Sign North Dakota Banking Contract Myself

Industry sign banking north dakota contract myself

welcome to esgx live the community for information and education to inspire collaboration on action on all things to do with sustainability and building or rebuilding a stronger and more inclusive economy and indeed society thank you very much for joining us again today and we're delighted that we have an audience that comes from more or less all around the world and also all around the united states and today we will be enjoying our green jobs report and an update on what has happened over the last month and taking a particular look at the role that public banks can pay in accelerating and supporting the transition and the investments that are so desperately needed just as a very brief introduction please do introduce yourselves to each other in the chat please say hello tell us something about your interests or where you are if you have questions then also please post them in the chat or put them in the q a function in the q a it's easier for us to keep track but either way we will do our level best to answer anything reasonable that you put forward there also if you are watching on social media uh please do share with your friends please do post online please do send a link to the show now es at live.esgx.org and indeed if you're there then use the like button that helps other people to find this and i think with no more ado i will pass over now to paul herman to introduce this month's green jobs report over to you paul thanks nigel welcome everybody uh happy december 1st this is the last month of 2020 and for the last um uh es green monthly green jobs monthly report we're going to dig into public banking today after our recurring monthly jobs report presented by amir khaleghi who's a research fellow at the global institute for sustainable prosperity and a phd candidate at the university of missouri kansas city also joining us today scott fullweiler a professor at university of missouri kansas city um and our special guest raul carrillo and sylvia chi so let's kick it off with amir amir welcome uh look forward to having you here and please ask any uh audience please ask any questions in the chat box um uh amir are you excited for 2020 coming to a close um well excitement anxiety and everything you know and i feel like the excitement comes from the solutions that we've been trying to figure out um over the past six months um and hopefully we see a change for um in the positive direction this is something that i stay optimistic for and to think that our group and things that we have been doing and pushing for from the topics that we've been presenting with our various panelists um to see positive change from that that is um what i'm you know most excited for thanks for being optimistic and uh so let's uh take a deep dive amir um over the next you know eight to ten minutes let's take a deep dive into the latest monthly green job report um that we've put together all year and you can find on esgx.org and then uh we'll kick off our panel after that so go for it perfect so for those of you who are just joining us or for those of you who are returning and need a refresher um our green jobs report uh measures the greenness of various industries within the u.s economy examples of the different rated industries are so those that are highly rated would be those of wholesale distributors of medical products or recycling services medium rated industries would be that of pharmaceutical manufacturers or hospitals and low rated industries would be that of oil and gas and casinos obviously these are just examples our industries span from over 200 industries within the us economy so the way that these industries are scored is that we take data from hip investor human impact plus profit which give a rating on over 2 000 companies within the united states based on performance products and management practices which include detailed metrics in health wealth earth equality and trust pillars that focus on people planet and trust these ratings for companies are mapped to various industries within the ces and the purpose of this green jobs report is to measure the direction and magnitude towards a more sustainable and greener economy as a whole so what we have found is that jobs and greener industries have been the most resilient with the onset covid 19 crisis proportionally the greener rated industries have been the least impacted by the kovid 19 crisis and since february these greener industries have seen a reduction of 4.3 percent while the lowest tiered industries have seen the highest proportional job loss with a reduction of 10.8 percent since february um we can move on to the next slide so the what we've noticed is that the jobs recovery is no longer experiencing meaningful gains in the u.s economy so from april to june we saw a return of around 8 million jobs to the u.s economy and to be noted the loss from february to april was around 20 million jobs within the united states but the months following the return of jobs has significantly declined the change from june to july was around 1.5 million and has since declined you know at an accelerating rate from august to september the return of jobs was around 890 000. when looking at the levels between february the employment of the united states right now currently is still around 10 million jobs below the february level and in the most recent month the industries with the most extractive products recovered faster as compared to um the greener rated industries or but something to be noticed too um this isn't the graph that we're looking at right now is in terms of products and services which is only uh the hip investor rating right is or the hip rating the human impact plus profit rating encompasses products and services but it also encompasses the management practices and their environmentally sustainable practices as well but looking at products and services specifically we saw that the products and services are the industries that deliver the most extractive products and services saw the highest gain in this month from with a 1.74 increase from august to september but with that being said these jobs that returned weren't necessarily high quality jobs this can be shown here in the reduction in pay for the extremely extractive industries so the extremely extractive industries were the only industries to see a decrease in the average hourly earnings over the month whereas the slightly extractive industries saw an increase of zero point or not 0.404 4 cents per hour while the green industries saw an increase of 10 cents per hour and still there's a significant difference between the green industries and that of slightly extractive industries and extremely extractive industries and for a summary on the you know hourly earnings we can see from that decrease that although that there was an increase in the extractive industries due to it being lowered by two cents meaning that the jobs that returned on average were lower lower quality or lower pay as compared to the jobs that were currently in that bucket so moving on a portion that we look at is the high contact sectors if you could go back just one more slide so what we've noticed right is that obviously high context sectors due to the health risks are uh more likely to have jobs destroyed due to the nature of the virus and high contact industry sectors are occu industries that contain occupation occupations which require work to be within one arm's length whereas low contact industry sectors contain occupations which allow for social distancing high contact sectors since february have lost around 5.6 million jobs compared to low contact industry um this is you know significantly higher as compared to low contact industries where low contact industries have lost around three million jobs since february and this analysis of high contact and low contact industry sectors is mimicked from is a mimicked analysis from the st louis fed which was shown below on that graph but something interesting that we had found is although um even in high context sectors greener industries were more resilient to job loss so what we did was look at the industries within the high contact and low contact industries and we had the ratings for these industries for you know industries within both the high contact and low contact and we found when divvying them up um in turn like uh you know with a cutoff of below 30 and above 30 that industries with a hip score above 30 as compared to those below 30 were more resilient to job loss even in the high contact industry sectors so we can see here that comparatively that high contact industries within with a lower hip score saw a job a proportional job loss of 12.2 percent whereas industries that were above 30 saw a reduced reduction of 8.35 percent and this trend of higher hip scored industries being more resilient was also found within the low contact industries where low contact industries that were above 30 saw a around a 4.6 reduction whereas those in the below 30 category saw a reduction of 7.5 so the key takeaway here is that even in high contact industry sectors of the economy greener jobs remained more resilient to job loss when compared to the extractive jobs so now turning to our discussion of public banking and its role in greening the economy for a quick background on public banking publicly owned banks are financial institutions that are owned by one or more public entities such as a city or county and primarily they invest lend and provide banking services for the local communities distinctively public banks focus on the community needs as opposed to prioritizing shareholder returns these needs can span anywhere from affordable housing small business loans or public infrastructure but it isn't limited to that it's completely focused on whatever the needs of that specific local community may be so we can ask the question how can public banks accelerate in the green transition the goals of public banking align with esg and hip ratings the public banking initiatives aim to deliver a sustainable economic social and environmental development which is congruent with the promotion of health wealth earth equality and trust pillars that focus on people planet and trust the principles of public banking encompass social and environmental sustainability a focus in local communities building long-term relationships with clients that help with self-sustaining growth and they hope to provide opportunities that are resilient to external disruptions and conduct themselves with transparency in in you know all their business transactions so the public banking's motivation is you know the leaders of these um public banks hopefully already have the focus on people planet and trust and inspires that throughout their business dealings and the people they employ their model is focused on a triple bottom line that focus on focuses on people planet and profit they hope to contribute provide contributions to communities and the real economies within the specific communities and basing investments on their specific needs they they hope for the creation of long-lasting relationships with clients and to provide information on proper risk analysis for those prospective clients this is to ensure resilience hopefully to outside disruptions obviously there's disruptions that are unavoidable and we can't be resilient to but we can do the best that we can by creating these you know institutional outlooks in terms of what we're trying to provide and one of those things that we're trying to provide is also transparency at a high degree through inclusiveness and comprehensive reporting and hopefully with all these things set in place we can start to inspire a societal mindset shift towards people planet and profit as opposed to just profit and something that's often spoken about in our green jobs report is that it is unlikely to see a huge step towards greening the economy but by taking marginal small steps towards the right direction with initiatives such as public bankings it can start a snowballing effect so hopefully over the years as this as it hopefully a societal mindset shifts to people planet and profit as opposed to just maximizing profit we can you know hopefully attain that excitement of seeing a greener economy that we spoke about uh in the beginning super amir thanks for the deep dive into the green jobs great to continue to see that greener jobs pay more and appear to be more resilient even in high contact industries so there's a positive return on investment by investing in people and planet and trust by corporates um uh and so that'll be what's interesting in our discussion today because we're going to dig deeper into public banking is there's already a couple of questions in the audience from martha turner and michael savant and also from sandeep norwani um and uh so this will be sort of the kickoff to our panel i think so uh um uh scott and uh raul and sylvia if you can join us um uh i'll say i'll greet all of us and then kick it off with these three questions that are all of a similar flavor um so sylvia thanks for joining us you're part of the california public banking alliance and policy director of the asian pacific uh environmental network so great to have you with us today and uh raul carrillo your deputy director of the lpe project so i want to know more about that and uh associate research scholar at the yale law school um uh so great to have you with us and uh dr scott fullweiler from university of missouri kansas city um sylvia today you're going to speak to some local experience with public banking and role at least national and possibly international but just as a grounding um question is public banking only publicly owned banks like a government bank like the state of north dakota which is a long time public bank can it be a banking for public benefit and if it's banking for public benefit are there any distinctions about non-profits versus for-profits especially like credit unions or non-profit financial institutions so uh sylvia rule you want to kick it off with what's included when we talk about public banking sure i'm happy to talk about it in terms of how we envision it from the perspective of the public banking act um which i helped draft with representative ishita talib's office among other co-sponsors and perhaps sylvia um you can talk about it um with respect to how you see california public banking missions but um if you'd like to proceed first you're you're welcome to um yeah sure so in california um so i helped write the bill ab-857 that we passed in 2018 um and so so when i talk about public banking that's what i'm thinking of the ab-857 banks which are to be owned by local governments like cities or counties or combinations thereof which is not to say that non-profit financial institutions are not important and have a you know a critical role in the the financial ecosystem but just trying to distinguish and clarify um what could be the role of government and particularly local government so that's that's why i distinguish public banks um as government owned but there are lots of different definitions that different people use in different contexts yeah i i certainly agree there's a plurality of definitions within the discourse in in the literature and you have to remember that this conversation is not just about potentiality in the united states nor what we've accomplished and what sylvia and her crew have accomplished directly in california but about a global and historical perspective right there are plenty of public banking systems that are operating across the world right now including in germany brazil um a uh robust postal banking system in japan etc um but when you i think that when we're talking about public banking at the both the movement level and the legislative level in the united states we're fundamentally talking about government or community controlled entities ownership is a bit of a tricky term especially when we're talking about government corporations and i don't want to get into the debates about whether shareholders truly own corporations or not but i think suffice it to say for the public banks that representative tayeb's bill aims to incubate those will be the stakeholders will be public or they will be comm nity non-profits and so as sylvia said where there's very much space for partnerships with institutions that may have different ownership structures and many local efforts are more geared to that than others um fundamentally with the public banking act and i think most of the movements across the country right now we're talking about entities that are controlled by municipalities states or directly okay so um the discussion may focus on that but it sounds like there's multi-sector partnerships that are possible absolutely great great um scott did you want to say something before we dig into an example um i don't know that i have anything to say i'm just kind of got into the california law a little bit but i'd be curious um uh yeah about how that came about and and what's going on yeah sophia went explain sort of how that came about and um how it all came together sure um so this was a totally grassroots campaign almost entirely volunteer based and i think a lot of us and myself in particular you know i came to this area of work out of an interest in divestment and particularly the the nodapl movement which is about the dakota access pipeline and what what what i experienced was i went i live in oakland in california i went to oakland city council when our our city's contract with the bank was up for renewal and spoke out with a couple other community members saying you know these are all the terrible things that this bank is doing leveraging our city deposits to finance which are directly impacting the city we should try to find another bank and discover that there were really no alternatives under current california law um and figured out that it would be it was basically more politically achievable to uh start this public banking uh movement in california and create uh this new law uh then to actually to change the other laws um and you know there's as i you know got more into it over the over time you know learned about a lot of the other great benefits of public banking um so that's that's basically how i came to it we put together a a coalition of chapters of the california public banking alliance all across the state from san diego i know some members here are here to to humboldt and managed to bring in a lot of partners of community groups environmental groups labor to support this as just another toolbox another tool to add to the toolbox in terms of financing and public financing and what um so what was the constraint like the problem is at least in california and potentially other states it has been the case where you need a certain size bank for a city and so some smaller banks can't serve cities even if they're more community oriented so um is that now uh not a constraint anymore or is it forcing larger institutions to do something for public credit um the size is still an issue um so that's you know what we're trying to do is create public banks that can hold the deposits for cities like oakland um there just aren't any local community banks who were able to that had the capacity to hold those deposits um so yeah i think one thing we would like to do is uh you know stand up these public banks to hold those deposits but also to create the pressure on the existing mainstream bank banks to show them you know this is the public option that is creating competition for you for municipal for yeah municipal deposits um and hopefully have some effect on you know their their policies okay and what would you say are the three or four or five or more key ingredients in this recipe um for public bank obviously the law is not enough just having community reinvestment act is not enough so creating a law to have a public bank to be competitive but what isn't what is in that law like if other people on this call help facilitate that in other states what would be the components of it um i think one reason that this law was successful was that it um really leans into like local control and um allows different localities to have different business plans and structures so it's really important i think for as we organize public banks that community groups are involved in developing what the business plan structure looks like making sure that the the public bank really serves a public mission the law by itself does not ensure that so it still requires you know community participation another big important ingredient is funding uh you know we were initially planning on working on implementation of ab857 this year but because of the economic downturn none of the localities who are interested in it previously are interested anymore it's probably not going to happen really soon without some outside help so now we're working on a proposal to see if we can get more support from the state to help localities start working on that and developing their business plans that's that's kind of a good segue perhaps to to talk about the uh the national bill that raul was working on okay sorry he didn't mean ketchup no you're good i'll just let you just take it away um great so um i hope we can get a virtual round of applause for the folks in california just real quick because they've actually they've done it they've passed past the bill and um we are hoping to incubate and facilitate some efforts done with the public banking act introduced by representatives and what this legislation does is provide fundamentally two ingredients that you need to get a repository institutions like one size chart two it capitalizes local efforts that meet certain standards especially related to greening as well as affirmative lending um broader notions of sustainability and communal health right and sort of to return to some of the themes that i think were fundamentally does is um both create services that i think are necessary for achieving the sort of outcomes in the world that we all want to see perhaps lending to um you know greed and businesses and cooperatives where there is no place to get that sort of thing etc but also fundamentally the public banks become um a standard right and they help re-establish private sector on multiple fronts depending on again as sylvia indicated the democratic um aspirations of the local community right but ideally you know what happens is that a locality that has either achieved um sufficient laws so as to create a public bank on its own you can get additional money from the federal reserve or if it can get a charter directly from the federal reserve if the locality's home states it's particularly helpful in giving them a public bank so this is a particular concern to say um the constituents of representative detroit if the governor should not want to help depression and not sending fiscal aid to the city right and so this helps really um local efforts um in a more accountable manner than is currently going on and um you know different folks may desire different sorts of things are really focused for instance on the divestment front um as sylvia indicated competition for um custody of municipal deposits or the maintenance of municipal deposits is quite important and i was part of the grassroots effort in new york for three years in the previous capacity as a staff attorney at the new economy project and um our folks in new york city and we we're going from neighborhood to neighborhood we're extremely excited about is entangled from the wall street banks that are um funding harmful climate change that are building pipelines that in the case of new york city are um helping grow the prison jokes et cetera et cetera and people want the financial activities of their local jurisdictions and governments to be more reflective of their values of course you can push on some budgets and you can push on state budgets but these banks i think provide an opportunity to do new and different things so that's one and many folks you know want to see green work or more sustainable work um happen in their community but the financing is prohibitive the appropriate financial resources to participate in the green new deal as a is a social phenomenon right and that's something that we do in this country together so for instance um it's nice and it's not used to you but i think it is is my view and perhaps your view of dr fullweiler and that of other folks on the call is that you know transition and it can spend in all these ways that states and local governments fundamentally cannot it can its powers its fiscal powers are fundamentally far stronger at a constitutional and administrative law level than those of states and unions and so it's important to be the bank entity as well as the local treasure entity the treasury entity to fund this sort of work that i think we all want to see happen so that's i think the major federal public act and we like it again for the very reasons that sylvia mentioned local local control that can produce exploitation and certainly no robust regulation is very important and our bill you know points to that but this is this is a fundamentally changed financial system in all its sectors more sustainable and more democratic um you know as time goes on yeah so well thanks for that deep dive just so you know some of your words are getting mangled or smashed together i think we'd probably be okay if you skip video if that helps zoom does a pretty good job of compressing like in silicon valley inside out um yeah well just for that i'll take off yeah no problem if there's any other software that's open you might try closing that as well um but you know sorry there's always many uh puzzle pieces to clear video conferencing um so um sylvia like in um on raul's point about financing it sounds like cities have struggled to maybe access some financing so they're relying on state financing or is it reliant on federal financing like what are the pockets of money is it only government money that funds a government bank or are there depositors could domestic or international investors invest in a public bank and if so what would they get yeah um that's a good question um the eight under ab-857 um those public banks have to be entirely owned by um by government agencies um but you know there are certainly of annual budgets excuse me out of annual budget usually government agencies are funded by annual budgets it's hard to get like multi-year capital programs so yeah um it doesn't i mean it doesn't say like you know there's no requirements about like exactly um how it's funded you know part of that part of those details are to be worked out in the regulations which they have not uh they're still working on um but um yeah it's certainly the case that there are public banks um in other places um other countries that are a combination of public and private funding or public and private deposits but in california that's not not permitted or is permitted that's not currently the law um and i think that is that's i think that's partly because it was a simpler story to tell um just to say public only um i don't i think it just is more complicated uh to also include private got it in any models on that um so with respect to the to the federal bill um i think we draw some pretty clear distinctions but first i think it's important to keep a conceptual um delineation in mind between um deposits and investment right so these public banks will um you know ideally be handling municipal deposits but of course if they originate loans then there may be deposits at the bank and those may migrate but you can foresee different different situations in which the deposits of public and private actors are housed within a public bank but the investment i think um for the federal bill remains fundamentally federal and it is the the point that um the federal reserve will help capitalize these banks but it's it's a right or an entitlement with corresponding responsibilities right and so it's paired with federal banking regulation and that's fundamentally the idea driving driving this bill right is that um you won't get private investors and you won't be answerable you won't have to answer to private shareholders instead the decision that is made by um you know the folks who create the public bank is that it will be in exchange for the federal funding you follow these guidelines with respect to safety and soundness with respect to sustainability etc got it um and so therefore where does that money come from raul is that the federal reserve is that congress like how does that funding get produced yeah so ours is is from the federal reserve um and we're not um i mean it's it's from the federal reserve in the sense that money is and um the idea is that this could be modulated perhaps based on the uh menu of charters that we have available the bill you know again wants to incubate various um different kinds of banks depending on what people want and these may be retail level banks these may be wholesale banks these may be you know banks that primarily exist to facilitate ongoing local financial services provided by cbfis it could be a number of different things but um right the idea is is that the capitalization comes from the federal government and that is again the package that is offered and in speaking with regulators you know the sense is that um you know it doesn't make sense to do one without the other and i think it's it's a very common sense approach to pair again these sort of privileges with responsibilities which is something that has been lost arguably in the private financial system in some respects as i think you all discuss and we always have to think about public banking in the backdrop of the rights and responsibilities of you know quote-unquote private banks which are also fundamentally corporations given charters by the government and expected to do certain things and so rubble or sylvia or scott if you know like today um you know there's trillions of dollars of deposits in the banking industry what do you think the potential market share or dollar volume could be in the us or globally of public banking versus private investor-owned banks i was about to ask scott he wanted to take that one i um yeah this is i think a better question for an economist if i'm not so great at handling but um i would expect that the impact to be you know small at first in terms of share but i i couldn't give you a number yeah i don't i don't have a number um i was going to look up a number that some scholars have come up with you know depending on how you define what a public bank is there's you know folks have said that there's trillions of dollars held in public banks currently um globally but uh it's a pretty large range i don't remember the exact number right now but it's it's in the trillions yeah i'll say two things on that i guess um we know that there are millions of people who are unbanked um we know that there are probably millions of people that would switch that are currently banked to a public bank i can't give any magnitudes on that maybe somebody watching or listening uh knows some details on that i i think um not that anybody here is doing that but just want to make clear the distinction that the ability of a public bank to support the community with its financial activities lending and so forth does not rely necessarily on it obtaining you know so many millions or billions of dollars of deposits so um so we just want to make sure we separate those two things right so um some other you know choices that depositors could make would be the impact of their deposits which today if you put money in a you know in a city bank or uh bank of america uh you don't know where it goes would is part of the public banking appeal is that there's transparency about where things are going and there's more reporting maybe there's impact reporting maybe it even goes you know helps gets targeted to community zones not just attacked attached to the job cuts you know tax cut law um sorry i said job cuts have been tax cut law um so is that part of the requirement sylvia like in california because when opportunity zones got integrated into the tax cut law the impact reporting got stripped out in the you know before it was finally approved so the opportunity zones were approved the financial benefit was approved but the impact transparency and reporting was removed um is there any of that built into the california aw or raul the federal law yeah um for the california law um there isn't a very strong like enforcement mechanism to ensure that there is a requirement that the public bank be incorporated as a public benefit or mutual benefit nonprofit corporation so there's a possibility of enforcing that like through the ag's office but there are robust transparency requirements we incorporated elements from the existing like california public records law and um like good governance laws to ensure as much transparency as we thought would be practicable in the context of a bank okay because historically also there have been things like kiva.org as a non-profit where you could see you know or go fund me uh where you can have that visibility so i think this this raises this is a a good opportunity to discuss sort of how we think about this in the divestment space especially at the retail level so as scott indicated you know it's not really about where your money goes a bank is a much more complicated financial actor than a gofundme or a kiva right and it's approaching things from you know a consolidated balance sheet level and not necessarily um you know just like cash and cash out or thinking about that way is not particularly helpful so i would say though that to your point um a stronger way to look at it is that the federal bill and i think most of the public banking movements across the country bake these sort of requirements into the force of law into the charter right and into the regulations and in fact banks have to meet certain criteria it's public because it's government regulated inc government regulation of government entities and you will be able to see um how the banks meet their metrics and if they don't i can be pretty sure that you'll hear about it because public banks are going to be even under more scrutiny than private banks right and so people i think will have a strong sense of not so much again where their money goes as you know what the bank they're in bed with is doing um or the bank that they're in business with is doing and that i think is sort of a fundamental feature of um creating public banks and why they appeal to so many people across the world and raul or sylvia r scott is there you know there's the un's sustainable development goals are these 17 unsdgs it's intended to be a global framework for solving problems either at the local level or the global level um and these 17 goals have 169 metrics uh as proof of solving some of those problems there's not data on all those metrics but is there a benefit to financial institutions uh having you know a group of public banks across borders trying to do that a group of public banks across state borders doing that do the sdgs help to help bring capital that cities and states are striving for in california or nationally or globally so i'm not sure that the um the sand development goals bring capital again because the capitalization in the in the for prism of the federal bill is done by the government and i think in the california bill is also done by the government but the sort of alliance around metrics and indices and the sort of thing that you all work on i think there is a huge face for this and again just because um you know the public banks doesn't mean we're out of the woods in terms of accountability i have a lot of problems with the government i'm sure that you do and so there's going to have to be a lot of accountability here and when i think about accountability i'm not thinking about you know is the bank an appropriate um you know use of federal money so much is what is the bank doing and what is the bank accomplishing and is it following its mission orientation for which um you know it was chartered and capitalized in the first place and we have instances wherein public banks don't always follow their missions or their missions aren't unclear and i want you know i don't want um the listeners on the show to think i'm overly um you know classy eyed or rosy about this the the bank of north dakota is the single um you know established mainland public bank for now until sylvia and the rest of the crew get get up and running and it you know financed the um for instance the police presence at the standing rock protest which i think environmentalists folks would not be appreciate to hear but the bank of north dakota was also founded in 1919 and there aren't any sustainability goals written into its charter much less the constitutional law that surrounds it within the state of north dakota so this is where design is important right and i think that constant pressure on the design to hold it accountable is a feature of public banking and people having a better sense i think you know to your set of points paul of what public money is doing and what these entities are up to um is is a great thing and it's sort of a even cultural benefit of the public banking act um that um we probably do well to talk more about [Music] all right and uh so that you answered a question in the chat but just for everybody's benefit um the question is from martha turner are there any legal barriers or bonding capacity to use bonding capacity to fund some of those public banks and sounds like you said no there are any barriers to using muni bonds or other financing is that are you aware of that being considered for any cities seeking to do that currently or can that fund even climate action projects yeah um i think some cities are considering it it's still a bit early um so nothing too concrete yet i think that there's just um there continues to be some some some general barriers about doing muni's uh in california you need to you need to get a two-thirds majority uh vote i think for local uh municipal bonds so there's i think it's primarily a political obstacle okay let me ask a question here about the uh i think i'm asking about the federal reserve's role in the in the uh the federal banking act but uh we'll see um so we know with uh uh private organizations that they're non-loss organizations and uh people like ourselves can do ratings and etc etc on uh how sustainable they are how well they treat people how well they treat their communities etc at some point if you are a non-loss organization at some point you have a financial survival constraint that you have to meet and that may become that may override some of the other decisions right and we're of course trying to minimize this in in the work that all of us are doing here um i'm just curious uh one of the things we know with the fed of course so it can it can backstop all sorts of things like what just happened over the last eight months and it doesn't have to worry about a financial survival constraint um so i'm curious um about the on the federal bill or maybe there's something going on with the california one too in terms of financial survival constraint issues for public banks is there something uh what what happens on that end yeah i think i think i get over your head right here scott and i think um [Laughter] yeah i perhaps a good place to start i i think and i'll sort of just try to complement this point from a legal design point of view is that i think we need to be honest about what the whole banking system is which is at the end of the day underwritten by the fed right so when we're talking about creating or backstop by the fed to put it as you did um when we're talking about creating something different excuse me same thing yes i'm agreeing with you [Laughter] about the banking system what it fundamentally is banks are chartered licensed regulated in some ways administrated on a macro level by the government right and so it's sort of a little bit silly especially from my perspective as a scholar of banking law under the legal history of banking to think that to think in terms of government intervention or subsidy right or to think that the banks that already exist do not take advantage of you know fed privileges or be forced to or you know um one way or another um be you know rescued by the center of the system and in fact the system is built that way right we have deposit insurance and we have the discount window and the fed fundamentally legally as well as economically operates as the lender of last resort and so when i think that perspective is helpful when you think about the regulation of public banks and what we're going to do to keep them you know solvents and what we're going to do to keep them stable is a is a general matter and i hope um this hasn't been unclear but we expect the banks to be financially sustainable but what that means is something different than for a commercial bank right because the triple bottom line here is not so much um you know focused on profits as it is again the the financial and safety and soundness of the bank more broadly written because the bank's not trying to turn a profit and it doesn't answer necessarily it doesn't answer to private shareholders either and so well roi or profits might be a somewhat helpful metric i don't think it really speaks to what we want to measure out of what we're getting out of a public bank right which is again what is it creating how um what what is it investing in itself you know what are we accomplishing socially and what really happens is again i think that now that the backstop is more clear with public banks compared to private banks is that regulation is ten times easier right and you'll see that in this bill and it's just legislation it's not all the rules that will be promulgated by various agencies if the legislation were to be enacted but you can see in the legislation that we are baking in you know that certain goals have to be met that um certain metrics will have to be met with respect to safety and soundness if the bank is to continue as a supported concern right but at the same time we are not going to pull the plug on a public bank because of um you know because we are applying a metric from the private sector and we're saying it's not doing well by that metric and this becomes especially important when we talk about things like the pandemic right you don't you want the fed you know supporting local and public banks if they existed right now you want them to be helping um localities that are in you know trouble with bonds or just flat out don't have the revenue you want to be helping the states that have to comply with balanced budget amendments and so we don't want to bring i think an austerity mindset so much as a responsibility mindset to the public banking system if that makes sense great so we're getting near the top of the hour um there's one more question here um and at least an idea um uh you know with people from fossil free alliances including in california and other states for climate action and cities do have to deal with muni bond capacity whether it be for climate projects or um uh public banking uh institutions um so are there narrow you know there's things like green uh green banks and green funds and infrastructure funds and i banks in california for example infrastructure bank so can the does it make sense to narrowly uh constrain a charter of a public bank to a specific use-like climate that also benefits the community or does it benefit it to have like a wider charter as you know needs change over time um i'll say in california i think we we do have an eye bank already which is basically a revolving loan fund and they they just last year codified the climate catalyst fund within it but did not provide any funding for it so one thing that we're looking at at the the california public banking alliance is ways to uh modernize the ibank and part of that would be providing support to localities for ab-857 banks but also to um try to actually like make the climate catalyst fund real and um make it effective um and also to um expand the mandate because the ibanks mandate is pretty narrow right now for example it's not it's prohibited from doing lending on housing when california is currently in a really intense housing crisis so i think that you know depending on like the political context you're in that you're working in it might make sense to have a narrower mandate but i think there's a lot of benefits in having a really broad one and particularly you can and i think this is like really goes to the idea like a green new deal is to break down silos and be able to work across different sectors together and i think public banks could really do a lot there yeah i will say that the federal bill wants to support a variety of different types of banks and some of these public banks can engage in a more comprehensive set of functions than others um and a lot of this is sort of um you know mirrored off of the general i think positive approach that folks took in california of creating new categories right the old legal categories like don't necessarily fit or apply to what we want to do here so we're creating a new menu of options and the federal bill anticipates for instance getting a charter to to provide payments in just basic financial services or to lend or engage to infrastructure lending and that menu i think can be you know adjusted even further through regulation not to mention um subsequent discussion of the bill which you know hasn't passed yet um there is i think and i think slovenia are on the same page here in that um part of the spirit behind public banking is supporting a variety of functions and some banks may want to do more different kinds of things than others but really um this is about facilitation right and helping with a more bottom-up approach and you know for there are other public banking approaches for instance representative also supports postal banking as a consumer retail level across the country and fed accounts you know the possibility to have a digital account at the federal reserve but this really is about empowering i think localities to um to do these sorts of different things and you know from my perspective to engage in the green new deal and the broader environmental just transition effort um more fully well it sounds like a really exciting future and um private public banking uh i wrote private making public handling uh postal banking digital accounts at the federal reserve so um scott is there anything else you want to sum up with before we close i think uh maybe quickly um there are people that want to get involved with this what do you uh raul or sylvia suggest they do um for california if you're interested in joining the california public banking alliance check out our website which is california californiapublicbankingalliance.org it's very long and see if there's a local chapter near you and if not i think there's there's a link for you to get in touch and see if we can help you set up a local chapter in your part of california we put that link in the chat and raul how can we all take more action yeah so there are ongoing efforts in new york city oregon washington um chicago uh to my understanding bubbling up in miami um there's a team in west virginia um there are quite a lot of efforts around the country already so um you should dig into that of course most activism is online these these days unfortunately but um that doesn't mean that you can you know uh find folks in your area and if you don't find that a coalitional effort already exists such as exists in california and new york then perhaps you work with or know groups that are responsive to people in the community that can start thinking about this and it doesn't happen without people power right um as so many folks will tell you um and if it's the case that you want some you know tips on how to organize within a coalitional effort you know all these other folks who have already done it are out here and um you know i'm around and uh happy to put people in touch with each other etc fantastic i want to thank our guests raul carrillo of the lawn political economy project at yale university sylvia t of the california public banking alliance and doctor scott weil of the university of missouri kansas city and global institute for sustainable prosperity thanks also amir for the monthly green jobs report um and to our producer nick power nigel you wanna uh wrap up and summarize sure thank you very much paul and thank you all for a fascinating discussion i think it's been incredibly helpful certainly to me there are a host of challenges that has to be addressed and i think we all know what those are so i won't repeat them here and all you know the more sources of financing and ways to approach these problems that are available i think clearly the better as we head towards the end of the year i was just going to flag a couple of things firstly we've covered all sorts of topics on the green jobs report and indeed esgx live more broadly this year thanks to fidel kaboom as well for helping with the jobs the green jobs part of that and all of that material is available on our website or is available on the youtube channel at live.esgx.org looking ahead into next year if there are topics you would really love us to cover or if there are guests you would love us to get on the show particularly from the more diverse their backgrounds the better then please let us know you can just write to us at info.info esgx.org and that will come through to paul and me and we'll be able to build that into our program as best we can and i think finally we have coming up next week power shift where we are going to explore the impact of the changes in u.s energy policy that will come about as the biden administration comes into power and indeed some of the geopolitical shifts that will come with that because of the dynamics between the united states and the uk and indeed australia and china and there i think is some very positive implications of all of that lots of complexity too i don't know paul if you want to add anything in terms of the guests we've got coming next week but i'm i think this is going to be a really fascinating episode so please do sign up yes shah from generate capital um who is very active on uh leading action as well as discussion uh will join us as well as chris castro from the city of orlando and an active leader in the state of florida in the orlando metro area and we may have one or two more panelists but please join us for power shift next week on esg x and the following week our last up esgx episode of 2020 will feature green santa who will join us from the green north pole um so please sign up for the esgx next week for powershift and december 15th for the um holiday celebration um hi jill anything else last thing simply please do share with your friends please do share links to the episode post on social media thank you to our official tweet manager of the day fidel who's done a fantastic job please visit the youtube site site and share this helps to amplify all of our guests messages makes a really big difference so thank you very much and have a we look forward to