Illinois Citizens for a State Bank

From The Canton Daily Ledger via "The Illinois Is Broke" Campaign:"States’ deficits nationwide add up to $140 billion -- 1 percent of the $12 trillion the Fed gave Wall Street -- but the Fed’s Ben Bernanke this winter said that there’d be no bailout for state and local governments. So, if states can’t expect help from Washington, how can they pay? Again, raise money by banking. Banks make money by leveraging depositors’ money into loans. “States give this leveraging power away when they put their deposits in Wall Street banks and invest their capital there,” writes attorney Ellen Brown, author of “Web of Debt.” “State and municipal governments have assets tucked all over the state in separate rainy-day funds, which are largely invested in Wall Street banks for a very modest return,” she continues. “At the same time, states are borrowing from Wall Street at much higher interest rates.” Reasonable people may be skeptical of,...

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From the September 2011 issue of YES! Magazine: "There’s no single solution to the thorny problem of how to restructure our financial system, but one of the most promising strategies involves creating state-owned banks that can bolster the lending capacity of local banks, helping them grow and multiply. North Dakota is the only state, so far, that has a publicly owned bank. Founded in 1919, the Bank of North Dakota (BND) was a populist response to dynamics similar to those we face today. The state’s struggling farmers, tired of being at the mercy of powerful out-of-state financial interests that controlled the availability and cost of credit, decided they needed a bank better aligned with their own interests. BND is wholly owned by the state, which deposits all of its money, except pension funds, with the bank. BND does not compete with local banks; it does not solicit retail banking business and has no branch offices or ATMs. Instead, BND partners with...

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