Every year, billions of dollars of public money flow through banks. Wallstreet Megabanks, often accused of prioritizing shareholder profits, control a total of $509 Billion in deposits and $4.3 Trillion in state and local pensions. Advocates for public banks want more of that money to benefit the community.
Loath to be seen profiting from the economic disaster caused by the coronavirus, the nation’s biggest banks were quick to pledge that they would donate to charity any money earned from helping deliver the government’s signature small-business relief plan.
That promise may be something of a mirage.
Here’s something you might not have known. The Fed is a national development bank – our national development bank. Its mandate originally was and remains that of a facilitator of local business and productive community bank lending across the entire nation, not a bottomless liquidity hole for Wall Street high rollers.
Cities and states are in a fiscal crisis. Municipal bond defaults are now at their highest in a decade. Despite a $500 billion Federal Reserve intervention, with more potentially on the way, regulators have yet to address a longstanding structural problem—a group of the nation’s biggest banks that has cornered the market for municipal bond underwriting. This concentration of power has the potential to raise the interest rates on the bonds local governments urgently need to salvage their finances and the costs could be in the billions. While some municipalities will default on their debt, others will need to increase borrowing to continue providing public services. But the structural issues in the municipal-bond market could make borrowing costlier and alternatives are needed.
Amid the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has exposed systemic inequities, some say a public bank could be a key asset to Philadelphia’s financial recovery.
As Connecticut reckons with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers and community organizers have returned to the idea of public banking as a possible saving grace. Public banks — described as “operated in the public interest” and “owned by the people through their representative governments” by the Public Banking Institute, or PBI — are not an unfamiliar concept to the Connecticut legislature. Multiple bills to establish such banks, or to study the feasibility of doing so, have been introduced without success in the past five years.
Under the terms of new state legislation announced Thursday, a California public bank would be established to help with a more equitable economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. Assembly Bill 310, authored by Assembly Members Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, and David Chiu, D-San Francisco, would relocate “idle” funds from the state’s “checking account” into the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, or IBank, by moving 10% of the state’s Pooled Money Investment Account (PMIA) into the IBank’s loan fund.
The PMIA is essentially an investment vehicle for taxpayer money used by the state treasurer to manage the state’s cash flow.
Using these funds and expanded authority under the legislation, the IBank would be able to directly lend funds and offer credit to community banks, credit unions, municipalities and small businesses struggling because of the economic downturn…
News reports detail how the Main Street Lending Program and the Paycheck Protection Program, the Fed’s programs to assist small- and medium-sized business, have failed in their missions. This is partly because the private banks’ participation in the programs was optional, creating confusion for those applying. Loan-seekers had to search for a participating bank, then try to figure out how to apply for the programs. Many banks did not even know the programs existed.
Bankers generally don’t like surprises. But as CEO at the Bank of North Dakota, the only state-owned bank in the country, Eric Hardmeyer was pleasantly surprised to see the Federal Reserve taking a page out of his institution’s playbook to help deal with the unprecedented economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic.
After years of claiming to be a leader in climate action, California might be finally starting to step into its promised role — and it is bringing a secret weapon to the challeng
In the first few chaotic weeks of the Paycheck Protection Program, federal officials and banks throughout the country struggled to get bailout funds to small businesses as layoffs and furloughs climbed into the tens of millions. But there was one exception, a place where loans found their mark more quickly than any other: North Dakota….What’s their secret?
