More US banks to fail? Not with a State Bank of North Dakota

Alexander Hamilton dealt with what appeared to be an insurmountable sovereign debt crisis by establishing the First Bank of the United States as an infrastructure and development bank in 1791. That model was followed by Roosevelt’s government in pulling the country out of the 1930s Great Depression, and it can help put our economy on a more solid footing today. Now they are going to present an alternative financial system in North Dakota, writes Ellen Brown, an attorney and founder of the Public Banking Institute.

U.S. banks are again in the crosshairs. Standard and Poor’s has downgraded five new middle-tier banks and put three others on negative outlook. This follows sweeping downgrades earlier in August by Moody’s, which cut credit ratings on 10 banks and placed four of the 15 largest U.S. banks on review for possible downgrade. As with the banks going into receivership earlier this year, concerns include interest rate risk due to unrealized losses from long-term securities.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government itself has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings, which questions the government’s ability to finance its nearly $33 trillion federal debt. Just the interest on the debt is approaching $1 trillion annually — one third of the government’s federal income tax receipts — while the military budget is closing in on another $1 trillion, devouring over half the discretionary federal budget.

That leaves virtually none to cover the nearly $6 trillion that, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, is needed to repair America’s broken infrastructure, among other neglected service needs.

While economists disagree on the overall economic outlook, conditions seem to be deteriorating across the board. Congress cannot agree on a budget, with threats of another government shutdown October 1 when the new fiscal year begins. The moratorium on student debt also ends on October 1, with 45% of borrowers saying they expect to go delinquent on their student loan debts. Credit card debt is at the highest level ever recorded, surpassing $1 trillion; with the average rate of interest at a new all-time record of 20.63 percent, and delinquencies surging dramatically.

One trillion dollars in corporate debt is rolling over at much higher interest rates this year; layoffs and empty offices are decimating the commercial real estate market; and elevated interest rates are jeopardizing the home mortgage market, among other debt crises.

One state, however, has escaped all this unscathed. North Dakota has the fastest growing GDP per capita in the country; and North Dakota banks are thriving, backstopped by the nation’s only state-owned bank. (“Who knew?” said Kevin O’Leary in a recent Fox News news clip.) According to the latest annual report of the Bank of North Dakota, “The Bank set a record net income of $191.2 million in 2022, up $47 million from 2021. Our asset size set a record as well — $10.2 billion. The return on investment was a healthy 19%. Standard & Poor’s (S&P) affirmed BND’s credit rating as A+/Stable.”

The BND has been called the nation’s safest bank. Its stock cannot be short-sold, since it is not publicly traded; the bank cannot go bankrupt, because by law all of the state’s revenues are deposited in it; and it will not suffer a run, since the state, being the principal bank depositor, would not “run” on itself. Compare JP Morgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, considered among the country’s safest because it is “too big to fail.” JPM has over $1 trillion in uninsured deposits, the type most likely to “run” or be pulled in a crisis, and it has total deposits of $2.38 trillion.

JPM has $61 trillion in total derivatives, or $628 billion in netted derivatives, five times those of Credit Suisse which went insolvent last spring. Credit Suisse had to be bought by the giant Swiss bank UBS to avoid a derivatives implosion among “globally systemically important banks,” of which Credit Suisse was one.

Advocates in other states are working to replicate the BND model or variations of it, with some very promising business plans forthcoming. One analysis recently published by the Center for New York City Public Affairs at the New School measures the projected economic impact of a local New York City public bank, based on a business model put forth by local advocates. The analysis focuses on job creation, affordable housing development and preservation, and community development lending during the bank’s five-year start-up phase, the time projected to achieve a full lending portfolio. The authors concluded:

Other states pursuing legislation in 2023 involving the establishment of public banks include California, Oregon, Washington State, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

At the federal level, a much needed solution to the infrastructure crisis is a national infrastructure bank, proposed in HR 4052. We have faced these crises before and have come out the stronger for them, Ellen Brown insists.

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