|
For Your Information U.S. Institute for Public Banking Demands Banking Become a Public UtilityActivists in the United States are discussing and taking action on the issue of the regressive destructive role of the state-sanctioned private banks. Organizations such as the Public Banking Institute are demanding a new pro-social direction for the economy and, in this instance, the banking sector. They are speaking of the necessity for banking to be recognized as a public utility with a modern aim to serve the public interest and uphold social responsibility in all its affairs.
According to its website, the Public Banking Institute in the U.S. "was formed in January 2011 and is a national educational non-profit organization working to achieve the implementation of Public Banking at all levels of the American economy and government: local, regional, state, and national. [...] Our current private banking system has presided over the greatest concentration of wealth in human history, while the vast majority of America and the world has endured stagnant wages, declining wealth, and recurring recessions." The founder of the Public Banking Institute, Ellen Brown, writes, "Shock waves from one Wall Street scandal after another have completely disillusioned us with our banking system; yet we cannot do without banks. Nearly all money today is simply bank credit. Economies run on it, and it is created when banks make loans. The main flaw in the current model is that private profiteers have acquired control of the credit spigots. They can cut off the flow, direct it to their cronies, and manipulate it for personal gain at the expense of the producing economy. The benefits of bank credit can be maintained while eliminating these flaws, through a system of banks operated as public utilities, serving the public interest and returning their profits to the public." Brown writes, "The advantages of public over private banking are not rocket science. A government that owns its own bank can keep the interest and reinvest it locally, resulting in potential public savings of 35 per cent to 40 per cent. Costs can be reduced across the board; taxes can be cut or services increased; and market stability can be created for governments, borrowers and consumers. Banking and credit become public utilities, sustaining the economy rather than mining it for private gain." Under discussion is the concept that banking should be considered a public utility to be owned and managed by a public institution with the mandate and social responsibility to serve the public interest, with branches throughout the country and an authority accountable to the people. Money creation should be a public function with the social responsibility falling to the public banks. Enterprises and individuals with excess money could lend out the amounts they have but not create new money as the state-sanctioned U.S. commercial banks and Canadian chartered banks now do. With the creation of public banks, working people and their allies in the middle strata and small and medium-sized businesses would be encouraged to keep their money and savings in public banks and not funnel them into the hands of private financial enterprises. Workers in particular should demand and direct their pension and mutual funds be held within public banks that have the mandate and aim to serve the public interest, economy and society. The creation of public banks is a front in the movement to stop paying the rich and to increase investments in social programs, public services and public enterprise. (With files from ellenbrown.com and publicbankinginstitute.org)
This article was published in Article Link:   Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca |
No one can deny that the people of the United
States are facing enormous challenges to move
their country in a new direction. The unending
aggressive wars abroad, social despair at home
amid economic collapse and increasing poverty and
a failure of governments at all levels to mobilize
the people to control the pandemic pose difficult
questions for all on how to organize effectively
to move society forward in a new pro-social
direction.