Category Archives: Local Economies

Banking on Colorado Response to
Calabria: Colorado would be wise to reject state-owned banking

Earl Staelin, board member of Be The Change — USA, and a leader in its initiative to establish public banks in Colorado, Banking On Colorado, wrote an Op-Ed for the Denver Post, entitled Colorado needs a public bank, which appeared in the print edition of the Denver Post on Sunday, February 15, 2015. In response […]

Public Banking In the News: How Public Banking is Winning the West

Public banking efforts are very active in the Western United States. Matt Stannard, who writes frequently about progressive economic issues, writes here about four of the more active public banking efforts in the western states: in Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. From the Occupy.com: How Public Banking is Winning the West BY MATT STANNARD […]

Bill Introduced in Maine Legislature to Establish a State Public Bank

A bill to establish The Maine Street Bank was introduced in the Maine legislature on 13 January 2015. Titled An Act to Create a Public Bank, the bill proposes to create a public bank by 1 July 2017 for the state of Maine that is largely modeled after the nearly century old Bank of North […]

NYTimes OpEds: Room for Debate – Should States Operate Public Banks?

While many of us understand the importance and benefit of public banks for stimulating local economies, there are many who have the opposite point-of-view and can present arguments that are reasonable, given their set of assumptions. It is important that we understand these arguments and can respond to them. The link below is to a […]

Observations of Ellen Brown on WSJ Article about the Bank of North Dakota

In an article in The Wall Street Journal dated November 16, 2014 and entitled Shale Boom Helps North Dakota Bank Earn Returns Goldman Would Envy, Chester Dawson relates a largely factually correct representation of the Bank of North Dakota. However, the interpretation of these facts is easily questioned. Ellen Brown, a major intellectual leader of […]

Public Banking in the Press — NYTimes Blog, You’re The Boss: What North Dakota’s Public Bank Does for Small Businesses

One of the major roles of the Bank of North Dakota (BND) is to support small businesses within the state. This story, which was in the New York Times Blog, You’re the Boss — The Art of Running a Small Business on March 13, 2014, gives some detail about how BND can help a small […]

Public Banking in the Press: Public bank advocates gain advice from experts – A Report from the Banking On New Mexico Symposium

The following article, from the Santa Fe New Mexican, is a report from the Banking on New Mexico Symposium: Funding Local, Sustainable Economies held in Santa Fe on September 27, 2014. The format of Banking on Colorado: Bringing Our Money Home Conference, to be convened on January 31, 2015 is very similar to the Santa […]

The Bank of North Dakota — Its History and Operation

North Dakota has a public bank–a bank that has been owned and operated by the people of North Dakota since 1919. Because of the Bank of North Dakota, the state weathered the crisis of 2008 far better than most. North Dakota has not had a single local bank failure in more than 20 years. This […]