http://www.opednews.com/articles/It-s-Not-the-Oil--Gas-Th-by-Scott-Baker-Bank-Of-North-Dakota_Bankers_Banking_Banks-160430-947.html

A Return On Investment (ROI) of 18.1% - without risky derivatives, out-of-state/out-of-country investments, securitization to naive 3rd parties - is something the Too Big To Fail banks can only dream of. And the BND has been getting returns like this for years, well before the post-2005 period when fracking began to push natural gas production to record levels in the state.

But still, many critics - on both the Right and Left, were skeptical of this deep Red State's bank with socialist roots in the now defunct Non-Partisan League , from its founding in 1919. Even when the bank celebrated nearly 100 years without a major scandal, while the major American banks were, and are, racking up billions of fines , year-after-year, some people and the mainstream media thought it was an anomaly, or a fluke of low population (North Dakota's population as of 2015 is: 756,927 , making it the 47th state by population. Other oil-rich states Alaska, ranked 48th and Wyoming, ranked 50th, have about double the rate of unemployment and lower rates of growth).

Note the conspicuous lack of lending in the oil sector. Though some local businesses do benefit from the economic effects of the oil and gas business, it is primarily the out-of-state big banks that lend to the large interstate oil and gas companies. And in any case, even at the peak of the oil & gas boom, it was the state which, rightly, collected the economic rent from those resources from the commons. Now, it's the state's turn to distribute some of those earnings, during the down times, while the BND continues to play its part, returning dividends to the state, including over $300m in one recent 10-year period, when the state's population still averaged less than 700,000 people.

https://arizonapublicbanking.org/2016/05/01/public-banking-the-nonpartisan-league-is-it-time-for-a-financial-revolution/

What is public banking? Public banking is “banking in the public interest.” Wall Street banks make deals for the good of their wealthy shareholders. Public banks make deals for the good of their shareholder—us, the citizens. Public banking is using all or part of the state’s rainy day funds to partner with community banks to invest in the future by investing in education, infrastructure, entrepreneurship and small business development, and debt relief.

How do we do this? In a nutshell, the state bank self-funds interest-free infrastructure projects and (through community banks) offers affordable credit to local businesses, entrepreneurs, and college students.

Currently every city, county, and state in the US (except for North Dakota) holds its rainy day funds in a too-big-to-fail bank, and those funds are invested on Wall Street for the good of the bank’s shareholders—not for the good of the taxpayers. If a state or local government wants to build a road or fix the potholes, they borrow the money from Wall Street and pay interest and fees on that loan. Yes, we pay fees to Wall Street to hold our money, and we pay interest and fees when we want to use our money. Local and state governments are paying billions of dollars in financial fees each year. THIS IS A WASTE OF TAXPAYER FUNDS.

If the state took all or part of its rainy day funds and established a public bank, it could self-fund highways, bridges, education, economic development—without going into debt to Wall Street. If the state had a public bank, it could also help local governments by lending them money for improvements at a reasonable rate. The local governments would save money, the state would make a modest income on these loans, and all levels of government would be free of Wall Street debt. This is a sustainable economic loop. Giving away tax incentives is not sustainable. Giving affordable credit is sustainable. The City of Santa Fe recently did a public banking feasibility study. They found that they could buy back their bond debt and they could save $25 million over 10 years.