Mr Hockey says we must punish students, unemployed etc, while ramping up ecological exhaustion. This he says is in order to pay the interest on previous loans from private banks. No-one questions this, yet it is perfectly possible and constitutional for Australia to create its own credit.
This is what private banks do, they create credit out of thin air and then demand compound interest. Whole countries are indebted, whole families are shattered by this process which transfers vast wealth from the poor to the top five per cent of the population.
Moreover, private banks tend to fuel speculation and housing bubbles, not small business, which creates jobs.
A public bank could create a new era of job-rich prosperity, and weaken the anti-democratic power of the Big Four. Private banks such as Westpac and Citibank and Goldman Sachs have controlling interests in most big corporations, and vast lobbying power.
Australia created its own very low-interest credit with the original Commonwealth Bank. New Zealand, Japan and Canada used to, and the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – still mainly do this. All of these countries boom during the eras of self-financing.
It is easily done, it is proven, it liberates countries. Credit is like the blood of the economy and a public good like roads or water.
North Dakota, with a state bank, is the only American state to avoid the recent GFC disaster. Upcoming GFCs are likely, since all our banks are more exposed than ever to shadow banking/derivative meltdown.
The current private appropriation of a public good is reinforced by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Geneva, which decrees all European states must borrow privately and cannot exceed three per cent deficit, effectively consigning weaker states to being unable to rescue their people via public job creation.
When the world’s people wake up to how simple it would be to create their own independent public banks, alongside the private system, a whole new era of social and ecological wealth could arise.
Dr Liz Elliott, Mullumbimby
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
