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http://publicbankinginstitute.org/county-banks.htm
The Importance of County-owned Banks
“Washington and the regulators are there to serve
the banks.”
So said Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the Wall Street crony who chairs the
House Financial Services Committee in
charge of banking policy.
If you ever needed justification for exerting a semblance of local control
over how credit is issued in the economy of
your city, county, or state, this may just be it. Any impartial observer
of this summer’s most recent bank scandals knows
that Wall Street does not have your interests in mind. Apparently, neither
does Congress.
Antidote to the Wall Street casino
This issue of PBI’s monthly newsletter is meant to showcase what some of
us are working on at the county level. Public
banking is not a difficult concept – it’s just regular depository banking,
but with the owner being the people, as
represented by city, county and state governments. There are numerous
implications, however, which primarily involve
governance. And, yes, local governance may be messy, but it is far
superior to the existing corporate-controlled
governance coming out of D.C., which, instead of issuing debt-free money,
has handed to banks the monopolistic power
over money creation. At least citizens, using a public bank, have the
power to make affordable loans for the benefit of
their own city, county, or state.
And a few of us, from Berks County in Pennsylvania to Alameda County,
California, are doing just that. In Sonoma
County, a small team of us are putting into place the relationships needed
to create a county-owned bank. In addition to
leverage local tax dollars to support the local economy and
infrastructure, county banks hold the promise of being a
B2B mutual credit exchange, plus being able to issue local currency, much
like Citibank's frequent flier miles -- only to
aid local businesses in the circulation of goods and services. But there's
hard work to do: First, get a champion; second,
get the local university to commit resources; third, get business
associations and a few banks on board; fourth, expand
the coaltion; fifth, go for a vote with the county supervisors. In Sonoma
County, we’ll get to a vote sometime late winter
or spring.
Meanwhile, PBI has added a county bank section to its website. Be sure to
check it regularly or, better yet, make the
effort yourself to build consensus around your own county bank. If you are
interested in developing your own county
bank, be sure to join us every Thursday, from now through November 15th.
We'll have a county bank working group
conference call at 9am Pacific. You can register for the conference call
series at
http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/JL8L2E778XJP1RX
The time is now
With the demise of the Glass-Steagall Act, "boring” community banking of
the last century was replaced by too-big-to-fail investment banks, armed
with nuclear-tipped financial products, sold as fail-safe, that have led
directly to a  meltdown of our economy and America’s Descent into Poverty.
As described by Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant
Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal, “cities, counties, states, and the federal
government (are) without a tax base, resulting in bankruptcies at the
state and local level and massive budget deficits at
the federal level that threaten the value of the dollar and its role as
reserve currency.”
Wall Street banks are too big to regulate. Not that it matters -- Congress
is their servant. Don't you think it's time to take
matters in your own hands and start a county-owned bank?
Marc Armstrong
marc at publicbankinginstitute.org
Executive Director
Public Banking Institute