Written by parr   

Wall Street Journal recognition that a public bank owned by one of the 50 States outperforms giants like Goldman Sachs or J P Morgen Chase & Co. should be an apogee for the 99%.. Chester Dawson claims that North Dakota's economic success is due to oil and gas production and its state-owned bank, Bank of North Dakota, was the beneficiary.# Only North Dakota of the 50 states has had a growing economy since the 2008 crash, and, as a result, only ND had chronic budget surpluses, prior to legislative tax or appropriation reactions.

Many other benefits sprang from Bank of North Dakota's economic advantage: higher personal income growth, lower unemployment rate, higher bank profitability, lower foreclosure rate, lower loan delinquency rate, higher upward mobility, higher educational spending growth, more stable property values, lower tax burden, higher return on equity, and higher credit rating than most other states. These result from greater liquidity in North Dakota because its state-owned bank creates local money, when it lends to local enterprises, while the other 49 states have liquidity shortages resulting in lower economic activity.

The money shortages are worsened by extreme budget measures states implement to balance their budgets. Because the other 49 states aren't legally incorporated as banks, they do not create new money when they lend it. They must borrow the money first, or confiscate it from citizens by raising taxes, or other measures. This makes their liquidity crisis worse.

Oil and gas is produced in 27 of the 50 states in America: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois,Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota,Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Wyoming...(data obtained from internet research).

Estimated federal Oil and Gas production subsidies cost U S taxpayers over $20 Billion per year **.

If Oil and Gas were the reason for North Dakota's economic and social success, then the other 26 oil and gas-producing states should also have higher economic and social results like North Dakota, but they don't.

Why? The story that North Dakota's oil boom powers its economic success is false. It is not energy that accounts for North Dakota
success, it is the only U S state-owned bank. The WSJ article got it backwards. The state-owned bank didn't benefit from the oil boom. The oil boom benefited from the state-owned bank. Then the state-owned bank benefited from its investment in oil and gas by receiving its lending repayment. It benefits regardless of the industry. Earnings of the state bank then went into the North Dakota Treasury as state revenue. Ellen Brown pointed out the dark side of the oil boom in her Truthout article ## quoting Ryan Holeywell in Governing: "Drilling each new well requires more than 2,000 truck trips, and the heavy rigs are destroying the roadways. “Simply put, the roads are falling apart in many cases,” says Alan Dybing, a researcher at the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, which estimates that fixing the roads will require an investment of more than $900 million over the next 20 years." ###

Maine's legislature is considering a bill to create a state-owned public bank, LD24, modeled on Bank of North Dakota. Maine has no
known oil or gas deposits so it probably can't get any of the $20B federal oil corporate welfare, but it can get the benefits of a state-owned bank. Like many of the other 26 oil and gas states, North Dakota has been producing oil or gas for nearly a century. For nearly a century North Dakota has had the only state-owned bank in the United States. "While the industry has seen peaks and valleys since the late
1800's, North Dakota has recently seen its oil and natural gas industry explode as the 3rd largest producer of oil, and contributing to the nation's lowest employment rate. In 1929, North Dakota's first commercial production was established. ." ***

Occupying a New Maine Economy, has more information on Public Banking. We also have a new web site: MainePublicBanking.org. In a previous article mistakenly misquoting a source who wrote that North Dakota Oil boom hit in 2010, I called 2010 the year of first ND oil production. The source was not referring to the first ever, but the most recent ND boom. If it didn't receive enormous taxpayer subsidies oil production would be less profitable in ND and in the other 26 oil-producing states. To those walking the hallways of power, the Wall Street Journal is a credible source.

People use facts, as well as reasoning, to attribute causal factors. Between Wall Street thinking and the 99% spans a universe. WSJ is not alone in misattributing North Dakota's reason for success. Wikipedia has the same false story. Wall Street bankers who fraudulently approved liar loans pooled into AAA rated securities that triggered the 2008 economic collapse, from which we still haven't recovered, are still on the prowl. Fraud is their game. Truth is a powerful force that rulers want to keep hidden. WSJ and other media outlets should get the North Dakota story right.

References:
# wsj.com/articles/shale-boom-helps-north-dakota-bank-earn-returns-goldman-would-envy-1416180862
## ellenbrown.com/2014/11/19/wsj-reports-bank-of-north-dakota-outperforms-wall-street/
*** ndenergyforum.com/topics/north-dakota-oil-and-gas-history
** priceofoil.org/campaigns/separate-oil-and-state/ending-us-fossil-fuel-subsidies/
### governing.com/topics/energy-env/north-dakotas-oil-boom-blessing-curse.html