June 22, 2022 - Presently, the United States is undergoing a severe economic crisis. On the one hand, inflation is at a forty-year high, and on the other, the withering of productive economy is accelerating. The solution to this crisis was the subject of discussion at an emergency Zoom Town Hall sponsored by the Coalition for a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB), on June 16, 2022.

To set the stage, there is a lack of agreement on the current cause and solution of America’s economic crisis, and this is the subject of heavy debate. 

The prevailing narrative is that there are only two deadly choices to solve the problem, inflation or recession. In effect, the American people, once again, are being told they have no choice but to accept the “lesser evil.”  However, the NIB Coalition provides an alternative, proven solution, which you will hear more about in this ninety-minute video. 

Opening the town hall was Senior NIB Economist Alphecca Muttardy, who said, “Economists are divided on whether we’re going to enter into a recession. It doesn’t have to be this ‘Sophie’s choice,’ either the Fed clamps down and causes a recession, or the Fed does too little and we have stagflation, which really hurts everybody. There is a third way, and I really want to tell you about how the NIB can be this third solution.” This set the Town Hall into motion.

The dynamic discussion that followed offers Americans the only way out of our current economic crisis. Here is a preview of better things to come. For the full presentation watch the entire video. 

The Town Hall was energized by two compelling and comprehensive PowerPoints, one, by Alphecca Muttardy, a 25-year IMF Macro-Economist, and the second, by Ellen Brown, Chair and Founder of the Public Banking Institute. Muttardy began by expertly detailing how the NIB works, followed by Brown who demonstrated how the NIB would use its money-creating powers to finance $5 trillion in infrastructure investments, based on the same banking principles established by Alexander Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States. Their presentations made a cogent case for the necessity and functionality of the NIB. 

That nicely bookended two big-picture presentations by prominent economists, with totally unique perspectives. The first, was Dr. Nomi Prins, Ph.D, renowned author, journalist and speaker, and the second, Cornell University Professor of Law and Finance Robert Hockett. Here is a paraphrase of their remarks. 

Dr. Prins weighed in. “I think the main problem, and there are many, is getting infrastructure projects to fruition, to actually get to a point where not only are they complete, but actually spur economic growth, solidity and equality,” ... So, “the idea of the organization of the finances for the completion of the projects is necessary, and that it can produce economic growth is very important. At a point where we have a $9 trillion Fed book a $30 trillion overhang of national debt, a $23.5 trillion GDP, a 130% debt to GDP ratio, we’re in a situation where we’re not getting enough done with that debt to begin with, so the idea is to repurpose it, and leverage it into actual projects.” . . .

Prins went on, “The reality is, we’re super, super, behind because we’re not consistently financing things to completion. ... So, having a general way of infusing financing into real economic growth, not monetary growth, reducing the uncertainty that is in the economy for good, not just when the Fed feels like it, not just when there’s more money injected in the economy, when rates have come down or rates go up, and there’s all sorts of tinkering around the edges in terms of the cost of money, but actually a flow that can actually get things done, than that’s something that should be of interest to everybody.”

She concluded by making the case for the NIB. “And so the idea of financing, kind of like the idea of how Wall Street finances, but using it for public purposes, and organizing it from the public perspective for a national bank, for public banking, and so forth, is just a way to do that so we can avoid having the same conversations. When I say ‘we’, I mean Congress, and I mean both sides of Congress. This should be appealing to both sides. . . When I was on Wall Street, where I was for a number of years, and that was just the way you got things financed, sometimes in a very bad and criminal way, so we’re not going to talk about that. This is a very direct and transparent way, which is a big part of this, in a way that you can actually see projects to completion and get returns back to the individuals, the corporations, and the entities in government that are involved in financing, and you actually see results.”

Following Dr. Prins, Professor Hockett zeroed in on the root cause of the economic crisis and how, historically, the United States solved similar problems in the past.

Hockett began, “[T]he old adage that inflation is too much money chasing too few goods carries with it an understanding that there is a relation between money supplies and goods supplies. And, what that in turn means, is that if you have an inflation problem there might even be too much money. But there can also be too few goods, or there might be both. All of the talk of late seems to be there, and almost no talk at all about the goods and services side of that. ... [T]he so called supply chain problems that the pandemic brought us, and the pandemic highlighted, but, in fact, the problem is actually a much longer vintage that’s been going on for much longer than this, and it’s been basically going on ever since the United States decided that it would be a good idea to have everybody else in the world produce the things that we use and that we purchase here . ... To make a long story short, what we have to do now is to jump start and accelerate production, and if we’re really serious about this, we have to re-shore production. ... We’re faced with a sort of mobilization challenge, a productive mobilization challenge.”

Hockett then detailed the historic precedent. “Now, there are two times in the Twentieth Century when we confronted mobilization of production challenges of a similar scale. One was the case of the First World War mobilization ... and the second, of course, was the Second World War mobilization. ... We seemed to have found a model in the 20^th century that was in essence a kind of a 20^th century update of the old Hamiltonian model which can also be viewed, and also been updated, by Samuel Chase and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, as well. But the sort of modern incarnation of the Hamiltonian vision seems to involve distinct functionalities. ... Now, the way that we handled that kind of coordination function in the case of the First World War mobilization was through a new entity called the War Industries Board. ... But, then we got to the time of the Second World War. We did this through a similar entity called the War Production Board and the WPB.” 

Hockett made his summation. “So, in the First World War, the sort of financing arm that was associated with the War Industries Board was called the War Finance Corporation, the WFC. And then similarly, at the time of the Second World War, we made use of the essentially the direct descendant of the WFC known as the RFC, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. ... And, I believe … the best way to do that is, essentially, to replicate that, sort of, two-part structure that served us so well in the First World War mobilization and the Second World War mobilization. ... The NIB, in effect, is providing us with at least the financial arm of this. It’s providing us with a later day RFC, a later day Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States. ... 

“The draft bill that I put together about a year and a half ago, a version of which will be introduced in the Congress quite soon. The idea here is to form again a kind of coordinative council that combines, on the one hand, the White House, or the President, let’s say, and the Vice President, and the Fed Chair, and the Treasury Secretary, but also all the heads of all of the cabinet level agencies with primary jurisdiction over the nation’s principle industries and infrastructures, … along with … state and local officials … and various private sector representatives as well from the principles industries, whose factories are going to have be turning out the new infrastructure. … This ‘National Reconstruction Development Council’ would basically be the later day version of the War Production Board or War Industries Board and it would complement the NIB. …”

Following the Professor’s remarks, which ended the first segment of the ninety-minute dialogue, former New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz called for “mobilization three,” as a follow-up to Hockett’s mobilization one and two. Ortiz said, “Now, we need to do mobilization number three, which is, we have to mobilize ourselves to make sure that we can take on Congress in the last 3-5 weeks they have left, to make sure that they are able to learn and articulate what we’re trying to do here . . . to find out what is their position on the NIB. The Assemblyman called on Congress, saying “either they act on and co-sponsor HR3339 or be fired in the November election.”

If you are the kind of person, when presented with two bad choices, and like to challenge the status quo, take the third choice. Call your member of Congress today and urge them to co-sponsor the National Infrastructure Bank Act, HR3339.