Whatever provides the most services for the least cost. That’s what we want. Right? In the case of North Dakota, that would be a socialist bank. Yes sir, you heard me right. A pinko, liberal, fancy-word-for-commie, SOCIALIST bank! Right here on American soil.
Not a penny of bailout money. Not a dollar of pension money lost. No huge bonuses paid to bank executives. Just affordable loans for farmers, students and businesses, fair treatment for everybody, and more than $500,000,o00 earned dollars since the bank’s inception handed over to the state treasury to help out with other SOCIALIST stuff like roadworks and public schools
The Bank of North Dakota, the only state-owned (socialist) bank in America, was formed in 1919 to promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. The bank describes itself as “a progressive entity” with the needs of North Dakotans in mind. Imagine that!
Imagine a bank whose success is tied to the success of the community it serves. Imagine a bank that, more than anything else, tends to the core business of banking. You know, safeguarding deposits and making loans instead of investing in exotic financial instruments and swindling customers out of their hard earned money. Imagine a bank that uses its resources to keep families in their homes instead of feasting on tax dollars while kicking taxpayers to the curb.
It’s a vision that’s been gaining a bit of traction lately. Virg Bernero, the Democratic nominee for governor of Michigan, is championing the creation of a state-owned bank, organized on the North Dakota model. to bail out his state’s underwater homeowners. The idea has gained widespread acceptance in a state where unemployment and homes lost to foreclosure lead the nation. It’s funny, isn’t it, how people—whole states, even—come around quickly to progressive ideas when it’s THEIR homes on the foreclosure auction block!
Actually, it’s not funny. It’s tragic. Families are suffering, and it didn’t need to be this way. Mercifully, in North Dakota it isn’t.
