The Real News: Paul Jay- 'Should Banks be a Public Utility?'

Source:The Real News- interviewing Yves Smith.

"Yves Smith: Finance sector controls the regulatory process - there needs to be a publicly controlled alternative to the private banking system." 

From The Real News

As a Liberal who has no interest in making the Federal Government any bigger than they are and actually wants to make it smaller both the budget and workforce to make it smaller and more efficient. But with the irresponsible behavior of our private banking system and the fact they can bring down our economy like in 2008 with their irresponsible behavior and how large they are and important they are to our economy, they literally have a part of our entire economy. Ao we have to have a healthy banking system that the banks and consumers benefit from in order for us to have a health economy and we don't have either right now. 

I'm someone who believes in competition, not monopoly whether it's a private monopoly or a public monopoly. To me monopolies look like what Microsoft used to look like before it was broken up. Or what a state DMV looks like today and to a certain extent our public education system in America. If a large organization (again, private or public) doesn't have enough competition, it's going to perform and be efficient as it should be because it doesn't have the financial incentive in order to succeed. 

One of the reasons why I'm not in favor of single payer health insurance where the Federal Government controls our entire health insurance system like with Medicare or a single payer pension where the Federal Government controls our entire pension system like with Social Security, large organizations or any organizations need competition in order to succeed, or they get complacent and greedy thinking: "Why do we need to improve our service or even perform a good service, our customers don't have any other choices to turn to." 

Our public education system is an excellent example of a public monopoly where most of our students are stuck going to certain schools based on where they live and not what's the best school for them. 

I'm not in favor of having the Federal Government taking over the banking system in America or even allowing our states to do so either. But what I am in favor of is leaving our current private banking system private and even for-profit (if they choose to stay that way) but regulating it better so they are no longer "Too Big to Fail". As well as providing the private banking system with more competition, similar with my position on health care reform, with a public option in the banking system, but not a new Federal Bank but what I would do is set up a new Federal banking system. 

With a public banking system we could allow all fifty states, plus the territories to open up their own public banks that would all be operated independently of the Federal and state government's. That would be regulated by them and be non-profit as well and then let the consumers decide for themselves what bank they want to use: stick with their current private bank, pick another private bank, or choose a public bank. And let the market the people decide for themselves and give them the freedom of choice to decide who they do their banking with. 

The market is a beautiful thing when you let it operate properly. Community banking is a great idea to provide more competition not less in the banking system. Just as long as you don't end one monopoly by creating another and having less choice in the market. And giving people less freedom of choice in where they do their banking, but have maximum freedom of choice instead.  

On a personal note: this is my 100th post for The FreeState MD.