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Title: 'Stunning Rebuke to Predatory Wall Street Megabanks' as California Gov. Signs Law Allowing Creation of Public Banks
Source:
Common Dreams
URL Source: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2 ... gns-law-allowing?cd-origin=rss
Published: Oct 3, 2019
Author: Jake Johnson
Post Date: 2019-10-03 10:58:44 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 569
Comments: 3
Members of the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition rally at San Francisco City Hall to demand the creation of a public bank. (Photo: Kurtis Wu) California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed into law historic legislation that would allow the state's cities and counties to establish public banks as an alternative to private financial institutions, a move advocates hailed as a "stunning rebuke to the predatory Wall Street megabanks that crashed the global economy in 2007-08." "Now is our moment in history to lead the nation by re-envisioning finance and recapturing our money to benefit our local communities by building a new system that works for the greater good." Trinity Tran, co-founder of Public Bank LA, said Newsom's decision to sign the Public Banking Act (A.B. 857) despite fervent opposition from the state's business lobby "is a testament to the power of grassroots organizing." "The people of California just went up against the most powerful corporate lobby in the country—and won," Tran said in a statement. "Now is our moment in history to lead the nation by re-envisioning finance and recapturing our money to benefit our local communities by building a new system that works for the greater good." The Public Banking Act—which was backed by a diverse coalition of labor unions, climate justice groups, and civil rights organizations—makes California the second state in the U.S. after North Dakota to allow the creation of public banks. Proponents say public banks can pursue those projects and support local communities' needs while being free of the pressure to obtain higher profits and shareholder returns faced by commercial banks. Support for public banks also has grown since the financial crisis a decade ago and since Wells Fargo & Co. was embroiled in a slew of customer-abuse scandals in recent years. The new law sets into motion a pilot program allowing 10 public bank charters in the state over seven years. "These banks can invest in local projects like affordable housing, small businesses, resilient infrastructure, and clean energy, giving communities a voice in their own economic futures," said the California Public Banking Alliance. Sushil Jacob, senior economic justice attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, said the law represents the "first step toward repairing communities that were immensely harmed by the 2008 recession, especially communities of color." "Today, California's communities of color remain disproportionately harmed by Wall Street's predatory practices," said Jacob. "Public banks can make all of our communities whole with equitable lending and non-extractive investing." In a column for Common Dreams earlier this year, Ellen Brown, founder of the Public Banking Institute, applauded states like California and Washington for pursuing legislation to create state-level public banking systems and said their passage could prove a game-changer for the nation's economy. "The implications are huge," Brown wrote at the time. "A century after the very successful Bank of North Dakota proved the model, the time has finally come to apply it across the country." Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.
—Trinity Tran, Public Bank LA
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#1. To: Deckard (#0)
I like it! Given that most of the oil, gas and minerals in the country are located on public land, and licensed to private exploiters for a song, I would vastly prefer to see a federal oil and gas company, and a federal mining company, with all of the profits going to the treasury. That would bring down taxes massively, as the government partly funded itself. In a similar vein, given the prevalence of public housing, I would like to see outright true public housing, renting from public agencies in publicly- built housing units, with the profits going to the treasury. For-profit public institutions can compete very well with private enterprise, because the salaries of executives can easily be capped at civil service wages (hundreds of thousands vice tens of millions), and there is no shareholder class to pillage the companies. Profits go to the treasury.
No, it would not. More money to Big Stupid Greedy Goverment never brings down taxes. Big Stupid Greedy Government needs to be strangled, not coddled and fed.
Last time I looked, the Navy runs nuclear power plants more efficiently and with a better safety record than private industry. And the Bank of North Dakota is more successful than Goldman Sachs. So yeah, government-run things can be superior to the private sector.
#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
(Edited)
That would bring down taxes massively, as the government partly funded itself.
All it does is hire more parasites and give them raises.
These are lazy clockwatchers who could only get government jobs, after all.
#3. To: Hank Rearden (#2)
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