by matt on May 14, 2018

Occupy.com is publishing my ten-part series on public banking, “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of the movement, as I told editor Mike Levitin. Here are Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five, which was just published today.

Main themes: Public banks are tools, not ends in themselves. It matters how we message them. Thus far, technocratic and even conspiratorial rhetoric has dominated the contemporary movement, although historically, successful public bank advocates (the Non-Partisan League in North Dakota, the Quakers, and even the medieval clergy, have been motivated by strong visions of economic justice. Money, debt, interest, sovereignty–these are all ways of describing material relationships. The foremost question of political economy, and the most important policy question in creating a just banking system, is to co-create and meet needs in sustainable ways. Public banking is an important step on that journey. Again, it matters how we issue all the demands and create all the things.

Part Three is a little bonus story-within-the-story: How a whole lot of California public banking and cannabis activists, and a small organization (Commonomics USA) helped evolve the State Treasurer’s Cannabis Banking Working Group into a test case of arguments for and against public banking–and ultimately a proponent of the paradigm. This was a big deal in my mind, because John Chiang began his leadership of the Working Group by saying its goal was to provide to the cannabis industry the same private banking service other industries get, and has wrapped it up by calling for the exploration of a public banking system that would run across the state’s gargantuan economy while staring the DOJ in the face. That’s some evolution. It’s hopeful stuff.

If you’re interested in all of this and have stuff to say, let’s think about getting some discussions on a podcast–yours, someone else’s, mine, whatever. And, as you might imagine, these ten articles gotta be compiled after the series, so look for whatever package that ends up becoming.