our courageous group continues to fight for banking reform and the creation of public banks throughout California. We have been encouraged by the recent success in Oakland with the unanimous approval of the Public Banking Resolution by their City Council. It gives us hope! We need referrals to the mayors, city Council members and finance directors for the 18 incorporated cities in San Diego County to stop our money from flowing to Wall Street!
_________________________________________
Below we see right after the global 99% finally understood the extent of the global banking 1% systemic frauds against US et al------the United Nations came out in 2009 that MOVING FORWARD would be that GLOBAL RESERVE BANK-------tied to WORLD BANK-----partnered with United Nations. This is what all the TALKING POINTS today in US on PUBLIC BANKING has as a goal------it has nothing to do with our US sovereign banking system----it will have nothing to do with citizens' banking---we will not even be able to see money----if we think a US Wall Street predatory, criminal, and crony was bad----we don't want to MOVE FORWARD to GLOBAL RESERVE BANK----THAT 'PUBLIC BANK' now pushed by far-right wing global 1% CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and morphing into far-right wing LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS-----
The Case for an Increased United Nations-World Bank partnership
SIPA’s IO/UNS specialization hosted a panel discussion on the evolving relationship between the UN and World Bank.
'That recommendation appears in a U.N. report released this week, which suggests the dollar's outsize role in international finance has ended -- and says that it's time to invent a successor currency that would be managed by a "Global Reserve Bank."'
If we think the global 1% are celebrating on Broadway with HAMILTON the success of US FED in fleecing all US wealth and public assets----wait for the next show a few decades into HAMILTON THE WORLD CENTRAL RESERVE BANK!
By Declan McCullagh CBS News September 9, 2009, 3:46 PM
United Nations Proposes New "Global Currency"
(AP)
The United Nations would like the dollar, euro, yen, and other national currencies to be succeeded by a new "global currency."That recommendation appears in a U.N. report released this week, which suggests the dollar's outsize role in international finance has ended -- and says that it's time to invent a successor currency that would be managed by a "Global Reserve Bank."
Countries could "agree to exchange their own currencies for the new currency, so that the global currency would be backed by a basket of currencies of all the members," says the 218-page report from the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.
Keep in mind that this is a U.N. report written by bureaucrats without any actual legal ability to create the global equivalent of the Federal Reserve. Anyone who remembers how a U.N. agency once called for a global e-mail tax of one cent per 100 e-mail messages -- but didn't exactly get it -- can attest to that.
The U.N. report grew out of the financial problems that swept the world in the last year or two, which it diagnoses as arising from too much speculation in commodity markets, a bubble in stock markets and housing markets, and trade imbalances between countries like China and the United States. Its prescription? "More stringent financial regulation" and "diversification away from dollars" as part of a new system of constant exchange rates. (Supachai Panitchpakdi, UNCTAD's secretary-general, also wants "vigorous" global actions, including "managing" energy prices through taxes, to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions.)
The diversification-away-from-dollars idea is a close cousin to what the Chinese government has been saying recently. China, of course, can now claim the dubious honor of being the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasurys worth a total of $776.4 billion as of June 2009. According to a U.S. government report from 2007, China was the top foreign owner of Freddie and Fannie bonds too.
One aspect of the U.N. report that stands out is that, in all of its 218 pages of analysis and charts, it doesn't seriously contemplate a new currency that's based on something other than paper money, which can be devalued as fast as governments can run their printing presses or add zeros to their banknotes. The two classic options are gold and silver -- which are resistant to governmental inflationary urges -- though I prefer economist David Friedman's suggestion of a bundle of commodities. Then again, returning to money that's backed by something tangible may not require the ongoing services of an entire U.N. bureaucracy.
RSS Feed
