Private interests run the economy for the benefit of the very few and the financial elites designed it that way.
The economic sphere is now totally separated from the political sphere, making the flow of private capital immune to public scrutiny as it now stands. The economy is where the real power lies; so without the power to guide the economy in the name of people and planet, our political leaders have been unable to provide meaningful solutions to the imminent problems we now face.
Too much is at stake in too short a timeframe to be content with anything other than real solutions. Divesting from one extractive Wall St. behemoth only to reinvest into another would, at the end of the day, provide only an illusion of progress. The time has come to stop merely looking at the symptoms of a pernicious financial system; the time has come to do nothing less than radically transform the system itself.
You’ve watched the videos and read the articles on the extractive nature of our private banking system. You’ve learned about the hubris, the greed, the foreclosures, the war profiteering and the pipelines. You might have hoped the bankers responsible for the crash be brought to justice or have a general sense of discontent and that a new system is overdue that acts in the name of the 100%.
The solution is right in front of us! Create a public bank in the name of the People. Instead of slapping Wall St. on the wrist, ditch Wall St. altogether. Provide funding for all the things we need like green energy and affordable housing. Reinvest profits back into the community (instead of banker bonuses).
This is SO MUCH bigger than just creating a new type of bank. This is about sparking a radical reformation of the system at its core. This is about consigning predatory capitalism to history. This is about ending predatory lending, boom-bust cycles, and the funding of destructive projects.
It’s about creating local self-determination and an economy that is run explicitly in the name of people and planet. Economics, in this new system, will not be about self-service but about public service.
The People, not the plutocrats, should benefit from economic activity. The People’s Bank will ensure that this is always the case- it will be built into its very makeup- constructed with a value system that all investments and financial dealings align within a strict code of ethics, community development and environmental sustainability.
We are not only advocating for a public bank, there are already some public banks in the world that still act within the economic paradigm as we know it- we aim to take this concept further; we are advocating for a bank that is enlightened in its values, ambitious in its vision and revolutionary in its aims.
Imagine it. Instead of private shareholders, we the people are the shareholders. Instead of bankers as profiteering speculators, they would be public servants appointed by the people and accountable to the people, who would be rewarded for improving the community or fired for serving themselves.
Without accountable public servants in control of the economy, we will never break the shackles of the financial elite. Revolutionary times are among us. When city after city- state after state adopts this model, we will quite literally have made history.
If you could create the perfect bank that ran the economy exactly as it should be run, how would you make it? Let’s answer that question and make it happen, humanity and the planet depend on it.
