Comments on: Banking and finance roundup

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 19:34:34 +0000

PaulB. I do not want to put words into Mr. Olson’s mouth, but I would suspect that he opposes the North Dakota bank as much as any other publicly owned bank. And I do not think that a publicly owned bank would ipso facto be a great institution. I just think that a publicly owned bank can work and, in some circumstances, is work exploring.

I have no opinion whether such a bank could work in Oakland. The arguments on both sides are persuasive.

By: PaulB

PaulB — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 17:50:16 +0000

Allan, the culture of North Dakota allows for a conservatively run public bank that provides useful services in a state that is thinly populated and has always had a cautious public sector even when populist agrarians dominated state politics. Anyone with any familiarity with Oakland knows that the idea that a publicly owned bank there could work there is ludicrous. When you read the article that Walter links to, you can read how its proponents are under the delusion that this will be a means of funding all sorts of goodies to the underprivileged.

By: Allan

Allan — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 16:39:15 +0000

Mr. Olson and I will continue to agree to disagree about whether public banks are a good or a bad idea. My view is that publicly owned banks can be as good as or as bad as private banks.

By: No Name Guy

No Name Guy — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 14:22:33 +0000

“Obama’s hosing of secured creditors in Chrysler bankruptcy raised borrowing costs of other unionized firms”

Duh. No sane person would lend to such firms anymore.