A lot of this has been discussed more than once here. but the real question is how to get the dialog going outside our comfortable corner.
Here's another good piece that should grind the bones of the Sarkoheads.

William Pfaff on the French economy

When the economists and financial analysts outside the mental lockdown of the Chicago School mindset reported the good results of the Mexican nationalization, it was no surprise that the story disappeared into the black hole of the damned--it was Reaganland, and things economic seemed to be proceeding swimmingly. Lots of dead commies in Nicaragua, the sound of money trick-ling down.
This is our chance, and it's slipping away.
For a long time one of my more outrageous opinions was that one could conduct government by reading chicken guts, and if you had enough money and enough compliant fools to throw at it, it would work for a while.

We've still got the fools, but not the money.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.

I now have an Economy 3.0 weekly slot on Labour List which is cross posted from our Nordic Enterprise Trust blog.

Municipal Banks? Or Municipal Banking? | LabourList.org

Municipal Banks? Or Municipal Banking?

After the Lehman insolvency in September 2008 there was a brief flurry of interest in the possibility of municipal banks being set up in the UK, and apparently both Birmingham and Essex County Councils remain interested, albeit their proposals have stalled for differing reasons. In Scotland, Municipal Banks never went away, and five still remain: North Lanarkshire, West Lothian, North Ayrshire, Clydebank, and East Dunbartonshire.

Municipal Banks are extremely limited in their operations and may not offer services to individuals other than to pay interest on deposits, which are typically those of council employees and pensioners. They can't lend to individuals - as a Credit Union may - and while they may technically lend to virtually any type of organisation, in practice, the Treasurers of the relevant Council are the sole customer and use their captive Banks as a source of reasonably cheap funding.

Municipal Banks, like Credit Unions, essentially do what everybody thinks commercial banks do - they take in deposits and lend a matching amount to borrowers. But if you think about it, if that were all that commercial banks did, then there could not be any new money. Commercial banks are therefore known as Credit Institutions who have the privilege of creating credit on the base of an amount of regulatory capital prescribed by the Bank of International Settlements in Basel.

Such credit creation is now increasingly scarce and expensive, and this is the business that Councils really need to enter in order to adequately stimulate the local economy. As Ellen Brown points out today in the Huffington Post, this is not only possible but has been going on in North Dakota for 90 years to the great benefit of the citizens of that State.

However, public sector credit creation is unacceptable for politically dogmatic reasons, and no change to banking legislation would be likely against the organised resistance of the banking industry against "unfair" municipal competition - to wit, the freedom from paying returns to rentier shareholders.

Introducing the Guarantee Society

My concept of a "Guarantee Society" was introduced by the Scottish LibDems in March 2004 in order to solve the problem faced by small businesses in meeting public sector procurement criteria.

It essentially allows businesses to mutually guarantee their collective performance, supported by provisions made into a suitable fund, insurance, or both. The policy appears tohave fallen by the wayside, although there is increasing evidence that the major firms with whom Councils are prepared to engage are now routinely engaging in "subbie-bashing" and imposing upon sub-contractors delayed payment, spurious claims to avoid payment, or both.

Be that as it may, it is in fact quite straightforward for such a collective guarantee to be extended to credit provided to Guarantee Society members. This occurs routinely on the continent in respect of bank loans : the European Mutual Guarantee Association membership extends to 17 countries across Europe.

Peer to Peer Credit

The innovation I propose is to extend collective guarantees to the interest-free trade credit provided directly by trade sellers to buyers as 'time to pay'. While this credit is interest-free, both the seller and the buyer will make a provision into a default fund, which would be held by a Municipal Bank as a Custodian.

This guaranteed trade credit may be settled in conventional money, but there is also the possibility of alternative forms of settlement whereby the seller may agree to accept all or part of the balance in money's worth (ie barter) from the buyer instead.

Service-Providers-Formerly-Known-As-Banks

In North Dakota, the State owned bank works in partnership with local banks, and the form of municipal banking I advocate would be little different. Service providers are necessary to set and maintain "Guarantee Limits" for both sellers and buyers; maintain accounting records; monitor the system; and handle defaults in accordance with the Guarantee Society's policies.

This is of course a classic banking role, the only difference being that the bank no longer puts its capital at risk by creating credit based upon it, but instead acts for a fee as a service provider managing the bilateral creation of credit among the membership which is supported by a pool of funds in common ownership.

Municipal Banking

The Guarantee Society model described may be straightforwardly achieved by using the simple but infinitely flexible UK Limited Liability Partnership as a framework for the guarantee, with any funds being held by Municipal Banks as Custodians and conventional banks or credit unions acting as service providers.

The outcome will be to enable the credit necessary for the circulation of goods and services, and for the creation of productive assets, to be simply created "at cost" without the payment of unnecessary returns to rentier shareholders. Investment, and long term funding of productive assets, such as affordable housing, or municipal infrastructure, is another story, and represents another opportunity for banks to reinvent themselves.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

I talked about this exactly several times in the past. The present system is a return several millennia back, when the local lord (the banker) decided who gets the money (as he takes a hefty slice on the side). Instead of nebulous utopia, my solution is to enforce strict regulations in permissible behavior (deontology) of bankers, under oath, viewing them in a position similar to public notaries.
There was strictly no comment on my essay on the subject last week. I should stick to the Qur'an and Islamic banking...
PA    

Patrice Ayme Patriceayme.com Patriceayme.wordpress.com http://tyranosopher.blogspot.com/

This would seem to be something that Schwartznegger and the Democrats who control the Assembly and Senate might agree on.  With Arnie's help, they might be able to peel away enough Republicans to achieve a 2/3rds majority, if that is required, and create a state bank.  California has a proud progressive history.  Were it revived and updated, it could provide a way out of their current dilemma.  A state bank along the lines of that in North Dakota could be a start.

But for such a project to really succeed a public figure who commands an audience is needed to re-educate the public on how the world CAN work and show exactly how and why it is working so disastrously today.  It would be a highly improbable but highly amusing spectacle for The Terminator to terminate the evil spell cast by  Neo-Classical Economics, even if only in California.  A nice thought though.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."