[Occupymendocino] Public banks,yes!

[agnes at mcn.org]

This is from Ed Oberweiser's email-Are  Big Banks Criminal enterprises?
Thanks,Ed,
Agnes


Nationalize Now and Create State Banks

There are about 20 too-big-to fail banks which have been designated
"systematically significant." These should be immediately nationalized.
Shareholder value should be wiped out because these banks are repeatedly
violating the law, including aiding and abetting criminal enterprises. All
employees should be placed on the federal civil service scale, where the
top salary is approximately $130,000.

Can the government run banks? Yes, if we break up the big banks and turn
them over to state governments so that each state would have at least one
public bank. (North Dakota has a strong working model.) The larger states
would have several public state banks. But never again would we allow
banks to grow so large as to threaten our financial system and violate the
public trust. Let FDIC regulate the state banks. They're actually good at
it.

(We'd also have to do something about the shadow banking industry -- the
large hedge funds and private equity firms. Eliminating their
carried-interest tax loophole and slapping on a strong financial
transaction tax would go a long way toward reining them in.)

Won't the most talented bankers leave the industry?

Hurray! It can't happen soon enough. It's time for the best and the
brightest to rejoin the human race and help produce value for their fellow
citizens. Let them become doctors, research scientists, teachers or even
wealthy entrepreneurs who produce tangible goods and services that we want
and need. What we don't need are more banksters.

Isn't This Socialism?

We already have socialism for rich financiers. They get to keep all of the
upside of their shady machinations and we get to bail them out when they
fail. This billionaire bailout society is now so entrenched that our
nascent economic recovery of the last two years has been entirely captured
by the top 1 percent. Meanwhile the rest of have received nothing. Nada.
(See "Why Is the Entire Recovery Going to the Top One Percent?")

I know, I know, people say, "Next time, just don't bail them out!"
Meanwhile, they get to rip us off, day in and day out, until the next
crash? No thanks. Put them out of business now. If you have a better idea,
let's hear it.
Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute in New York,
and author of How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour: Why Hedge Funds Get
Away with Siphoning Off America's Wealth (J. Wiley and Sons, 2013).