Dear friends,
Below is an excellent summary of a very high leverage economic system change opportunity – state banks. A single example already exists in the U.S: the little-known but revolutionary state-owned Bank of North Dakota.
State banks simultaneously address the problems of unemployment, lack of financial resources for state and local governments (including rising government debt), and the economic inequity generated by Wall Street's colonization of our economy.
The essay below also alerts us to the dangerous erosion of democracy represented by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement currently being negotiated behind closed doors.
State banks are no long term cure-all for the economic disruptions likely from climate change, resource depletion (especially peak oil), and various technological developments.* But they constitute a powerful sea change in our current economic business-as-usual, reducing dangerous concentrations of social power and buying us time to co-create more sustainable economics, politics and governance.
The article below features the work of Ellen Brown, who is showing up more and more in economic innovation circles, especially in efforts to revolutionize our financial systems. I've recently seen two other remarkable articles by her:
Continue reading “Tom Atlee: State Banks, Debt Renunciation, Other Populist Cures”
