Month: July 2019

One hun­dred years ago July 28, a bank in Bis­mar­ck, N.D., opened its doors for the very first time. This would have been an unre­mark­able event, like­ly lost to his­to­ry, except for the fact that it was a pub­lic bank, owned by all the res­i­dents of the state. A cen­tu­ry on, the Bank of North Dako­ta (BND) is still the only pub­licly owned bank in the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States (a sec­ond pub­lic bank was recent­ly estab­lished in Amer­i­can Samoa) — though poten­tial­ly not for long.