Neg - GND Wave 2 - Michigan 7 2023 CPSW

Neg – GND Wave 2 Updates
Notes
Corrine and Zaki worked on this file
Banks CP
Notes
So there’s this new INB type thing I added and it kinda contradicts the DA. It says that the private sector is bad and the DA says private innovation is good, so probably don’t read both in the debate
Solvency
Solvency – K/Soft left
Public Banks are a revolutionary reform that redefine assumptions
Haines ‘21 [Pamela, writer, workshop leader, and speaker with a common theme of demystifying the connections between economics and daily life, while challenging people to claim their power and act on their values; 11-18-2021, "Why Public Banking Is a Step Toward Revolutionizing Our Economy", https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2021/11/18/public-banking-revolutionized-economy, YES! Magazine, accessed 7-6-2023 \\pa-zyg]]
The potential for public banking—or managing taxpayer funds through publicly controlled financial institutions rather than private banks—first became real to me in the office of my city council member in the spring of 2019. A group of us had fanned out through City Hall to speak with every member of the council about the benefits of establishing a Philadelphia Public Bank. The staffer we were chatting with was new to the idea, and grew more and more interested. “The council person would really like this idea,” he said. “It’s good for the common people. It’s good for the city budget. I’m going to talk with her about it. I think she’ll want to support it.” In that moment, the concept of public banking, which I found compelling and had been promoting informally for years, became not just another good idea but an attainable goal. It’s been a puzzle to know how to best organize around economic issues. Once we’ve identified our economic system—and, more particularly, the financial system—as the root of so many of our problems, what do we do next? Transforming the economy is too big to easily build campaigns around, and the number of people who can be mobilized purely on ideological grounds is small. While Occupy Wall Street was a great national teach-in on wealth inequality, including a critical understanding of the importance of democracy, it didn’t offer enough focus or program to keep people in motion. With an eye open to possibilities, I jumped at the opportunity to attend the founding conference of the national public banking movement, conveniently held in Philadelphia in 2012. The idea that our public money should be kept under the control of the public and used for the public good, rather than deposited in private banks to be used for private gain, was compelling. The reality that we have our own public banking model—in the 100-year-old state Bank of North Dakota—was grounding. We were all blown away by a 12-year-old from Canada who told their country’s story: how the creation of a national bank in the 1930s allowed them to build critical social, health, and economic infrastructure; how a political change in the early 1970s moved control of that wealth to the private sector; and how billions of dollars that could otherwise have been used for public good have since been siphoned off to private banks. This is the situation we face in the United States. Currently, private banks create all the money in circulation—except for the bills and coins issued by the Treasury—by making loans. The Federal Reserve is a network of private banks with a special relationship to the Treasury. Interest on our growing federal deficit is paid to banks that hold Treasury notes. When banks become “too big to fail,” it is our tax dollars that bail them out. It’s clear that we have to address control of the money supply in order to solve a host of social, equity, and climate issues. Yet, where can we get the leverage to make such a massive transformation? The distinction between revolutionary and reformist reforms can help us here. Revolution could be framed as transformation of our money system from one that is privately managed for profit to a democratically managed public utility. Visionary federal legislation to do this has been proposed, but the frame is too abstract to attract popular support. We can’t get from here to there without some steps in between. There are many things we can do to make our current economic system more bearable and fair within the context of the current system: raise the minimum wage, oppose predatory lending, strengthen the social safety net. These “reformist reforms” are all important and totally worth doing. And any reform that builds grassroots solidarity and momentum helps create the conditions for demanding more. But in and of themselves, they don’t challenge the power dynamics that are built into a system that privileges the accumulation of private wealth at the expense of all other life on the planet. A “revolutionary reform” is like a wedge into the power status quo, and I see public bank campaigns as playing this role. They provide a tangible local hook around which to organize, while calling into question the root issue around power and control. They get people thinking about the big questions: Why should our taxpayer dollars be held by private banks to be invested in their own interests when we have pressing needs at home? Why should half the cost of long-term public borrowing go to paying back interest to private bondholders? Why don’t we have control over our common wealth? A public banking campaign doesn’t go all the way. It doesn’t directly challenge the rights of private banks to essentially own our nation’s money supply. But it’s a clear step in that direction, and one that ordinary people can get excited about taking. The potential of public banking as a popular issue was made clear in Los Angeles in 2018. That story started with an earlier activist campaign to get the city to divest from fossil fuels. Voters approved this measure, but the city discovered that all the banks that were big enough to handle its money were complicit in fossil fuel investment. There was no place they could move the money to. The City Council president acted that summer to put a referendum on the fall ballot to establish a public bank. With only a few months in which to organize, the divestment group pivoted to an all-out campaign to support the referendum. They did an outreach and social media blitz and got endorsements from hundreds of civic, labor, and other community groups. Measure B received over 44% of the votes, with 430,488 Angelenos voting yes to a public bank. This was not enough for a win, but it was an astonishing achievement from a grassroots, volunteer-run campaign with minimal funding—and it laid the foundation for a series of advances in the establishment of a structure for creating public banks throughout California. As I became involved in the Philadelphia Public Banking Coalition and started talking with people around the city about the potential of a public bank, I had the same experience of people catching on immediately. They had just never considered that there might be an alternative. We led an information session with the Philadelphia Urban Coalition, a group of mostly Black church leaders who resonated strongly with the message that it’s just not right for big banks to use our public money to maximize their profits when great needs in the city are unmet for lack of financial resources. Several of us went to our local farmers market on a series of Saturdays through the next summer, gathering petitions for a public bank. Everyone who was willing to talk not only got the logic of the concept right away, but was grateful to know about the campaign and eager to support it. Later, when we reached out to local community organizations to offer information sessions, the concept always made intuitive sense. Fortunately, our coalition has not only engaged in community outreach efforts, but worked the inside track in City Hall. From the beginning, we have had a strong ally in City Councilmember Derek Green, and have worked closely with him over the years. One of our members, who used to work as legal counsel for City Council, actually drafted the legislation that Green introduced in January 2021 with a veto-proof majority—the result of a vigorous lobbying campaign on our part. Since then, we have continued our dual strategy of gathering more community support and working with the legal and financial departments in City Hall to hash out the details. We are working particularly hard on building in a democratic governance structure to ensure that the bank is not only insulated from political influence, but rooted in the communities it is meant to serve. The public banking movement all across the country has experienced a groundswell since 2019, and it continues to rise. The question now is not whether there will be another U.S. bank to join the Bank of North Dakota, but when. Philadelphia is joined by the California Bay Area and Los Angeles in a race to establish our first municipal public bank. After years of dreaming and hard work, the goal of having legislation in place before the end of 2021 seems like a real possibility. Of course, that’s not the end of the story. A reform, revolutionary or not, is still a reform. But it’s more than just an improvement in the conditions of those who suffer under our current deeply inequitable and unjust economic system. It’s an opening wedge, a beginning of a transfer from private to public control of our financial system, a shift in the story line about who rightfully owns and controls our common wealth
Solvency General
Public Banks can generate enough money for the plan
Steinfort ‘19 [Lavinia, political geographer and activist. As a researcher at the Transnational Institute (TNI) she is working on public alternatives such as (re)municipalisation of public services, a just transition towards energy democracy and transforming finance for the 99%; 2019, "", https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/highres_public_finance_executive_summary_online_version_0307.pdf, No Publication, accessed 7-7-2023 \\pa-zyg]]
For decades there has been a concerted effort to try to convince us that the public is dependent on the private sector and that there is very little public finance left to invest in public services and infrastructure. Figures produced by the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for instance, misrepresent the value of public finance by evaluating that public banks have only US$2–5 trillion in assets. Given the many trillions needed to finance climate infrastructure alone, this amount would be a drop in the ocean. However, research undertaken by Thomas Marois at the University of London shows that there are 693 public banks worldwide with assets worth US$37.72 trillion. Public finances amount to over US$73 trillion, once you include central banks and multilaterals such as the Asian Development Bank, as well as pension and sovereign wealth funds. This equals 93 per cent of global gross domestic product. All this public money is urgently needed to directly finance the fight for renewable energy systems in order to avoid the catastrophic consequences of runaway climate change. US$6 trillion need to be raised annually, up to a total of US$90 trillion, for climate infrastructure investments, and the above figures show that public finance institutions have the resources to drive this. Most governments, however, limit themselves and their public finance institutions to incentivizing private companies to invest in the transition to renewable energy by supporting privatization and public-private partnerships (PPPs). Irrespective of countless tax incentives, subsidies and government guarantees, the private sector has shown little 4 | Public Finance for the Future We Want interest in financing a transition away from fossil fuels. Due to over-reliance on the private sector, investments in renewables even dropped by 7 per cent in 2017, according to the International Energy Agency. This trend is likely to worsen as long as we underestimate the potential of public finance and continue to depend on private finance and market mechanisms. The unfolding climate crisis, however, cannot wait for halfmeasures. As the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report makes clear, ‘all pathways begin now and involve rapid and unprecedented societal transformation’. By contrast, public systems and services have greater success with public investment, leading not only to lower costs but also to better social and environmental results. In Bangladesh, for example, the publicly owned Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) provided the capital to install more than three million solar panels in rural areas between 2003 and 2014. This brought electricity to the homes of thirteen million people. A 2017 study by the Transnational Institute recorded 835 reclaimed public services by over 1,600 cities around the world. The report showed that privatized corporations neither guarantee better service quality nor lower prices and increased investments. When municipalities end privatization and re-municipalize a public service, such as water, energy or transportation, they usually prove to be better equipped to provide good services for all than a profit-making private provider.
Public banks prioritize public well-being over personal gain
Stewart ‘20 [Emily, covers business and economics for Vox. She has written about a wide range of topics, including Elizabeth Warren’s political roots, the motivations driving the crypto space, and what’s going on these days with the Beanie Baby market; 10-30-2020, "Exclusive: Rashida Tlaib and AOC have a proposal for a fairer, greener financial system — public banking", https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21541113/rashida-tlaib-aoc-public-banking-act, Vox, accessed 7-7-2023 \\pa-zyg]]
The Public Banking Act, first shared with Vox, wouldn’t create those options by itself, but would foster the creation of public banks across the country by providing them a pathway to getting started, establishing an infrastructure for liquidity and credit facilities for them via the Federal Reserve, and setting up federal guidelines for them to be regulated. Essentially, it would make it easier for public banks to exist, and it would give some of them grant money to get started. While it sounds a little wonky, the basic idea is to make it possible for state and local governments, local businesses, and people to do business with public banks, which theoretically would be more motivated to do public good and invest in their communities than private institutions, which are out for profit. One public bank exists in North Dakota, and there is a growing movement to create more of them across the country. California recently passed a law allowing cities and counties to create and sponsor public banks. “Economic stability is really, truly tied in with access to this type of banking,” Tlaib said in an interview with Vox. “It’s to try to create stable neighborhoods and communities.” The proposal lands in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has shed light on many inefficiencies in the American system, including banking. Take the Paycheck Protection Program, for example: It used the regular banking system as an intermediary, which ultimately meant that bigger businesses and those with preexisting relationships with those banks were prioritized over others. Some smaller businesses missed out, with many owners saying they were denied loans for even a few thousand dollars. The discrepancy hit Black-owned businesses particularly hard. “ECONOMIC STABILITY IS REALLY, TRULY TIED IN WITH ACCESS TO THIS TYPE OF BANKING” The intent of the proposal is to try to guarantee a more equitable recovery by providing an alternative to Wall Street banks for state and local governments, businesses, and ordinary people, and by ensuring such banks provide services to historically excluded and marginalized groups. The public banking bill also does double duty as a climate bill: It would prohibit public banks from investing in or doing business with the fossil fuel industry. “Public banks are uniquely able to address the economic inequality and structural racism exacerbated by the banking industry’s discriminatory policies and predatory practices,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. She said that she also believes public banks could facilitate the use of public resources to construct “a myriad of public goods,” including affordable housing and local renewable energy projects. “Public banks empower states and municipalities to establish new channels of public investment to help solve systemic crises.” Other countries have various forms of public banking in operation and have different regulatory schemes set up for them than commercial banks do, said Rohan Grey, a law professor at Willamette University. But, he said, this proposal is particularly comprehensive and supportive. Getting the bill passed, the regulatory scheme and grant program set up, and public banks chartered and operational in time to actually shape America’s recovery from the pandemic may not be possible on a broad scale, timing-wise. But the bill is a signal of what’s possibly to come. If Democrats keep control of the House come 2021 and manage to flip the Senate and win the White House, they’ll be able to take some big legislative swings, including and perhaps especially on issues related to the economy. It is worth noting that both Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez sit on the powerful House Financial Services Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). “I look at economic justice and the issues around economy right now, that many of our working families, from farmers to the middle class to front-line essential workers, all of them know that, with the corporate bailouts, at some point it’s just hitting a wall where it doesn’t carry them along and they’re looking for options,” said Tlaib, who represents Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, the third-poorest congressional district in the country. “So I’m putting this on the table as an option.” The Public Banking Act, briefly explained To be clear, the Public Banking Act isn’t creating a federal public bank. Instead, what it does is encourage and enable the creation of public banks across the US. It provides legitimacy to those who are pushing for more public banking, and it also includes regulators as key stakeholders who can support and provide guidance for how those banks should operate. “It’s not that tomorrow you’re going to see 1,000 of these across the country; it’s still going to be a hill-by-hill, city-by-city battle,” Grey said. There is a spectrum of services public banks would offer; many would be a lot like what commercial banks do, though different public banks would likely have different areas of emphasis. At least at the outset, some banks could serve as depository institutions for state and local governments, meaning those governments would put their money in the local public bank, not JPMorgan. Or they might partner with community banks or other institutions to help boost lending capacity and offer lower debt costs to the businesses and cities they lend to. They could also facilitate easier access to funds for state and local governments from the federal government or Federal Reserve. “It’s basically a way to finance state and local investment that doesn’t go through Wall Street and doesn’t leave the community and turn into a windfall for shareholders,” said Porter McConnell, the campaign director of advocacy group Take On Wall Street. “This is more about community development.” They could engage in retail banking as well. The legislation creates a framework for public banks to interact with postal banking, where the Postal Service serves as a bank, or FedAccounts, where everyone gets an account with the Federal Reserve through which they could receive direct payments from the government, for example, during an economi

Preview shortened. Download the file for the full document.