Make Banking A Public Utility?


Professor Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto, talks with Paul Jay of The Real News, and describes the various decisions on the part of the US government which led to the financial crisis.

Panitch says that the roots of the crisis go all the way back to the 1960’s and that the effort to house the poor without mobilizing large public expenditure is what created the conditions for the crisis. As a result, the only way to resolve the situation is to return this role to the state itself, as funded by progressive taxation and a sharp decline in military spending, and to remove greed and the profit motive from the equation by making banking a public utility.

October 10, 2008 – 8 min 34 sec

Leo Panitch: The roots and remedies of the financial crisis

Leo Panitch is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto. Panitch is also the author of “Global Capitalism and American Empire” and his most recent release “American Empire and the Political Economy of International Finance”.

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    • Edger on October 10, 2008 at 19:00
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    Or is public utility banking a viable solution?

    • RiaD on October 10, 2008 at 19:28

    a lean towards socialism? populism?

    but. for the people, by the people, of the people fits pretty good.

    if you take profit OUT of finding a solution …& also do away with (todays definition of) lobbyists…. return to the idea of good argument. if you can present your case & show your side well enough the law would change with consideration of your side….

  1. reference. I actually thought he was um retired or dead but Marxists never actually retire do they? He was a favorite of mine to read back in my Communication/Poli Sci student days and I think he was a big influence on one of my all time favorite professors who was also kind enough to mentor me.

    Hey Edger are you in Canuckistan or a Canuck because I can’t imagine an American knowing who Panitch is. Maybe like some old time American lefty might recognize the name.

  2. to remember actual ‘public utilities’ as in the phone, the water etc. Privatizing and the market’s profits running all aspects of our human needs and resources has obviously not worked. I do not know if this would work as I cannot even understand how they could unravel the connection between the corporations and the government they have created. I think it would be a better system then having banks being players in the gambling casino.

    This crisis stinks of Shock Doctrine tactics and color me paranoid but any solution they come up with seems likely to involve the same players who will use what ever system there is in place to maintain the status quo. If the government would as in the New Deal divest it’s self from the robber barons it would work. They need to first enact the laws needed to regulate and somehow stop thinking that more capital thrown at it is going to fix it.          

  3. Boards of Directors and get to watch the books like hawks.

    • banger on October 12, 2008 at 18:52

    But it would require some kind of public debate about the whole notion of public good. I’m not so sure Americans understand or believe in such things.

    I see fragmentation ahead not unity. But if there was some cultural movement in the direction of cooperation then I would favor all major sectors, banking, health-care, transportation, energy to all be public utilities and reduce or eliminate regulation of non-essential sectors of the economy.

  4. was interviewed on KPFA yesterday; he said turning the financial industry into a public utility would be a good idea.  

    He was the first segment on Kris Welch’s “Saturday Morning Talkies” show at 9:00 AM.

    I guess the key is oversight, transparency and regulation–things which were not there in the Enron debacle.

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