September 13, 2013

Disaster recovery and public banks: Boulder, Colorado and North Dakota

[We are pleased to announce that our book, 7 Steps to Global Economic and Spiritual Transformation, is now available online at Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.]

As we watch the fruits of our friends' labor washed away in this strange and abnormal weather pattern, we can't help but wonder how the recovery will be financed.

Under private bank hegemony, the usual pattern is that one-time government relief is inadequate or absent, and that the only available solution to reestablish the status quo ante is personal loans; that is, paying compound interest to a handful of usurers for the "privilege" of borrowing against your future labor.

There is a much better way, of course, which does not require indentured servitude to the banksters. It's called public banking.

Its principles were used by the original 13 colonies to attain unprecedented prosperity, by the Continental Congress to pay for the Revolutionary War, by Lincoln to pay for the Union Army, and by JFK, to avoid increased federal indebtedness.

In the aftermath of the great Red River flood that hit North Dakota in April, 1997, the Bank of North Dakota (BND), the only remaining public bank in the U.S., stepped in--as it had during blights, low crop prices, recessions, and other natural and man-made disasters--and refinanced mortgages on homes and farms, as well as provide lines of credit to small businesses and local governments (see here and here). Eleven years later it did the same thing following the recession of 2008. This is why North Dakota has the lowest unemployment, largest budget surplus, and least disrupted social fabric of any of the 50 states.

This isn't rocket science, folks. Instead of depositing its revenues from taxes and fees into a local branch of the international banking cartel, North Dakota puts its money into its own bank, and leverages its reserves in the public interest, by supporting credit liquidity in local markets. With no Wall Street bankers receiving bonuses for speculative short-term profits, returns on investment of state moneys are six or seven times more than any state, county, or municipal treasurer dreams of.

Given the generally progressive politics and environmental focus of the citizens of Boulder County, who are in the midst of suffering their most costly disaster, it behooves us to consider this alternative--not only to dig our way out of this catastrophic event, but to finance the recently approved City of Boulder's municipally owned power company, as well as other means of making our local economy independent of the sociopathic usurers and their minions, all of whom who worship at the altar of a monetary idol, rather than serving people and the rest of our biosphere.



Copyright, 2013, Robert Bows.
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[We are pleased to announce that our book, 7 Steps to Global Economic and Spiritual Transformation, is now available online at Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.]

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