“Outsiders tend to know South Dakota for two things: Mount Rushmore, which is carved with the faces of four US presidents; and Laura Ingalls Wilder, who moved to the state as a girl and wrote the Little House on the Prairie series of children’s books,” notes Oliver Bullough in Britain’s The Guardian, “But its biggest impact on the world comes from a lesser-known fact: it was ground zero for the earthquake of financial deregulation that has rocked the world’s economy.”
All Americans are now aware of President Trump’s rags-to-riches transformation of a woebegone America frittering away its proud legacy under previous administrations of both parties. It took financial genius and savvy risk-taking to reverse the downward spiral. Yet it took a Brit to open the world’s eyes to former “Governor William ‘Wild Bill’ Janklow, a US marine and son of a Nuremberg prosecutor, who became governor in 1979 and led South Dakota for a total of 16 years.”
Like the America Trump inherited in 2016 (and which triggered his upset victory), “In the late 70s, South Dakota’s economy was mired in deep depression, and Janklow was prepared to do almost anything to bring in a bit of business. He sensed an opportunity in undercutting the regulations imposed by other states.” Janklow started something with Citibank that now makes South Dakota the envy of the financial world, including Swiss banks. Other US states are quickly trying to jump on the bandwagon. “The economy was, at that time, dead,” Janklow recalled. “I was desperately looking for an opportunity for jobs for South Dakotans.”
“Janklow was truly a genius in seeing this would be economic development with a very low cost to the government,” a South Dakota trust task force member interviewed by Bullough said, adding that by “’the government,'” he of course means that of South Dakota, not that of the nation, other states or indeed other countries, which all lose out on the taxes that South Dakota helps people avoid.”
The South Dakota Trust Company –as of today, below–has “Trust accounts representing more than $70 billion in assets under administration” including 90 billionaire clients. The number is growing quickly. South Dakota is a worldwide leader, though few even in the state know about it. Keeping things quiet actually is best for success.
More media attention only invites Fake News and Democratic Party demagoguery, both of which see the masses as gullible, foolish, and sentimental, no longer the informed citizens that our country was founded upon. These days, the rallying cry of the left is “Redistribute the Wealth” to “Make Everyone Equal” while the right, like trust lawyer Terry Prendergast, correctly says “People should be allowed to do with their property what they desire to do.”
Turn on the current television programming. See the moral values and commercialized entertainments that a few “aristocratic” moguls already use to mesmerize the populace. None of it supports Christianity and conservative thinking. Little of it supports America’s heritage. Perhaps a competing merit-based and can-do aristocracy will arise to replace the ruins of monarchies around the world. Should we look to Davos or to South Dakota for leadership to a better world?
Listen to a podcast of The Guardian article