Wales needs to consider following the successful public banking model of North Dakota

Dr Ian Jenkins • www.walesonline.co.uk • May 16, 2013

Plaid Cymru is proposing a Public Bank for Wales but what is public banking and is it the answer to the challenges facing the Welsh economy? Dr Ian Jenkins explores.

It is fair to say that North Dakota is not the highest-profile of the States of the Union: lying on the Canadian border between Minnesota and Montana it does not have the globally impressive multi-billion GDP of a California, a New York or a Texas and in fact has the lowest per capita GDP of any US state.

Yet North Dakota has two things that none of its more heavyweight fellow states can boast – a budget surplus for every year since the economic crisis began in 2008 and an unemployment rate of 3.3%, the lowest in the US: so they must be doing something right in the Peace Garden State.

So what makes North Dakota different from other US states, allowing it to navigate the stormy seas of recession without recourse to brutal austerity measures or suffering crippling unemployment?

Read the article here.