Making the reduction of income inequalities the sole focus of public policy — dubbed macreconomic populism — has been a recurring presence in Latin American economic history. At certain times over the past 40 years, it has been costly and traumatic, which is true today for Venezuela and Argentina.

This policy approach often overlooks internal restrictions such as the simultaneous need for sustainable fiscal balance, price stability and wage alignment based on productivity. There are also external limitations such as balancing trade and improving the country’s international credit rating, all hopefully within a framework of growth. And populism today has acquired an additional association with bad institutions that aggravate the problem of concentrated markets.

The populist cycle, which lives through three phases of varying duration, is often attributed to irrational voting motivated by an overwhelming faith in electoral promises that ignores potential long-term consequences. Others see the durability in populism in the unfortunate combination of unsatisfied social and political demands, as well as the absence of institutions that equitably distribute the benefits and burdens of society.

From 1990 to 2003, Argentina had a growth rate of just 2.1% of GDP, an unemployment rate of 14.6% and average inflation rate of 197%. Venezuela grew about 2.5% a year up until 1999, with unemployment at 10.1% and average inflation of about 46%. There was public dissatisfaction with economic performance in both countries. There were calls to redistribute incomes as part of reactivating and restructuring the economy, as successor regimes took power.

In the first part of that period between early 2000 and 2011, attending to the social clamor of both countries was the recurring theme that justified a relentless rise in public spending and “raids” into market territority by imposing price controls of various types. The public welcomed measures such as fossil fuel subsidies as high as 80%, taxes and restrictions on dollar trading,  import/export quotas, and certain tax incentives and industry nationalization.

External conditions were favorable. Increasing Chinese demand from 2002 boosted energy and commodities prices during that period — soya 25%, cereals 49.5% and oil 103.5%. This gave the confused impression of impressive growth, with rates of 4.8% and 7.1% of GDP for Venezuela and Argentina, respectively.

But the bill for these policies inevitably arrives. A more than 40% fall in crude oil prices and about 20% for other raw materials has decimated the revenues of both countries. Growing unemployment, the end of protected jobs, food and consumer shortages, power cuts and ballooning debt are all symptoms announcing the coming, third phase of the populist cycle: crisis and collapse. The International Monetary Fund expects both economies to shrink about 2% in 2015, and the mid-term panorama is somber.

Evidence shows that macroeconomic populism is unstable  macroeconomic despite advances in the “good years,” perhaps because of its exclusively short-term focus. Both these countries need institutions that will create credible and stable expectations that encourage investment, rather than promises that destroy what was built before them.

Alexis Goldsmotih writes:  A group of Americans with a different agenda for the future of banking-people are pushing hard for policy change. They’re advocates of public banking, and they want to see new banks created that would be owned and operated by the government, usually at the state or city level. (This would greatly increase the amount of investment capital available for small business development, local infrastructure, and affordable public transportation, none of which are much favored by private banks seeking a high return on investment.).

Gwendolyn Hallsmith is one of those advocates. She’s currently the executive director of the Public Banking Institute, but she worked previously as a public servant in Montpelier, Vermont, where she resides and ran for mayor in 2014. Hallsmith also spent some time in divinity school, and you can hear it in her voice-which is soft but strong and deliberately paced.

To Hallsmith, the main advantage of a public bank is lower-cost financing, which can enable the state to pay for things like building affordable housing, repairing infrastructure, and expanding educational opportunities. And each of these projects creates jobs.

Hallsmith said: Public banks “allow cities, counties, and states to finance important public priorities without needing to rely on Wall Street and pay the hidden interest tax that Wall Street imposes on all our money.”

The quest to achieve public banking at the state and local level has been a long slog. Until quite recently, you had to go back almost 100 years to find the last major victory: the founding of the bank of North Dakota, the only state-run public bank in the United States, which was established in 1919.

But interest has been picking up around the country. Santa Fe, New Mexico, voted in October to conduct a study on the feasibility of a city-run public bank. And in December, the Seattle City Council’s finance committee hosted experts in public banking to explore the topic.

But nowhere have the steps toward public banking been more successful than in the state of Vermont. There, Hallsmith and other advocates won a small victory against Wall Street through an effort so relentless and strategic that it would have made any banking lobbyist proud. They combined savvy organizing with data-driven reports and policy briefs to prove the benefits of a public bank-like avoiding fat interest payments to Wall Street banks-for the state’s economy.   A Fight for Public Banks