Public Banking with Dr. Thomas Marois

Public banks are pervasive, with more than 900 worldwide, and powerful, having combined assets nearing $49 trillion. They are also resurgent, with new institutions being created worldwide and grassroots movements championing public banks as a means to right historic structural inequalities. But there is nothing essentially better or worse about a bank being public. Instead public banks need to be thought of as dynamic and contested institutions within the public spheres of states. In this view, public ownership predetermines nothing, but it does open up a particular public realm of possibilities. Change becomes possible and is a result of social forces making it so, if within the structural confines of gendered, racialized, and class-divided capitalist society.

Thomas Marois is a Reader of Department of Development Studies at SOAS University of London. He is author of the recent book, Public Banks: Decarbonisation, Definancialisation and Democratisation (Cambridge University Press 2021). Between late 2020 and early 2022, Thomas worked as a Senior Research Fellow in Patient Finance and Public Banking at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) where he is involved in the Government of British Columbia’s engagement with IIPP on mission-oriented innovation. He is currently a Researcher at the Municipal Services Project and Co-I in a SSHRC-funded 4-year project studying public banks and public water around the globe (both housed at Queen’s University, ON). Thomas is engaged with the Canadian Union of Public Employees National on its submission to the Canada Infrastructure Bank five-year review in 2022 and is advising Public Services International on developing a trade union approach to public banks. Thomas does not have all the answers on public banks, but he’s keen to discuss their prospects.