HACIA EL CONTROL DEL SISTEMA BANCARIO POR EL PUEBLO

HACIA EL CONTROL DEL SISTEMA BANCARIO POR EL PUEBLO

PUBLIC OPTION IN BANKING. CASE OF GERMANY
Hugo Adan. Octubre 16, 2011
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/

Ayer sabado 15 muchos pueblos del mundo se unieron para decirle al pueblo Americano que ocupa Mahatann y varias plazas del país “TENEMOS EL MISMO ENEMIGO: EL MODELO ECONOMICO ABSOLETO, EL NEOLIBERALISMO controlado por grandes monopolios financieros corruptos y depredadores ( ver imágenes en http://www.chinaview.cn/; www.news.cn y en Democracynow.org).

Sin duda una nueva internacional asoma y no son los comunistas marxist quienes lideran el movimiento (con la notable excepción del economista americano Wolf http://rdwolff.com/ y del prestigioso analista latino Atilio Boron). Si uno los lee se da cuenta que la vieja disyuntiva capitalism-socialism es incompleta para dar cuenta de la realidad concreta (ellos solo ofrecen un parcial análisis de las causas y adolecen de alternativas claras al movimiento en marcha). La economía mundial esta globalizada y no hay forma de volver a los viejos nacionalismos autárquicos.

Las miradas van hacia un modelo de democracia orientada hacia el mercado pero con fuerte control social (lease al respecto lo que escriben Hauke Hartmann del Bedrtelsmann Fundation de Alemania y gente del propio BM como Daniel Kaufmann; A Kraay; M Mastruzzi; P Zoido-Lobaton; o al mismo Strauss del FMI que dedclaro absoleto el modelo neoliberal). Y el problema central al nivel económico es como zafarse de este modelo financiero, y esto tiene que ver con la emergencia de un nuevo sistema bancario y de una nueva divisa internacional para el intercambio mundial y de reserva bancaria.

Las alternativas son pocas pero son, empezando por el Tobin tax a toda transacion financera en las bolsas de valores del mundo; la re-instalacion de un nuevo Glass Steagle Act en los EU y el fortalecimiento de monedas regionales o de un paquete de monedas de países con alto crecimiento y desarrollo económico como fue propuesta en el FMI en los tiempos de Strauss. Una buena propuesta es la que acaba de circular en los EU y refiere el PUBLIC OPCION como alternativa bancaria a los pueblos mundo. Eso significa trasladar el dinero desde los bancos dolarizados y a punto de naufragar hacia cooperativas de ahorro local, municipal y/o nacional donde se deposite en moneda regional (la del UNASUR podría ser si se concreta la propuesta) y en moneda internacional, la del país que lidera el crecimiento y desarrollo económico mundial. El nacimiento de los bancos municipales controlados directamente por el ahorrista es la alternativa al sistema bancario privatizado donde la ganancia fácil, orientada a la especulación ilegal y fraudulenta es lo que impera. Este articulo los transcribimos abajo. Veré si hay traducción al español.

Al nivel político la situación es mucho mas compleja y decíamos a este nivel que si estos mov de pueblo logran institucionalizar frentes únicos contra la dictadura de los financistas y sus aparatos electorales seudo-democraticos (caso EU, cuyos lideres hablan de democracia y libertad, lo que en los hechos destruyen fuera y lo anulan en su propio país: véase el video “I Am Not Moving - Occupy Wall Street (17/10/11) in http://futurefastforward.com/feature-articles) . El asunto es tan complejo que solo un adagio popular podría dar cuenta del adonde vamos: caminante no hay camino. SE HACE CAMINO AL ANDAR.

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THE PUBLIC OPTION IN BANKING: ANOTHER LOOK AT THE GERMAN MODEL
By Ellen Brown – Truthout. Friday 14 October 2011

Here some extracts. You can read the complete art in the webs below:

http://www.truth-out.org/public-option-banking-another-look-german-model/1318444344
http://futurefastforward.com/images/stories/financial/ThePublicOptionInBanking.pdf
Original Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/public-option-banking-another-look-german-model/1318444344

Introduction

Publicly owned banks were instrumental in funding Germany's "economic miracle" after the devastation of World War II. Although the German public banks have been targeted in the last decade for takedown by their private competitors, the model remains a viable alternative to the private profiteering being protested on Wall Street today.

One of the demands voiced by protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement is for a "public option" in banking. What that means was explained by Dr. Michael Hudson:
“The demand isn't simply to make a public bank, but is to treat the banks generally as a public utility, just as you treat electric companies as a public utility.... Just as there was pressure for a public option in health care, there should be a public option in banking… This is how America got strong in the 19th and early 20th century, by essentially having public infrastructure, just like you'd have roads and bridges.... The idea of public infrastructure was to lower the cost of living and to lower the cost of doing business.”

We don't hear much about a public banking option in the United States, but a number of countries already have a resilient public banking sector. A May 2010 article in The Economist [5] noted that the strong and stable publicly owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the world in the last few years.

GERMAN ECONOMIC MIRACLE

By 2003, a country half the size of Texas had become the world's leading exporter, producing high quality automobiles, machinery, electrical equipment and chemicals. Only in 2009 was Germany surpassed in exports by China, which has a population of over 1.3 billion to Germany's 82 million. In 2010, while much of the world was still reeling from the 2008 financial collapse, Germany reported 3.6 percent economic growth.


The country's economic miracle [10] has been attributed to a variety of factors, including debt forgiveness by the Allies, currency reform, the elimination of price controls and the reduction of tax rates. But while those factors freed the economy from its shackles, they don't explain its phenomenal rise from a war-torn battlefield to world leader in manufacturing and trade.


One overlooked key to the country's economic dynamism is its strong public banking system, which focuses on serving the public interest rather than on maximizing private profits. […] They are publicly owned entities that rest on top of a pyramid of thousands of municipally owned savings banks. If you add in the specialized publicly owned real estate lenders, about half the total assets of the German banking system are in the public sector. (Another substantial chunk is in cooperative savings banks.)


They are key tools of German industrial policy, specializing in loans to the Mittelstand, the small-to-medium size businesses that are at the core of that country's export engine. Because of the landesbanken, small firms in Germany have as much access to capital as large firms; there are no economies of scale in finance. This also means that workers in the small business sector earn the same wages as those in big corporations, have the same skills and training, and are just as productive. [Emphasis added.]


The Landesbanks function as "universal banks" operating in all sectors of the financial services market. All are controlled by state governments and operate as central administrators for the municipally owned savings banks, or Sparkassen, in their area.


Targeted for Privatization

The EU doesn't like the landesbanken. They denounce the explicit and implicit public subsidies that state ownership entails, saying they violate the rules of competition policy. For over a decade they have fought to have the system privatized. In the end, the dispute is simply ideological: if you think that public ownership should only be an exception, narrowly crafted to address specific market failures, you want to see the landesbanken put on the auction block. If you think an economy should be organized to meet socially defined needs, you would want a large part of capital allocation to be responsive to public input, and you'd fight to keep the landesbanken the way they are. (There is a movement afoot in the US to promote public banking.


While the large private banks were betting on the casinos of the financial markets, lending to businesses and the "real" economy was left to the public Sparkassen, which were more efficient in serving average citizens and local business because they were not stock companies that had to satisfy shareholders' hunger for ever-larger dividends. Today, the market share of private banks in Germany is only 28.4 percent, and Deutsche Bank AG dominates the segment. But with its 7 percent market share, it is still well behind the public banks owned by municipalities and communities.


The International Monetary Fund, too, had long demanded that any competing public monopolies in the German banking market be broken up, citing their "inefficiencies." When the German public Sparkassen and Landesbanken were reluctant to turn to investment banking with its skyrocketing profits, they were branded as bureaucratic and "unsexy." When they were pressured to increase their returns for their government owners, the German Landesbanken did get sucked to some extent into derivatives and collateralized debt obligations (fraudulently rated triple A). But while they "lost billions in the Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers Ponzi scheme," Niemeyer says the extent to which they became involved in highly speculative transactions was "laughable in comparison with the damage done by private banks, for whom taxpayers are now providing guarantees."


It was the public banks and Sparkassen that supplied the real economy with liquidity, and that stepped in for the private banks when they withdrew to bet in the financial casino; but it was on the failings of the Landesbanken and Sparkassen that the media focused their attention. The real motive, says Niemeyer, was that the large private banks wanted the public banks' market share themselves:


In order to win back this important market share, it has become a prerogative to destroy public banking in Germany completely. This unpopular move could never come from the German government itself, so that's why the [European] Commission is being employed for this dirty job.


The Price of Success

The German public banks were brought down by knocking their public legs out from under them. Previously, they had enjoyed state guarantees that allowed them to acquire and lend funds at substantially better rates than private banks were able to do. But in 2001, the European Commission ruled to strip the Landesbanks of their explicit state credit guarantees, forcing them to compete on the same terms as private banks. And today, the European Banking Authority is refusing to count the banks' implicit state guarantees in their "stress tests" for banking solvency.


The upshot is that the German public banks are being stripped of what has made them stable, secure and able to lend at low interest rates: they have had the full faith and credit of the government and the public behind them. By eliminating the profit motive, focusing on the public interest and relying on government guarantees, the German public banks were able to turn bank credit into the sort of public utility described by Professor Hudson.
The example of Germany shows that even success is no guarantee in the face of a relentless onslaught of propaganda by large privately owned banks interested only in making money for their CEOs, wealthiest clients and shareholders. But
peering behind the propaganda, the public banking model that helped underwrite Germany's economic success might be the fast track to a US banking system that serves Main Street rather than Wall Street.

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/public-option-banking-another-look-german-model/1318444344