Banking at home: Should Montana run its own bank?

Montana needs a state bank that can keep valuable capital at home rather than sending the money to Wall Street, according to some small-business owners and community organizers.

They want to start a Montana Partnership Bank modeled after neighboring North Dakota, the only state in the country with a state-owned bank, which prospered through the recent recession.

Today, the Bank of North Dakota, established in 1913, manages assets of nearly $5.4 billion and has earned a return of 22 percent over the past decade, according to Sheena Rice of the Montana Organizing Project http://montanaorganizingproject.org/ .

By Jan Falstad

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