>"North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000, known for >cold weather, isolated farmers and a hit movie - Fargo. Yet, for some reason >it defies the real estate cliche of location, location, location. Since 2000, >the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have >grown 34%. This year the state has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion!"<
Wait, the whole country grew a lot, too, during the bubble years (while "Fargo" mostly takes place in Minnesota). It's also a bad sign that personal incomes and wages lagged so much behind gross state product. >What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The answer >seems to be: its own bank. In fact, North Dakota has the only state-owned bank >in the nation.... < That's a good thing, if it avoided getting involved in the city slickers' Standard & Ponzi scheme. But who runs that bank? business, I'd bet. > Some experts insist that we must tighten our belts and start saving again, in > order to rebuild the "capital" necessary for functioning markets; but our > markets actually functioned quite well so long as the credit system was > working. We have the same real assets (raw materials, oil, technical > knowledge, productive capacity, labor force, et cetera) that we had before > the crisis began. Our workers and factories are sitting idle because the > private credit system has failed.< Right, it's like I said in my long missive to David, there are a lot of real productive assets that can be used. It's not just in ND. > A system of public credit could put them back to work again. The notion that > "money" is something that has to be "saved" before it can be "borrowed" > misconstrues the nature of money and credit. Credit is merely a legal > agreement, a "monetization" of future proceeds, a promise to pay later from > the fruits of the advance. Banks have created credit on their books for > hundreds of years, and this system would have worked quite well had it not > been for the enormous tribute siphoned off to private coffers in the form of > interest. A public banking system could overcome that problem by returning > the interest to the public purse. This is the sort of banking system that was > pioneered in the colony of Pennsylvania, where it worked brilliantly well. < this is wishful thinking, isn't it? it's not about to be instituted, is it? The ND state bank isn't going to be doing monetary policy, I'd bet. (you betcha!) -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
