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

[midnight]

escaped the 2008 banking crisis.

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

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


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



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


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