Trillions in Unnecessary Interest Costs to the American People

Many people - including former analyst for the U.S. Treasury Richard Cook - argue that credit is too important a function to be left to the private banks. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told Congress recently:

If the Federal Reserve were made a fully public body, it would be an acceptable alternative.

Bloomberg News columnist Matthew Lynn writes:

The U.K. government needs to start thinking about what it will do with all the banks it now owns. The answer is simple: Hand them to the people...

Instead of selling the stakes it acquired in the financial system to other banks, or listing the shares on the stock market, it could create mutually owned societies. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc could be a people’s bank, owned by everyone.That would ensure more diversity, competition and stability, all goals just as worthy as getting back the money Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government spent on bank rescues...

Michael Moore recommends that the American people demand:

Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

As Moore notes, the state of North Dakota already has such a bank, and - because of that - North Dakota is just about the only state which is not running a huge deficit.

California considered creation of a state bank modeled after North Dakota's bank in 1977.

The Massachusetts state Senate is currently considering creation of a state public bank.

PhD economist and candidate for Florida governor Farid Khavari wants to create a Bank of the State of Florida, to create credit without burdening the state and its citizens with high interest charges by private banks. See this for details.

If the power to create credit were taken away from the Federal Reserve system and its private banks and given back to the government (as the Constitution envisioned), then American taxpayers would save hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars in unnecessary interest charges in paying off the national debt, as the government would not have to pay interest to finance its debt (sovereign nations such as the U.S. and England have the power to create credit and money; see this, this, this, and this).

Given that America is already deeply in debt, how can we justify the ongoing mountain of interest debts placed on the backs of the American people by the private credit-creation system of which the Fed is a part?