America's Trade Bank: Ex-Im.

As an amendment to yesterday's Russian Pork post, an article on the Council of Hemispheric Affairs appears to imply we do already have a system in place for exploring and expanding our exports: The Export-Import Bank of the United States. Its key role is financing and providing insurance to companies who are looking to begin or increase their export capacities.

This is an instance of the government spending money to make money, or otherwise stimulate the ecomony. Their recent track record in that regard doesn't seem good. However, the rationale that there are several billion customers (and all the fastest growing markets) outside our borders, it does seem like a reasonable gamble which could correct that trend of poor performance.

Ex-Im, as a government program, is up for renewal this year. The government needs to decide to keep or discard the bank. The CoHA article lists some of the common for and against arguments in a "Critics" section about halway down. I can't quite catch the import of half the statements, so I find it difficult to make a meaningul summary. Take a quick look to see fi you can untwist them back to plain english.  As best I can tell, the main arguments for each side are 1) Ex-Im crimps the performance of domestic lending institutions by competing for the same borrowers, and 2) Ex-Im is a counter-force against the effect of similar institutions in other nations.

So, do we cut away Ex-Im to save some budget and shift those borrowers back to private banks, or do we keep Ex-Im in hopes it will generate more export jobs than the private banks could? Use the eBook tips to get people talking, save the thread and e-mail your Congressman.