Public Banks: How to Cut Infrastructure Costs in Half

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The publicly owned bank Brown refers to – The Bank of North Dakota – is probably the most important legacy of the 19th century populist movement. See prior post Populism: America’s Largest Mass Democratic Movement

WEB OF DEBT BLOG

Americans could save $1 trillion over 10 years by financing infrastructure through publicly-owned banks like the one that has long been operating in North Dakota.

President Donald Trump has promised to rebuild America’s airports, bridges, tunnels, roads and other infrastructure, something both Democrats and Republicans agree should be done. The country needs a full $3 trillion in infrastructure over the next decade. The $1 trillion plan revealed by Trump’s economic advisers relies heavily on public-private partnerships, and private equity firms are lining up for these plumbing investments. In the typical private equity water deal, for example, higher user rates help the firms earn annual returns of anywhere from 8 to 18 percent – more even than a regular for-profit water company might expect. But the price tag can come as a rude surprise for local ratepayers.

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5 thoughts on “Public Banks: How to Cut Infrastructure Costs in Half”

Donald Trump is certainly not going to go for that if his background is anything to go by and quite frankly, it would not surprise me if he gets in on the action, underhandedly, of course and benefits from any infrastructure deal with the big banks. He’s going to get himself impeached for some reason; probably for a myriad of reasons, so he may as well start somewhere and this would be a great start. My only problem is if Trump gets impeached, we’ll have to deal with Pence, but then again, me thinks we ARE dealing with Pence. Maybe we could get a 2for1 special out of the deal? Hang on to hope, eh?

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I also dread Pence coming to power, Shelby. He’s far worse than Trump. To look on the bright side, though, when they impeached Nixon they did make sure to get rid of Agnew first. I think Ellen Brown envisions public banks being created at the state level – that’s definitely where she’s putting her lobbying efforts. I know Washington, California, Maine, Arizona, Illinois, New York, New Mexico and Vermont all have groups and legislators working on creating state public banks (independent of Wall Street) since the 2008 crash. The banks would be funded with tax revenues and federal block grant funds – and there’s nothing in federal law to prevent this.

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