討論逐字稿: Public Banking

The discussion for which this is the transcript is Public Banking.


public sector bank employees have to pass the civil service exam to be hired. and that also means that they can’t be fired.
people in private banks are paid based on performance, but not in public banks.

privatized
The Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China. = specific mission to cooperate with government policy for overseas diplomacy or improving Taiwan trade

depository = you can put your money in an account there
infrastructure bank = lend money to construction companies, literally building things like bridges, highways,

internal efficiency = following the policy mandated by the people in charge

private sector is free to choose better performing companies in accordance with their own judgment, whereas public banking has to be ‘internally efficient’, meaning they have to follow their policy directives laid out by the government.

We are helping enterprises overcome the Turkish economic crisis” = we’re giving Taiwanese hard-earned tax dollars away to potentially shady-ass Turkish businessmen

shady = sketchy = untrustworthy

[adj]-ass = intensifies the feeling of the word
[the adjective is better with a ‘eee’ sound at the end of it, just sounds better]

bottom line = in the final assessment, when everything is calculated, you know if you won or lost

concentrated lending = too much money pouring into a place that has been designated a good place to invest in because of policy or the gvt’s purpose

conventional wisdom = “what everybody knows” it comes from collective experience and knowledge but can be manipulated by media and advertising

in general it’s a good idea, because you need a bank for everybody, not just rich people. poor people also need access to money, and they’re desperate for loans. and the bank is like, if you have money, they give you more, if you have no money, they want to take it away, because they’re afraid you can’t afford the interest. because their interest is in making money. and public bank should be the balance for this. they lend money to poor people, and maybe lose money, maybe not, but help the small business. unlike private banks that’ll sit there and watch you die.
I don’t know about NDB, but it depends on the people who are running the bank. if you have a good culture and people are rule-bound, then it’s good, if you have a corrupt culture, it won’t work.
—according to the information in this article, the performance of the NDB is pretty good. it might depend on how you run the bank. or I guess maybe there are some conditional sentence in the legislation that mandated them, to make them have a more good ‘internal efficiency’ than other countries.
—the two places I trust banks, one is NDB, and one is Utah, because they’re religious. If you go to salt lake city, it’s so clean and nice
—it’s a cult, that’s why!
—hahahah, yes


Final Statements
—people who research into this believe that public banks do help stabilize the economy. when the economy goes down, they will lend money to small or medium enterprises.
if there are 10 companies, and the banks take the money out of them, then they don’t do well, then other companies who were doing business with them will also be impacted, and go down.
so it’s necessary to have public banks to stabilize the economy, if they can keep lending money to the original 10 companies, then the economy can keep running, and as time goes by maybe those companies will do well again. so that’s why some countries in asia there are still one or three public bank, for this kind of necessary or social purpose.

I can’t find any differences between public banks and private banks, for me they are the same. because i just put the money there, and pay my bills, so they are the same.

I think last week we talked about privatizing versus the public good. I think the same ideas here can apply. for the bank, I think I mentioned that why we want things to be privatized, because a private company has two features that public cannot compete with, efficiency and innovation. so the bank is the same thing. like US banks, all big banks are all private, because they have more financial goods to sell, better tech to use, they’re all led by private sectors. public banks are so far behind. but we need them, because government needs to lend money to disadvantaged people, these areas a private bank won’t touch, so we need the public banks to carry out this mission, for the greater purpose. maybe they’re losing money in the short term, or they don’t return money on time, or lose it overall, but for the greater purpose, the social welfare issue, they’re still effective. for the socialism idea. but business wise, they’re at a disadvantage when competing with private banks. they only think about following the rules and retiring safely. they don’t want risks, they want things to be as stable as possible. no risk, no new business. no new business, your money loses value. it’s natural for the public sector. so it’s necessary for some reasons, but it’s not for everything.

I’m just thinking about that maybe the public banking is necessary to capitalism, actually that’s my question, if the ‘pure capitalism’, maybe it’s not necessary to have public banking. but nowadays, it’s hard to keep pure capitalism in this world. I think maybe many years ago we talked about this point
—eight years ago, in 2011
—and so, the public banking, no the gvt could put some intervention via public banking, so they could control the financial system, and the lending, and maybe support turkey…something like that. so I just think, remember this point, that we have once discussed, and but maybe I cannot tell too many points in this regard, sorry! next time susan and francine can do this part. but I agree with Henry that we still need public banking, because we need it to support the things that private banking will not support, because there’s no profit. for example my boss, needs to earn money, because profit is everything for private companies. so they need to earn money for their business, family and employees, so next time we can talk more about capitalism, although it is very complicated.
—it so is!
—but actually when I think about that it is very, not interesting, but impressive
—why
—because I’m a research person, as the banking or financial is complicated so i’m impressed
—because You like complicated problems
—okay, fine, yes.

—I just cannot agree more with Maggie, because after last week’s discussion, I started to think actually there are some roles that the private companies, or private enterprise cannot play. ok I will talk about this next time, because that’ll take a long time to say. going back to today’s article, I think bank of north dakota is really an impressive paradigm, because the bank helps farmers to overcome the difficulties and sustain their community, but it just comes to my mind that there are actually some particular land for the public bank to grow well. I think the public bank can operate well within a more homogeneous community or society. Because if the people within this community have similar needs, for example the North Dakota farmers, they all have a very specific and same desire. but if they have like maybe farmers, and then business persons, and different occupations and even foreigners, they might have different needs, and it would be hard to serve them well. If the public bank, for it to operate well, it must have a clear and consistent mission and purpose. for example we used to have an Agriculture bank,
—not now?
—it privatized. so it must have a clear and particular purpose. it has been privatized, so now it doesn’t just help farmers, it now issues credit cards and lends to other industries. probably it earns more money but loses its focus
—it’s about segmentation, if the segmentation isn’t clear, then it will lose its purpose
—and everybody becomes private.

—I came into this discussion being in support of public banks for all the reasons the website talked about, and I wanted to find out what the potential pitfalls were, to be honest. to see if maybe the problems would outweigh the benefits. but what I’ve learned is that like everything else, it just depends on how it’s done. it’s gotta have good design, and then it can work well. but also have to have good people involved. so it seems like, we need to have the ‘skilled bankers’ haha, the people who know what’s going on, and also are committed to the ideals of the project, and also the ideals have to be well focussed. so it feels like there’s a lot that can go wrong, but if it works right it can benefit.
I think that maybe public banks can help US society equalize.
even if it’s hard to do well, they might still do the job
—the internal efficiency is at least there, even if the external efficiency isn’t
—maybe efficiency isn’t the point so much? I don’t know,

well, first I don’t know this topic a lot, but thanks to francine and susan and everybody, I understand a lot more about this commercial and finance and banking system stuff. I have one question though, people think public banking is good, but there’s also negative side. but if we know the negative sides, why don’t we establish laws about public banking then. since it’s own by government units. if you’re owned by government, and you’re supposed to have the specific authority to oversee it, just set up specific rules and laws to protect it and prevent people from doing dirty tricks, and prevent it from going wrong. like susan said, make it specific for farmers or some specific industry. set up a set of rules, no matter how it changes, like a public bank constitution. because there could be collapses, or people using it for bad things, but if there were a regulation governing it, maybe the chances of it going wrong would be less.