Posted March 25, 2014
by Jerry Alatalo
The Public Banking Institute has produced a short but very insightful film that clearly shows why cities, counties, states, and the federal government would be wise to consider establishing public banks across America. Through the use of graphics, the film gives the viewer a visual, accurate understanding of how governments of all sizes send money to Wall Street banking corporations.
In a few minutes the video simply makes the case for public banking by governing bodies of all sizes. Public banking allows elected bodies the real opportunity to save massive amounts of money in the form of greatly lowered interest payments.
The narrator of the film compares an average homeowner’s eventual total paid to mortgage lenders to a city’s construction of a new school, or a county’s building of new roads, or a state’s construction of a renewable energy facility. The homeowner who purchases with a traditional mortgage loan a $100,000 home will pay $250,000 before the mortgage becomes paid off. The city which builds a $1,000,000 school will pay $2,500,000 before the school gets paid off.
The same interest payments apply for any projects that governments need to borrow money to complete, so public banks offer – when taking every project across America during a given year – an obvious and tremendous reduction in interest costs. This can apply to college loans to ease the financial burden on students, as well as saving communities and regions funds when dealing with natural disasters like the floods in Minnesota and North Dakota described in the video.
One screenshot in the film reads, “Wall Street gets bigger and richer than ever.” It is safe to say that the American people are probably in the kind of mood to begin reversing that decades long trend, while creating public banks that turn off the money pipelines to Wall Street. And so Wall Street executives may have an issue with any initiatives that turn off the money taps flowing toward them from their “thousand points of interest payments” – scattered across “this land is my land, this land is your land” – found in city halls, county buildings, statehouses, and Washington, D.C.
Perhaps the billions in Wall Street bonuses may have to be reduced in “austerity cuts” and be given a “haircut” as they say in the banking industry – once public banks become “the people’s thousand points of light”. More jobs, more tax revenues, more business startups, more infrastructure projects, better schools, better public safety, more teachers, more solar, wind and other renewable energy developments…
With a strong, vibrant public banking sector stretching across the entire United States of America, the men, women, and children in the 99% will need to start purchasing a great deal more shampoo.
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(Thank you to Public Banking Institute at YouTube)