Economy Prompts Fresh Look at ND's Socialist Bank

[Hissyspit]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5irpidjF86kdOndGLyeFQXABbruLgD9DT6A500

Economy prompts fresh look at ND's socialist bank
By DALE WETZEL (AP) – 47 minutes ago

BISMARCK, N.D. — It has no automatic tellers or drive-up windows, doesn't issue credit cards, and tends only a few thousand checking and savings accounts. Its only location is a glass, steamboat-shaped headquarters near the Missouri River, where the business moved from its original 1919 home in a former auto assembly plant. The Bank of North Dakota — the nation's only state-owned bank — might seem to be a relic. It was the brainchild of a failed flax farmer and one-time Socialist Party organizer during World War I.

But now officials in other states are wondering if it is helping North Dakota sail through the national recession.

Gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Oregon and a Washington state legislator are advocating the creation of state-owned banks in those states. A report prepared for a Vermont House committee last month said the idea had "considerable merit." Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore promotes the bank on his Web site.

"There's a lot of hurt out there, a lot of states that are in trouble, and they're tying the Bank of North Dakota together with this economic success that we're having right now," said the bank's president, Eric Hardmeyer. Hardmeyer says he's gotten "tons" of inquiries about the bank's workings, including questions from officials in California, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Washington state. North Dakota has the nation's lowest unemployment rate at 4.4 percent, soaring oil production and a robust state budget surplus — but Hardmeyer says the bank isn't responsible for the prosperity.

"We are a catalyst, perhaps, or maybe a part of it," he said. "To put this at our feet is flattering, but it frankly isn't true."

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Hardmeyer said he, too, was always doubtful others would take up North Dakota's model, but now he's not so sure. "When I see what's going on around the country, it's not quite as far a leap as I thought it once was," he said.

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[ck4829]

1. K&R

[Odin2005]

2. K&R

[galileoreloaded]

3. ND is not feeling the effects of the depression because they are extracting resources

just like Australia. Now, if California and Oregon and Washington want that kind of success, they need to start cutting trees. This extraction, coupled with China cheap labor, will restart our economic activities.

Quite sad that this is what we have been reduced to.