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A World Without (Big) Banks, Part II
(Orignally posted April 3rd 2014)
In the first half of this piece, readers were subjected to an exposition on the status quo. We revisited the preposterous paradigm of “too big to fail”, where a Crime Syndicate of private sector mega-banks pronounced themselves so “systemically important” that (supposedly) we could not live without them.
As is generally the case; in our Wonderland Matrix the truth is precisely opposite: we cannot live with this Crime Syndicate, terrorizing individual market participants – and even pumping-up or destroying the economies of entire nations with their endemic market-manipulations. The purpose of the conclusion of this piece is to point out that not only could we “survive” the annihilation of these criminal Big Banks, we would reap large and immediate economic dividends.
Here, attorney and fellow commentator Ellen Brown deserves the credit for her extensive work in describing and detailing a different way of conducting our financial affairs: public banking. We have been carefully conditioned (by the Corporate media) to consider “public” anything to be an unmitigated evil, and the “private sector” was the supposed White Knight whom we could trust in managing and administering every aspect of our economies.
Of course having endured the last 40 years of economic rape across the Western hemisphere – by various “private sector” instruments, wielded by the One Bank – we now see that this mythology never possessed any validity. What is true, instead, is that when entities get too large (public or private) they always become inefficient. Worse, in the case of the private sector entities we know as “monopolies” and “oligopolies”; when these Corporate entities get too large they always become both predatory and parasitic.
This leaves us with only two (rational/legitimate) philosophies for managing our economies. We can adopt the “big is always bad” philosophy, in which case (obviously) we must not only ensure we practice Small Government economic policies, but also be equally vigilant in permitting nothing but Small Business.
The problem with that simplistic economic vision is that it renders impossible a lot of the major national/economic initiatives which we have been able to pursue previously only because of Big Government. The “space program” is but one example. Small Government (or small business) could never put a person into orbit – let alone send someone to the Moon.
So if we dare to dream of larger, collective endeavours, we must embrace “big” as a necessary (and regulated) evil. That leaves us with two choices: Big Business or Big Government. We already know what we get with Big Government: inefficiency. But, equally, over recent decades we have become painfully aware of what Big Business represents: inefficiency and corruption – on a scale never before witnessed with our species.
Big Government is not a “virtue” to be actively pursued/embraced. Rather, it is a lesser-of-evils, in any scenario where (for one reason or another) we need a large entity for a particular function(s). Here public banking provides one, obvious template.
What are “bankers” in the realm of finance and economic development? They are clerks and middle-men. In some cases they “facilitate” transactions, but in many cases they simply insert themselves into a transaction in order to needlessly (and parasitically) extract some “cut” for themselves.
Obviously where we have bankers acting as middle-men, we can simply eliminate them completely from the process. And where they are essentially performing nothing but clerical functions to “close a deal”, such clerical functions can just as easily be done by some public employee – with any “cut” for such services flowing into public coffers (and not the vault of some Mega-Bank).
“Banking” is not a profession, it is merely another occupation. It requires only modest skill and education to provide honest banking services. Where intelligence and/or cleverness factors into the equation is with respect to “crooked” banking (i.e. one form of fraud or another). Obviously to cheat other people it’s generally necessary to be smarter than your Chump.
“Investment banking” conversely can/does require skill and some level of professional expertise, but it’s important to note that this is not really banking, at all. Arranging financing for some corporate or public project of one sort or another is an entirely separate function from placing some client’s wealth into a particular investment – since any form of investing is simply a variation of gambling.
The dividing-line between “banking” and “investment banking” (gambling) was simply erased by the corrupt, Clinton regime (when it dismantled Glass-Steagall). Ever since then we’ve simply had “bankers” – where the word is now merely a synonym for “criminals”.
It was only when we allowed (true) “banks” to begin wagering the funds of their depositors (thus turning our collective economies into one, gigantic casino) that the banksters were able to foist the concept of “too big to fail” upon us. After betting (and losing) all our funds, which were supposedly entrusted to them for safe-keeping; the banksters then argued that we could no longer allow them to fail.
The fact that our governments willingly embraced this systemic blackmail shows where their allegiances lie: they serve the One Bank. But not everywhere. As Ellen Brown pointed out in her article, one U.S. state, North Dakota, has discovered a much better way of doing their banking: public banking.
In 1919, with the farming population of that state already enraged about the gouging they were getting from Big Banks; they pressured their state government into creating the Bank of North Dakota. Ever since that time, every “cut” taken by bankers for
handling financing and financial services in that state has flowed into public coffers, not (greedy) private hands.
The (private) bankers of the 21st century never fail to take credit – at every opportunity – for now being the driving force behind our economies. Yet for every month since July of 2008 (the Crash of ’08); North Dakota has had the lowest unemployment rate of any U.S. state, or been tied for lowest.
In an era of mega-deficits, where our various governments simply sell us pie-in-the-sky fantasies of “one day” having a balanced budget; the state of North Dakota has had a budget surplus every year since 2008. While many now think of North Dakota as an “oil state” (and seek to credit the oil industry for the state’s economic strength and health), the fact is that the BND pumps more dollars of revenue into state coffers each year than does the oil industry. It’s very profitable being a middle-man.
But with the Bank of North Dakota; it’s much more than simply a matter of how much profit it generates (for the benefit of state residents). More important is how it generates those profits. Unlike the mega-banks of Wall Street, which abandoned U.S. Small Business decades ago; the BND focuses on small-business development.
Our politicians and economists like to talk about how “small business has always been the driver” of any economy. Yet both of these groups also tell us (out of the other side of their mouths) that we should hand every new dollar created by our economies to the Big Banks.
What do the Big Banks do with 95% of those dollars? They gamble with them, in their Derivatives Casino. Here the numbers actually do not lie. According to the banksters themselves; their derivatives casino was nearly 20 times as large as the global economy, or put in opposite terms, the global economy is only 5% as large as their Derivatives Casino. This was until they suddenly came up with a “new formula” for measuring the size of their (crooked) Casino. Now it’s (supposedly) ‘only’ ten times as large as the global economy.
However, at the BND, they are “bankers” – real bankers, meaning they fund small business. Surprise, surprise. If the bankers actually fund the backbone of our economies, then even with “globalization” and “the New Normal”, our governments can provide us with some measure of real prosperity, rather than an ever-worsening spiral of unemployment and debt. Equally important, the BND has provided its superlative financial services to the state of North Dakota without siphoning $billions off-the-top as “bonuses” for its middle-men.
This is how a bank is supposed to operate. Yet certainly within any jurisdiction in North America, the bank which is doing its job the best is a public bank.
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Tylers, why don't you post Articles directly from Ellen Brown?
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take away from them the power to create currency, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits." - Sir Josiah Stamp, Chairman, Bank of England, 1920s (2nd richest man in Britain at the time).
Still true.
I already made a comment on the previous Part I of this article:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-09/world-without-big-banks-part-i#...
I focus on what I consider the most striking paragraph in Part II:
"What do the Big Banks do with 95% of those dollars? They gamble with them, in their Derivatives Casino. Here the numbers actually do not lie. According to the banksters themselves; their derivatives casino was nearly 20 times as large as the global economy, or put in opposite terms, the global economy is only 5% as large as their Derivatives Casino."
Other than attempting to understand that for the simple sake of understanding it, WHAT THE FUCK is one supposed to actually do, after one recognizes that all the "money" the vast majority of people use to buy food and fuel, etc., is now but a TRIVIAL aspect of the established economic systems? The REAL problems are so BIG than the lives of ordinary flesh and blood people no longer matter to the virtual world of finance based on runaway, triumphantly enforced frauds. The paragraph quoted above is probably an understatement. The overall situation is that the financial world is dominated by a collective group of trillionaire mass murderers, while nobody else is remotely close to being in their league. Therefore, although I enjoy reading articles like the one above, doing so only INCREASES THE FACTS THAT THE MORE ONE LEARNS, THE WORSE IT GETS!
In my view, to attempt to "get real" about the surreal situation where the "money" made out of nothing to gamble with is orders of magnitude bigger than everything that flesh and blood people ever actually pay for, using the same public "money" supply, requires facing some extremely distressing basic facts. Namely, money is measurement backed by murder, and therefore, those runaway debt insanities are headed towards provoking death insanities!
Recommending more "public banks" and more public control over the public "money" supply are theoretically great ideas. However, what is actually going to happen is almost certainly going to be way worse than such sublime ideals being implemented! The oligarchy that dominates the established systems ARE collectively a group of trillionaire mass murderers, and therefore, their "solutions" to the problems they have created are to provoke much, much more mass murders. At the present time, there are practically no good grounds to believe that enough the Zombie Sheeple will do anything else than continue to be fleeced to exhaustion, while they are set up to be slaughtered.
Sublime notions such as more public banks, and public control over the public money supply, make great theoretical sense, until one faces the MAGNITUDE of the problems caused by there already being enough "money" made out of nothing in order to speculatively gamble with, that it would take more than 10 extra planet Earths to enable that to continue to work, rather than go through psychotic breakdowns and crazy collapses into chaos.
Our fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems HAVE enabled us to live AS IF there were more than 10 extra planet Earths, inside of the virtual world created by the banksters' abilities to have their frauds enforced by governments. Anyone who thinks we could fix the problems that exist when everything that operates now is based on pretending there are more than 10 more planet Earths in the virtual world, than in the real world (because that virtual financial world is based on systems of electronic monkey money, backed by apes with atomic bombs), is NOT remotely close to being in the order of magnitude of what those problems ACTUALLY ARE.
There is no rational way to imagine what the possible "market corrections" could be, when the ERROR was based on acting like there were more than 10 more additional planet Earths! Instead, we are surely headed towards times of PEAK INSANITIES!
"Their derivatives casino was nearly 20 times as large as the global economy." EVEN IF it is "(supposedly) ‘only’ ten times as large as the global economy," that still MEANS that the current public money supply, that all the flesh and blood people have to use to buy food and fuel, presumes that there are somehow at least 10 extra imaginary planet Earths, because that is what it would take to make the accumulating magnitude of the established systems of enforced frauds NOT BE INSANE!
Overall, a good argument can be made that the ratio is more like 100 to 1, rather than merely 10 to 1, while that is headed towards becoming 1,000 to 1 at an exponentially accelerating rate. For example, it appears there is 100 times as much electronic and/or paper "gold" as there is physical gold, and similar situations appear in every area that one more critically examines! The accumulated CONTRADICTIONS between the imaginary, virtual, financial world, based on government enforced bankster frauds, versus the real, physical world, ARE AT LEAST AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE OFF!
To borrow language in this Web site:
http://www.economicactualism.com/
The nominal wealth is at least an order of magnitude bigger than the actual wealth, which makes any sufficient market correction TOO BIG to be able to fully comprehend happening!
There's a short introductory video
embedded in that Web site about:
"ECONOMIC ACTUALISM"
Amongst other things, that stated:
"The world is going crazy, and economics, the science of rational behavior, is leading the descent into madness. To many, economics is the dismal science. Its numbers don’t add up. ... Economic Actualism shows how a “confusion of nominal and actual” wealth makes us live in quiet desperation. We are told the economy is improving, but it is getting worse. Just as spark, fuel and oxygen will combine to create a flame, so duress, inversion and ineffectiveness will combine to create a cancerous economic growth. The invisible hand which guides an economy is partly a pyromaniac, sparking a match. ..."
That was stating the same things that I did.
But, I felt, in a relatively toned down way ...
My ideas are that differences between
'nominal wealth versus actual wealth'
were due to ENFORCING FRAUDS.
After we get to the levels that we have, where Big Governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, and Big Banks are the best organized gangs of criminals, their accumulating successes via operating systems of ENFORCED FRAUDS have resulted in a collective social insanity that overall is pretending that there are more than 10 extra planet Earths. Given that, promoting the superficially good sounding ideas of more public banks, and more public control of the public money supply, are way too little, and way too late, and way too trivial to matter much anymore!
The publication of the information in this article is the kind of information that gets you put on the NSA Short List.
The world I envision without bigbanks is one in which the Earth is a solid sheet of glass, it snows in the Bahamas in July and there is no sign of life anywhere.
As for the cartoon I lean towards the big banks problem side/corporate entitities. Afterall the fuktards in the big gov't are being funded by them. Get rid of one they buy (or in Obama's instance--create) another.
Getting rid of the puppets would at least force the big banks/corporate entities to buy a whole new set of puppets. At what point does it become too expensive to do so?
There is a role for big banks -- even in a 'perfect world'. However, that role does not include investments and trading, commodities, FX, derivatives, or all the other things the TBTF banks have biught by paying off Congress.
Anyone who is interested in this topic and post should read the freely available "Mystery of Banking" which explains brilliantly and in understandable terms what has gone on.
Banking in it's free form is pretty much failsafe, but only if all banks are free to issue notes against assets, as then no bank can vastly inflate it's book by printing, because said "currency" may come in to be redeemed the next day, and byebye bank. Of course for this to happen the paper money has to have the backing of something physical and independantly valuable behind it, otherwise the banks can print counterfeit (all fiat) alleged money all the way up to the point where the exponential maths gets in the way.
I believe in recent years we have come extremely close to this point (the hockey stick or parabolic curve) which is why a crisis was created, as an excuse to reduce rates to extend that curve. If rates were reduced to negative we would be headed for the very same parabolic curve, the only difference being that the former could pass the liability to the next generation, the latter is very much in the now. It hurts much more (in the present) to be mugged now, than a theoretic mugging does 25yrs in the future.
My guess on the percentage of the western population that understand any of this would be 0.001%, very sad, very efficient cover up, though the knowledge is now gladly becoming greater.
There is only one way to sort this, and it starts and finishes with YOU! Don't whinge and moan about banks then go to the supermarket with your cashcard, big banks can't survive without big money and big business, so support the little guy and the little business, communities will be transformed and the parasitic institutions will die, if enough do the same.
http://mises.org/library/mystery-banking-1
Mom and Pop shops also use banks for loans. Thus when I use a local store, it doesn't stop that shop from going to a bank to get a bridge loan or something.
Banking has been around for centuries and it will continue on in the future. The internet had the power to curtail bank power with crowd sourcing. But crowd sourcing is such a small percentage of loans it doesn't even read on the radar.
Until then, commercial banking will continue on, for local shops as well as the conglomerates.
Mom and Pop don't need a loan, and we don't even need banks. Productive individuals can issue their own redeemable money in the form of Real Bills. As long as the customer pays in real money (gold or silver coin), and downstream suppliers accept the Real Bills (redeemable in gold).
http://professorfekete.com/moneycredit.asp
http://professorfekete.com/articles/AEFMonEcon101Lecture2.pdf
IMO there's nothing wrong with banks the problem is human nature. If we cured all this shit today, overtime greedy sociopaths would somehow, someway, weasel there way back to the top. Maybe Google can hurry up and create "non-fuckhead compliant" data chips that all people in a position of power need to have installed. The moment that happens someone will have already had backdoor access. We are the problem.
I've read Ellen Brown, and I think wow, that's great. Every state has a state bank. Is fractional reserve lending still not a Ponzi scheme if state government does it and spends the interest on services in the state? I think, 'What's the downside?' Won't state banks also end in tears as politicians build incredible infrastructure projects that can't be serviced down the road to bolster employment today? Isn't that model in 'modern' China? Ghost cities and bridges to nowhere? Someone help me here....
In an age where the "reserves" (Central Bank money) are also created at will, it is redundant to talk of problems with fractional reserve banking. The CRR (cash to reserves ratio) could be set at 100% and it would still make no significant difference. The banks will have to borrow from the Central Bank at the Central Bank lending rate, the entire amount they loaned into existence instead of just a fraction. It only affects how much of the interest, they charge their customers, they get to keep and how much they have to pay the Central Bank for the reserves they borrowed.
There is a way to handle new money creation without hurting those holding savings as currency. Exclusive depository institutions can be created whose only functions can be to facilitate deposits. withdrawals and transfers between account holders and charge account holders periodically for these services. They would be prohibited from lending and all the deposits regardless of the amount will be guaranteed by the Central Bank. Banks would be prohibted from taking in deposits. They can lend but only from the money they borrow from public. There are no government or Central Bank guarantees on the money lent to these institutions. If new money needs to be created, the Central Bank simply increases the amounts in the deposit accounts proportionately. This means that any inflation because of new money creation will not hurt those holding savings in currency. People will be free to chase higher returns by lending to banks, but will have to do so with the clear understanding that it comes with risks. This doesn't mean banks won't engage in leveraged speculation, but only that they will be limited by the money public are willing to lend them to do so. Most importantly, those not wishing to participate in the games of the banks cannot be made unwitting participants.
The public bank does not fund the govt via loans, it is just a regular banking service for the public.
Govt runs its affairs and budgets separately via treasury and finance ministers and a non private CB. It pays its bills via revenue and restrains uneconomic (non-returning) public spending and debt growth.
Control of a public bank restrains excesses of the private banks and keeps the whole system healthy and stable through business cycles. The govt mandates non extractive services in the public bank, so the private banks have to complete via doing the same, or all of their customers will leave them and go to the public bank.
Then the private banks have to work in your interests to survive, and those interests of small businesses, or these will not use the private banks at all. So ironically, and contrary to what would be supposed, a well-behaved conservative public bank dramatically improves private competition, and very effectively reduces the damage to society of greedy corrupt rent-seeking banking practices. It also discourages the current ruinous bubble-ism and hot money flow tendencies, making the entire financial system more stable and more conservative.
It works, we had that, and we can easily have it again, you just fully nationalize one bank, clean it up and make it operate in a conservative and decent way for all depositors. Guess what, you'll see interest back on your savings again, as well. If a public bank offers a fair interest rate on savings, the private banks must do the same to compete for the customer share. The extractive excesses come to a screeching halt overnight.
This works, it produces actual intense banking competition, and not just private banking platitudes about a 'competition', that essentially is non-existent, due to a deeply extractive underlying process already being present when customer concessions to 'compete' are offered back to the customer (victims) of such predatory fully-privatized banking environments/'markets'.
Not necessarily true. It depends on how long an irresponsible speculator can continue the game without crashing. The longer the speculator survives, the more people will tend to invest in the speculator and rue the decision when the crash comes. What is needed is not to create responsible speculators, but to deny speculators the ability to create money. No, I am not talking about return to Glass-Steagall. I am talking about segregating the depository and lending/investment functions into different institutions and denying all of them the ability to create new money. All new money should be created by crediting existing deposit accounts proportionately. All lending and investment has to come by borrowing from the existing money supply. Ponzi schemes will die very quickly because they will run out of the supply of money to keep them afloat. It will also ensure that speculators don't adversely affect the non-speculators.
"Is fractional reserve lending still not a Ponzi scheme if state government does it and spends the interest on services in the state?"
Yes, because whoever does it fractional reserve banking is by default diluting the money supply and thus devaluing existing money. And by creating the money from thin air (it doesn't currently exist) it couldn't be paid back if everyone in the world wanted to do that. Debt can only be repaid by further creation of newer money, belonging to future generations, paid with their labour, debt slavery and full on Ponzi.
PS Money doesn't currently exist, I mean currency.
Not true. New money is created as debt doesn't mean it can't be paid off without creating new debt. But it certainly means you can't create economic growth without increasing debt. Debt (plus interest) is paid off from one's income, not from the originally borrowed money. While the repaid principal component extinguishes part of the debt, the interest is the bank's income which re-enters the economy as spending by the bank (employees' salaries, rent paid, utility bills, shareholder dividends etc). However, if the total debt decreases (more principal repayments from existing debtors than new borrowings), the economy is likely to contract because the total volume of money in circulation has come down unless compensated by an increase in the velocity of money (very unlikely).
Even more interesting from Jeff is this article about Indian gold imports
http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/gold-commentary/26585-new-mysteries-in...
Putting a man in orbit costs nothing. Bringing him back alive...well that's a whole nother thing altogether.
We don't just get inefficiency with Big Govt, we get Giant Debt, and the bankrupting process is effectively broken for the public, with respect to that debt they were lumped with. If bankers create such a liability out of thin air, the public should be able to, and must be able to, destroy that debt liability.
i.e. co-opted corrupt Big Govt should not be able to effectively sell a population as slaves to banks, via debt contracts and usury, the way they currently do.
At the very least it is profoundly immoral, and seen to be so.
when we are talking about Big Govt, we invariably talk about governments that can have huge budget deficits
and the one government that has most freedom of budget is the US federal government, thanks to... the privilege it has of owning the global reserve currency
and this government is highly corrupt
and it's corruption is highly visible and legal. it is visible in the legions of lobbyists and it is legal because money rules everything that has to do with elections
and the whole thing is even more visible when you count in that USD-based megabanks can afford to send most lobbyists and money in the direction of Washington
so yes, I agree that transforming the whole 99% of the US population as slaves via debt contracts is an issue, and an important one, but it's not at the root of the thing
the root of the thing is that rampant budget deficits don't have the sort of somewhat direct consequences in the US, compared to elsewhere. in short, when Uncle Sam kicks the can, it lands further away, while of course becoming way bigger
beginning with 1971 every pretense was shed away, piece by piece. since then, every little thing that would protect the citizen from rampant usury was legislated away. limitations on credit, on rates, on everything... away! right to default... away!
it's a cancer, but it has not been diagnosed correctly. only treated with woodonomics
Nicely put G
It's kind of you, but I'm not that happy with my comment. The theme here is "Big Gov" / "Big Biz", something that is dear to me, being myself a small entrepreneur
the problem with that is that the scope is vast
from a Keynesian perspective, having a marriage of interests between gov and Big Biz makes sense, pushing up demand in times when it's low, for example after a big war
from any other perspective, it's a dangerous thing, then connections usually persists, and this marriage takes a life of it's own
megabanks are at the moment something like capital ships of old. seriously tackling them would need something like an international "financial dreadnoughts limitation treaty"
They tried that, torpedoes and limpets worked better.
Ghordius - I don't disagree with your commentary just narrowing it down further. The issue is reserve currency hosts. Such become the empire of there time as part of the job of RCS is global policeman.
I agree with Milton Friedman, all currencies should float freely. But it will probably take another world war to make that painfully clear.
As for this article I agree banking should be a public utility. I wager after ww3 it will be. With the advent of quantum computing deciding equilibrium vs disequilibrium doesn't require human inputs outside the first few variables for a system.
Agree, we had a Bank called the Commonwealth Bank (CB), in Oz, and it was privatized in about 1992. Prior to its sale the CB was able to set rates because the CB would do it, the the private banks were forced to comply, or they would lose customers.
Well when the CB was sold, in1992 all banking discipline and Control of their behavior and rate changes went out the window, the actual MARKET COMPETITION that had existed for customers when the CB was in public hands, immediately disappeared when that one public bank was privatized.
Well, guess what, in the past 20 years is has become the most corrupt big bank in Australia, and that is quite an achievement among those sharks.
What was the excuse for privatizing it? The Finance Minister, Kim Beazley (now Ambassador to US), waved his hand one day and said the Government should not be in the business of banking it should be in the business of government.
We have been getting ripped, gouged and stolen from ever since, check it out, all this is just 20 years of rampant private corruption:
http://www.bankvictims.com.au/commonwealth-bank-of-australia/item/11116-...
http://www.bankvictims.com.au/dr-evan-jones/item/11274-cba-asic-and-the-...
So I thank the authors for this proposal. I strongly agree that at least one public bank for everyone should be standard in all countries, as just that one public bank can, via ENHANCED MARKET COMPETITION, stymie and frustrate corrupt and criminal practices which try to get established. And it puts ALL of the big banks on a leach again, of govt, and customers.
In the Great Depression Americans used the Post Office for Banking. "They lent money at interest.". Indeed the biggest Bank in the world by assets is the Japanese Postal Service.
Americans know these Wall Street clowns far better than Wall Street knows itself and have adjusted accordingly. The folks going hat in hand for bankrupting their State in order to get a " bailout" now know the terms of the loan...everything has collapsed again...and so does anyone else who does business with these "Masters of the Universe."
When you see the actual returns these clowns generate you understand why the only thing they're good for is creating more debt.
But hey, this is why we have history. Some people learn...some don't. Once the money is all gone though...
That's precisely how it worked in Australia, the public post office provides a service for banking, formerly primarily via the Commonwealth bank, but it included all in one in.
Now the Post Office has, as of this past year, become a contracted conduit for Social Security Service provision as well, as the Govt attempts to scap the current bricks and mortar provider (Centerlink) and place it all online in consolidated form. Fortunately the Govt decided, just last May, that it was going to put on hold its former plans to privatize Australia Post.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-government-...
But it is really open to review and sale at any time (and a further wave of corruption and gouging that would result from that).
So in a country with many small remote population centers, a public banking service by an integrated postal service is a very good and no-brainer servicing idea as the major banks can't be bothered providing economic commercial services in such remote places as the returns are too low to make it worth their while.
So a public bank in a public postal service is certainly the way to go, for Australia.
The govt is also trying to place it all online as much as possible (and is succeeding in that, where Labor had completely failed), and roll out fast broadband everywhere aslo (something Labor socialism again completely failed at implementing, as gross in competance and waste is their #1 skill), but it is expensive over such a large land mass and such low population density, and many people can't afford to use such expensive private ISP provider methods of govt, bank and postal services.
Which implies that for service and inclusion, a 'free' public internet service provision, is also required through the national broadband network, to make the entire system work and eliminate the appalling gouging and integrated deception processes of a private system.
The Current govt is mostly achieving this via computers within office buildings and home access, at present, but it obviously has to be done from people's homes, with basic broad band internet access for all.
So the process of public banking in such a system has a set of implications that must all be integrated, and provided efficiently, in such a 'Big Govt' efficiency drive, because the Abbott govt is very much about drastically reducing the size of Govt and spending to stop the ruinous rate of public debt growth.
This is why the socialists and greens, plus State Media's extreme-lefty-kookery, within the ABC and SBS, hate Abbott and his govt so virulently. And why bankers/owners are not so happy and will play their games of political manipulation and political smear and 'assassination'.
The massive waste of hardline socialists, Gillard and Rudd, is finally being rapidly torn down and replaced with stripped down but far more functional systems. It remains to be seen if they'll get the resulting smaller Big-Govt system, balanced and efficient - I sure hope so.
What we're recently had was increasingly hopelessly inefficient, and public banking would also dramatically improve the situation in the country, if the Govt were to step-up and take that sort of policy to the next election cycle.
I think they would be pleasantly surprised how voters would receive that policy, but the mass media would attack the hell out of it ... of course.
Which means it's probably a good policy with abundant merits.
RD
If you look carefully you will see that many countries have made statements that a move toward free-floating currencies is underway. Several countries have announced that they will not intervene in protecting their currencies. This has been the game for decades as countries tried to lower the value of their currencies to protect their exporting abilities. It results in a variety of imbalances that distort markets and set up the world for currency jolts. Nevertheless even Russia seems to be following this policy.
It does not get discussed but it seems to be underway.
Fofoa has been discussing this lately.
Government exists to perpetuate more government and as long as the bureaucracy is unaccountable things will continue as they are...
Well apparently they've done a bad job.
An example of how the banking cartels control countries