State Bank Needed

Now is the time for public banking in California. We have given away too much for too long to Wall Street and big banks. We should have our own, here in California, like North Dakota has. The only state bank in the U.S. is in North Dakota and it partners with local lenders who provide loans to small start ups and commercial loans. California is the largest economy in the U.S. and the fifth largest in the world yet it has no state bank. There are numerous private banks, but none are state banks. The banks here in California send their profits out of state and sometimes out of the country. We do have some local banks, but they are not large enough to make an impact like a state bank would do. California needs jobs and infrastructure repairs, and California state bank would provide the money for jobs and protect us from Wall Street’s greed, which brought this country to the brink of disaster. Some in California want to split the state, but what we should be doing is start thinking like a country. We don’t have to leave the U.S. to do this, we just need to do business as if we’re a country with our own trade deals and climate change treaties with our own banking system. Operating like an independent country, we could afford healthcare, free education, a higher minimum wage between $15-$20 an hour, and maybe implement a universal basic income like Stockton, California is trying. We also need to charge corporations and businesses for the use of our Commons to contribute toward the costs of these social programs. Without a state-owned bank, California can’t deposit hundreds of billions of dollars in state revenues into productive investment within the state. It deposits tax revenues in large private banks and then watches as these banks lend the money out of state, or invest them in speculative trading strategies, that includes derivative bets against the California’s own bonds. None of these uses brings money to our state treasury. California is the best place to live, but it can be even better. There should not be a person without a roof over their head unless they choose no roof. There should also be an end to drug addiction. It should be treated as a sickness, and this could be done by legalizing all drugs and making treatment affordable or fully covered by the state. Legalizing drugs would result in a huge reduction in prison population and possibly the closing of prisons, and then using that money to treat the addictions while also creating more jobs. The means and the money are here, we just need the will and good leaders to accomplish this. There are naysayers and people who don’t like change and worse large banks that will fight California’s efforts to create a state bank, but one only has to look at North Dakota and what that states has accomplished having its own state bank. If little North Dakota can create a state bank, then a huge state like California can find a way. That marijuana money has to go somewhere since the federally regulated banks can’t accept it. North Dakota’s state bank started in 1919 with $2 million in capital, and it is the only state to skate through the Wall Street meltdown with little or no pain. Its bank takes individual and state tax revenues and loans to commercial projects. The state has more than $4 billion surplus and a $3 billion loan portfolio and the state has the lowest unemployment rate. Legislators from California and seventeen other states are looking at North Dakota’s state bank and its financial success from extending credit to small- and medium-sized companies, lower interest loans to students, farmers and small businesses unlike corporate banks, that do not care what happens to our communities. It’s time to take control of our banking system, state money is our money. It doesn’t belong in the hands of the greedy bankers. If North Dakota can be hugely successful, so can California. We need elected officials who are fighters for the people and creative thinkers to get around the obstruction of the big banks.