Madison in Egypt (2): Stopping the financial coup d’etat and the greatest heist in democratic history

Great and inspiring speech by Michael Moore, to the workers in Madison, Wisconsin. It shows what a tipping point this event is for world labor history.

It is followed by an excerpt from Ellen Brown, focusing on the importance of setting up public banks.

Ellen Brown on the need for public banks:

“Wisconsin could draw down the fund by the small amount needed to meet pension obligations, and put the bulk of the remaining money to work creating jobs, helping local businesses, and increasing tax revenues for the state. It could do this by forming its own bank, following the lead of North Dakota, the only state to have its own bank—and the only state to escape the credit crisis.

This could be done without spending the pension fund money or lending it. The funds would just be shifted from one form of investment to another (equity in a bank). When a bank makes a loan, neither the bank’s own capital nor its customers’ demand deposits are actually lent to borrowers. As observed on the Dallas Federal Reserve’s website, “Banks actually create money when they lend it.” They simply extend accounting-entry bank credit, which is extinguished when the loan is repaid. Creating this sort of credit-money is a privilege available only to banks—but states can tap into that privilege by owning a bank.

The state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) has allowed North Dakota to maintain its economic sovereignty, a conservative states-rights ideal. The BND was established in 1919 in response to a wave of farm foreclosures by out-of-state Wall Street banks. Today, the state not only has no debt, but it recently boasted its largest-ever budget surplus. The BND helps to fund not only local government but local businesses and local banks, by partnering with the banks to provide the funds to support small business lending.

The BND is also a boon to the state treasury, having contributed over $300 million to state coffers in the past decade, a notable achievement for a state with a population less than one-tenth the size of Los Angeles County. In 2008, the BND returned a 26 percent dividend to the state. In comparison, California’s public pension funds are down more than $100 billion—that’s billion with a “b”—or close to half the funds’ holdings, following the Wall Street debacle of 2008. It was, in fact, the 2008 bank collapse rather than overpaid public employees that caused the crisis that shrank state revenues and prompted the budget cuts in the first place.

Faced with federal inaction and growing local budget crises, an increasing number of states are exploring the possibility of setting up their own state-owned banks, following the North Dakota model. On January 11, 2011, a bill to establish a state-owned bank was introduced in the Oregon State legislature; on January 13, a similar bill was introduced in Washington State; on January 20, a bill for a state bank was filed in Massachusetts (following a 2010 bill that had lapsed); and on February 4, a bill was introduced in the Maryland legislature for a feasibility study looking into the possibilities. They join Illinois, Virginia, and Hawaii, which introduced similar bills in 2010, bringing the total number of states with such bills to seven.”

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