Category Archives: 2010 Election

What A Bank Of The State Of Florida Can Do

There are only two States in the United States that are not operating in a deficit, if not technically bankrupt. Montana because of their rich oil resources, and North Dakota, because of their implementation of a State Bank, the Bank of North Dakota.

Because most people are not economists and may well just fall asleep trying to read up on it, you can learn in this post and in one podcast all you need to know to understand why and how part of Dr. Farid A. Khavari’s platform as Governor of the State of Florida, the Bank of the State of Florida (BSF), will work.

How Floridians can have 2% fixed rate 15 year mortgages and how the State of Florida can make billions by providing them

A cornerstone of the economic plan is to create a Bank of the State of Florida. We will put the power of modern banking to work for the people of Florida, not for Wall Street.

Over the years, interest has been the biggest cost most families had. When you pay interest to the bank, that means less money for your family. Reducing interest costs can save a family hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Let’s take a $100,000 mortgage, for example. With a 30-year fixed rate 5.5% mortgage, your monthly payment is $567.79 and you will pay $104,404.40 in interest on that loan.

With a 2% fixed rate 15-year mortgage, your payment would be $643.51, the total interest would be only $15,831.80 – and the mortgage would be paid 15 years sooner! You save 88,572.60 in interest. If you then make 15 years of payments to yourself with 5% interest from the Bank of the State of Florida, you will have more than $160,000 after taxes in your account—just by having your mortgage from the Bank of the State of Florida.

How can we do this? It’s called “fractional reserve banking” and this is how all the banks do it. If you have $100 in reserves, you can loan out $900 or more. That means you collect interest on $900 but you pay interest on only $100 at most. If the bank pays you 2% for your CD and lends it at 5% on 9 times as much money, you can see this is a really good deal – for the bank.

Now our Bank of the State of Florida does not need to be greedy. It is not going to get involved in shenanigans like bundling and selling mortgages, taking out weird insurance policies and general practices that have caused the mess we are in today. When we make a mortgage, that asset remains right on our books and the paperwork is right there on file. We are going to pay good dividends and the highest rates in the market for long term deposits. We are going to loan out 9 times our reserves. And we are going to make billions of dollars for the State Treasury while we save Floridians a trillion dollars—and that trillion dollars becomes many trillions in Florida’s economy.

Let’s say we pay 5% for our $100 and loan out our $900 at 2%. We pay out $5 in interest, and we take in $18 in interest. Can we make money at that? You bet we can.

We could make the $3.6 billion we are short this year on just a couple of million 2% mortgages. We can do even better on 3 – 4% commercial financing and vehicle loans.

And all the money the bank earns goes directly into the State Treasury, to work for Floridians, not to Wall Street.

Where do we get the reserves? The State of Florida has billions invested with Wall Street. 5 or 6% guaranteed looks pretty good these days compared to a 50% decline in the stock market. Look at what long-term bonds are paying, look at CD’s—we will have no problem attracting all the long-term deposits we need to get started, simply by paying good rates.

Now look what happens. With a 2% fixed rate 15-year loan, the buyer has paid off over 11% of the principal within 2 years. That means we have more than enough reserves to make a new mortgage for someone else, without having to pay interest for the reserves! (In comparison, a 5.5% 30-year loan takes 7 years to pay 11% of the principal).

Now some people might think that low interest rates will just raise the price of homes. That would be true if the 2% loan was for 30 years. But the payment on the 2% loan for 15 years is a little bit higher than the payment for 5.5% 30 years, so this tends to hold prices down. It also tends to eliminate speculation that messes up the market every time. As long as prices are stable, we can offer mortgages with low down payments, so home ownership can be as easy as paying rent.

What the Bank of the State of Florida does is transfer hundreds of billions of dollars away from Wall Street directly into the pockets of Floridians by reducing interest costs… and it puts hundreds of billions into the State Treasury, too. We will have stable, fair prices for homes and take 15 years of slavery out of the process of owning a home.

Consumer financing is another area where Wall Street and the big banks are costing us way too much. Banks charge huge interest on credit cards, for example, where the cost of money to the bank is really zero. If a family has $10,000 in credit card debt at 25% interest, that’s over $200 per month in interest alone. At 6%, the monthly interest is only $50. This family could reduce monthly payments by $50 and pay off the debt years sooner. The State earns billions of dollars per year while saving Floridians billions and billions more.

The Bank of the State of Florida will earn billions of dollars per year for the taxpayers of Florida, not Wall Street fat cats. At the same time it will reduce interest costs and save Florida families hundreds of thousands of dollars per family. Who needs that money more? You or Citibank?

The Bank of the State of Florida can handle checking accounts and ATM’s too. The other banks will have to become competitive, and there is no reason why they cannot.

Couldn’t the federal government do the same thing? Actually, the federal government could do even better and they could do it immediately at huge benefit to the U.S. Treasury. Do you think we should wait around for them to do it? We can have this program in effect in Florida within a year, at no cost to the State.

Then there is this podcast hosted by Kim Greenhouse of It’s Rainmaking Time. It is an hour and fifteen minutes of a discussion entitled State Chartered Banks: A Solution for the US Economy featuring Ellen Brown and a panel of experts in the field. Dr. Khavari is one of those guests.

For the audio of Kim Greenhouse’s interview with Ellen Brown about State Chartered Banks, click HERE.

For Florida, and the rest of the country for that matter, this represents the light at the end of the deficit tunnel. Not an oncoming train.

related links:


Khavari: The Man With A Plan

In a continuing effort to inform Florida voters about the only person running for Governor of the State of Florida who has an economic recovery plan, one that does not include more borrowing and taxing, meet Dr. Farid Khavari.  The beauty of his plan is that it represents a blueprint for long term economic prosperity instead of a pothole patch.

And, it is a plan that other states can also benefit from. Economic security is not exclusive to Florida. Expect other states to catch on to this Bank of the State of Florida concept too! More information about his platform is on his website and in his latest book, Toward a Zero-Cost Economy, available in stores or for free download at his website, www.khavariforgovernor.com.

Please share this press release from the Khavari campaign.

Khavari: The era of commercial banks is over; state banks are the future.

Miami, FL  Nov. 23 — Noted economist Farid Khavari, a  Democratic candidate for Florida governor, has gained national and international attention for his plan to create a state-owned bank in Florida.

“Not since the Great Depression has it been so clear,” said Khavari. “We need banks that work for the benefit of the people, not people working for the benefit of the banks. There is no mystery why we are facing another depression: the banks got greedy and stupid, and now they are making us pay for it.

“The economy is collapsing due to lack of demand. The economy needs money, but the banks are cutting credit, and then sucking all the cash out of the economy by raising interest rates to make sure no one has any cash left at the end of the month. The cost of interest is built into the cost of everything. People already work ten years of their lives just to pay interest in one form or another. The Bank of the State of Florida will end that for Floridians. And this model will work for every state.

“We can start the BSF at no cost to taxpayers. We can pay 6% interest on savings. Using the same fractional reserve rules as all banks, we can create $900 of new money through loans for every $100 in deposits. We can loan that $900 in the form of 2% fixed rate 15-year mortgages, for example, and the state can earn $12 every year for every $100 in deposits. That means Floridians can save tens of billions of dollars per year while the state earns billions making it possible for them.

“2% fixed-rate mortgages will create a thousand times more jobs than any so-called stimulus can.  By reducing the total interest cost on a home by over 85%, the average family will save hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that money stays in Florida,” Khavari said.

“State and local government budgets will balance without higher taxes when the BSF cuts interest costs,” Khavari said. “6% BSF credit cards will save people billions per month, money that stays in Florida instead of going to the big banks—and the state will make huge profits on that, too.  Saving billions in interest costs will create millions of jobs without subsidies just by keeping those billions circulating in Florida. Eventually the state will earn enough to reduce and eliminate state and local taxes while every Floridian has economic security in a recession-proof Florida.”

Asked whether a state-owned bank is socialism, Khavari smiled. “Are public schools socialism? Public roads, police and fire protection, municipal water? Socialism is where everyone works for the state. In these cases, and with our Bank of the State of Florida, the state is working for everyone. I call that general capitalism.”

Farid A. Khavari, Ph.D. is an economist and author of nine books, including Environomics. His latest book, Toward a Zero-Cost Economy, is available in stores or for free download at his website, www.khavariforgovernor.com.


Who Has A Solution For Florida's Economy?

The political landscape in Florida is broad, but not very deep. There is more going on in the gubernatorial race and the Senate race than you know. More even than the media knows or is willing to share.

In the gubernatorial race, there is only one candidate that actually has a plan not only to fix Florida’s economy in the short term, but in the long term too. There is only one candidate that has a plan to maximize the health care dollars and health care productivity in the state, which will bring cost down, not up. There is only one candidate that is not running on endorsements and the boilerplate ‘I can do it better and smarter than him/or her’ but is running on a platform of real changes that will produce real and lasting benefits for Floridians, including jobs and lowering the costs of necessities like insurance, housing, loans and financing, energy and health care.

Did you know . . .

Florida is in a worse mess than you think. Our state’s economy is tanking, with 700,000 jobs lost, 300,000 foreclosures and more on the way. The banks just keep making it worse, and interest, insurance and energy costs keep going higher. This year’s $3.5 billion deficit got plugged by “stimulus” money, but next year’s will be worse. Most people don’t even know about the over $50 BILLION in losses at the State Board of Administration (SBA), for which Governor (and candidate for the U.S. Senate) Charlie Crist, Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Bill McCollum, and Chief Financial Officer (and gubernatorial candidate) Alex Sink are directly responsible. That’s almost $3,000 for every Floridian! They hope we won’t find out about this disaster until after the election. We can expect our taxes to go up by 25% in the next two years, because those same politicians are doing nothing to clean up the mess. They are too busy running for the next office. We can hardly look to them for solutions, because they are the problem! No one has offered a plan to fix Florida’s mess – until now.

The candidate with a plan is Dr. Farid Khavari. He’s an economist, not a politician. That’s probably why he has solutions that will work, instead of more of the same.

Don’t take my word for it though. Check out these three websites of the candidates, do your own research, and see who has a plan and who has more of the same.

Political Party Hardball. In an earlier post on how Florida’s Democratic Party is not Democratic, which was pertaining to the seven Democratic candidates for Governor, at which time you say ‘what? I thought it was only Alex Sink.’ I told you about how the party’s State Chairperson Karen Thurman chose Alex Sink at their state convention last month while ignoring Khavari and the other candidates. Well, the RPOF seems to be on the same track when it comes to picking their candidate for U.S. Senate. Don’t you want to have some say in this?

RPOF Chairman Bob Greer seems to have also taken sides on who he wants for Martinez’s senate seat, Gov. Charlie Crist. So much so that he is involved in some shenanigans to hurt Marco Rubio in an attempt to keep him off the ballot. And Crist and his hand-picked temporary senator George LeMieux have  been caught red-handed conducting a smear campaign against Rubio which includes of course, Hitler.

In an effort to bring party politics back into the open, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL, 01) is calling for the resignation of Party Chairman Greer. I concur.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: DAN McFAUL

November 7, 2009 850-324-4866

MILLER CALLS ON GREER TO RESIGN AS FLORIDA GOP CHAIRMAN

Congressman Jeff Miller (R-FL-01) issued the following statement today:

“Jim Greer has shown on numerous occasions that he is incapable of running the Republican party of Florida (RPOF) and refuses to remain neutral in contested primaries. Mr. Greer has failed at managing the financial, political, and public relations aspects of the state party.

The latest scandal involving a RPOF operative and the use of a fake Twitter account to disparage a duly elected county Chairman is just another in a long list of management failures. Further, Greer has shown a bias in the primary of the United States Senate Seat in publicly supporting Governor Crist and has repeatedly ignored calls from county party organizations for neutrality. This behavior is inexcusable and Florida Republicans deserve better.

At a time when Republicans across the country are energizing and unifying to defeat the Democrats in 2010, Greer is dividing and deflating Republicans in Florida.

I call on Mr. Greer to resign as Chairman of the RPOF.”

Now who is going to call Thurman on her obvious bias?

Conservatism Prevails

Is it a sign of the times? One could only hope and, time will tell. Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman gets a boost as Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava bows out of New York’s 23rd Congressional District race.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had said Scozzafava is exactly the kind of candidate the party needs to rebuild itself for a new Republican Revolution. However, Hoffman and his backers attacked Scozzafava as too liberal to represent the GOP. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and former New York Gov. George Pataki endorsed Hoffman.

Right. And General Colin Powell said that John McCain was the kind of leader America needed, before he voted for his opponent. Newt couldn’t be more wrong in his thinking. I don’t know where this comes from. He certainly didn’t believe this in ’94. You don’t build the Republican party by adopting planks of the Democrat platform. You do it like Reagan did by convincing Republicans, Democrats, Independents, everyone, that there’s a better way for America which happens to be 180 degrees from our present course. Stick to the principles that made us. Contrary to what the current administration is saying, conservatives believe that ‘the status quo’ means protecting and defending the Constitution, not supplanting it in an attempt to literally ‘remake America.’

Obama’s version of ‘status quo’ is a focus group tested phrase he assigns to problems either real or imagined (mostly imagined), used as a pejorative to condemn all that has made America the greatest country in the world, freedom, liberty, and a free enterprise market-driven economic system. His plans and policies are direct attacks on all three.

Hopefully, what is happening in upstate New York is the beginning of a real conservative movement, whether within or outside of the Republican Party. It is the Republican Party that has strayed from its conservative roots. It is the Republican Party that needs to return to them instead of being Democrat-Lite.

No true conservative condones the Chicago-style politics, the back room deals and quid pro quo with special interest groups and industries like is rampant in the Obama administration. Which, curious enough,  is exactly what Obama is accusing his detractors and predecessor of doing.

link: Scozzafava’s stunning departure