Like the BND, a Bank of the City of Los Angeles would provide credit for city projects -- to build bridges, restore lakes, and pay bills -- and this credit would essentially be interest-free, since the city would own the bank and get the interest back. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by 35% or more.
Awesome Possibilities
Consider what that could mean for Los Angeles. According to the current fiscal budget, the LAX Modernization project is budgeted at $4.11 billion. That's the sticker price. But what will it cost when you add interest on revenue bonds and other funding sources? The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge earthquake retrofit boondoggle was slated to cost about $6 billion. Interest and bank fees added another $6 billion. Funding through a public bank could have saved taxpayers $6 billion, or 50%.
If Los Angeles owned its own bank, it could also avoid costly "rainy day funds," which are held by various agencies as surplus taxes. If the city had a low-cost credit line with its own bank, these funds could be released into the general fund, generating massive amounts of new revenue for the city.
The potential for the City and County of Los Angeles can be seen by examining their respective Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFRs). According to the latest CAFRs (2012), the City of Los Angeles has "cash, pooled and other investments" of $11 billion beyond what is in its pension fund ( page 85 ) , and t he County of Los Angeles has $22 billion ( page 66 ) . To put these sums in perspective, the austerity crisis declared by the State of California in 2012 was the result of a declared state budget deficit of only $16 billion.
The L.A. CAFR funds are currently drawing only minimal interest. With some modest changes in regulations, they could be returned to the general fund for use in the city's budget, or deposited or invested in the city's own bank, to be leveraged into credit for local purposes.
Minimizing Risk
Beyond being a money-maker, a city-owned bank can minimize the risks of interest rate manipulation, excessive fees, and dishonest dealings.
Another risk that must now be added to the list is that of confiscation in the event of a "bail in." Public funds are secured with collateral, but they take a back seat in bankruptcy to the "super priority" of Wall Street's own derivative claims. A major derivatives fiasco of the sort seen in 2008 could wipe out even a mega-bank's available collateral, leaving the city with empty coffers.
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