State-Owned Banks Can Save The Economy! …
… and stick it to Wall Street at the same time! Sounds like the best of both worlds to us!
In November 2009 Ellen Brown wrote at AlterNet that bailing out the banking system “…has only fixed the economy for bankers and the wealthy; it has not done much to address either the fundamental problem of unemployment or the debt trap so many Americans find themselves in.”
The Bank of North Dakota may seem like a sole-surviving relic of a bygone era. As a “state-owned” bank, it offers discounted loans to farms and agriculture, students and education, andsmall companies. It serves as an important economic development agency and a “banker’s bank” that reduces the loan risks of private banks and assists the private banks to finance bigger business projects.
The Bank of North Dakota had over $5 billion in assets and a $4 billion loan portfolio at the end of 2009, and it made nearly $60 million in profits in that year, setting a record for the seventh straight year. This was at a time when the entire banking and financial sectors were reeling from the collapse. Over the past 10 years, the bank channeled over $300 million in profits to North Dakota’s state treasury.
