Or, a state bank?
| When a ballot measure that would’ve allowed Los Angeles to start its own public bank was rejected by the city’s voters last year, even proponents of the idea acknowledged that it was a little far out. |
| Get one of the nation’s largest cities to take the billions of dollars it deposits in big commercial banks and instead park that money in a financial institution that would invest it back into things like affordable housing? It sounded like a progressive pipe dream. |
| But, as supporters have said, the seed was planted. And now, amid rising anger at the state’s gaping economic inequality, the idea has gotten new momentum with an assembly bill that’s making its way through the State Legislature. |
| The bill, A.B. 857, would create a process for local governments to start their own public banks, if they choose to. |
| “Currently California cities turn over hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to our country’s largest Wall Street banks, who invest our money in industries antithetical to our state’s values and policies,” Assemblyman David Chiu, one of the bill’s authors, told me. “This is an idea driven by millions of consumers who in recent years have experienced predatory lending, foreclosures, student loan debt, lack of access to small business capital and having millions of fake bank accounts opened in their names.” |
