Economy prompts fresh look at North Dakota's socialist bank
By DALE WETZEL, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 16, 2010
BISMARCK, N.D. – It has no automatic tellers or drive-up windows, doesn't issue credit cards, and tends only a few thousand checking and savings accounts. Its only location is a glass, steamboat-shaped headquarters near the Missouri River, where the business moved from its original 1919 home in a former auto assembly plant.
The Bank of North Dakota —
the nation's only state-owned bank — might seem to be a relic. It was the brainchild of a failed flax farmer and one-time Socialist Party organizer during World War I.
But now officials in other states are wondering if it is helping North Dakota sail through the national recession.
Gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Oregon and a Washington state legislator are advocating the creation of state-owned banks in those states. A report prepared for a Vermont House committee last month said the idea had "considerable merit."
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