In order to escape the current economic crisis, the U.S. should switch away from its private banking cartel:
[T]he core issue we need to address is the fact that private institutions called banks control the nation's money. Money is the supreme power when it is in the hands of private bankers and they use it for their own purposes.
They hurt the people in countries where they operate, even in countries with a public bank like Canada. America has a private banking system. It is called the Federal Reserve, but there is nothing federal about it. It's a Wall Street cartel, a private banking cartel. That's what it is.
Canada has a public banking system, so does Britain, but they do not function that way. Britain's banking system is beholden to the parliament and Canada's banking system is beholden to the government, but they let their big bankers operate just the way they are operated in America. That is unforgivable.
The only state in America that wasn't decimated by the financial crisis was the one with a public banking system:
There is one state in America, North Dakota that has a public state-owned bank. North Dakota is the only state that prospered in the worst years of the economic downturn. They not only prospered, North Dakota had the biggest surplus in its history.
Every state could prosper like North Dakota; America could prosper like North Dakota if the government obeyed Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution that says, “Only the Congress has the right to coin money”. Only the Congress has the right to control money - that means the people; that means the public.
It doesn't mean Goldman Sachs; JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America; it means the people. The law needs to be enforced. People need to get money power back. If they get it back they'll get everything else they want.
The most prominent example of how a public banking system can revive an economy is post-WWII Germany:
Publicly owned banks were instrumental in funding Germany's "economic miracle" after the devastation of World War II. Although the German public banks have been targeted in the last decade for takedown by their private competitors, the model remains a viable alternative to the private profiteering being protested on Wall Street today.
One of the demands voiced by protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement is for a "public option" in banking. What that means was explained by Dr. Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, in an interview by Paul Jay of the Real News Network on October 6:
[T]he demand isn't simply to make a public bank, but is to treat the banks generally as a public utility, just as you treat electric companies as a public utility.... Just as there was pressure for a public option in health care, there should be a public option in banking. There should be a government bank that offers credit card rates without punitive 30% interest rates, without penalties, without raising the rate if you don't pay your electric bill. This is how America got strong in the 19th and early 20th century, by essentially having public infrastructure, just like you'd have roads and bridges.... The idea of public infrastructure was to lower the cost of living and to lower the cost of doing business.