Attention, all you wishful, would-be homebuyers, builders and lenders.

A Davis man with a utopian outlook offers the credit-starved some food for thought.

Jim Pinkoski says he knows how:

*Homebuyers could get mortgage money easily without paying high interest rates.

*Builders could get paid in full for each home sold as soon as escrow closes.

*The lender could be quickly repaid and therefore have no need to charge high interest rates.

That's how things would work, says Pinkoski, if there were only one financial institution in the whole U.S. -- that's one bank for all the saving, checking and lending activity.

The 31-year old Pinkoski, a sometime professional cartoonist who developed his theory after three years as a bank teller, has drawn on his artistic skills to present the idea in a copyright pamphlet.

In "The New Money Game," he uses the example of mortgage lending to illustrate how things would work if one institution handled all the money.

First, the bank lends the money to a person who wants to buy a house.  Next, the homebuyer pays the money to the homebuilder.  Finally, the homebuilder deposits the money into his account -- which, of course, is in the same institution that loaned out the money.  By extension, if the builder pays out some of what he was paid, the recipients will make deposits in the bank.

So the bank already has its money back.  Therefore, says Pinkoski, it can afford to charge a borrower a miniscule amount compared to what the institutions now require and yet still make a comfortable profit.

The "one bank" theory could work, says Pinkoski, because "all the money is actually numbers on computer," and existing institutions -- which have similar, even compatible computer systems -- could be consolidated into one giant institution.

What Pinkoski doesn't say is exactly how the nation's 14,000 banks and 4,600 savings and loan associations, more than 17,000 federally insured credit unions and other financial institutions -- which now are fiercely competitive -- can be persuaded to join forces.

Relaxing in his rural rented home where the walls are papered with magazine art, so that Mr. Spock eyes Albert Einstein and a lifesize cutout of the movies' Superman faces one of comedian Steve Martin, Pinkoski said that he hopes media attention will help him reach receptive minds in the financial world.

The few bankers he's talked with in this area have not been favorable, "but they can't prove it won't work," he said.  "Computer people know it works, in theory."

After developing his one-bank notion, Pinkoski took the idea further, and now he sees it as the cornerstone of an entire utopian system.  Short-term benefits, he said, would include wages for housewives and rebates to mortgage-holders who still owe money on their homes but who, because of high interest charges, have paid more than the original sale price.

In the long term, he said, the one-bank system could come to operate as a quasi-governmental entity, perhaps eliminating some of all taxation by allocating part of its huge reserves for scientific research, health care, welfare and Social Security.  But the exact limits on the nation's only financial institution, he said, would be "up to the people to figure out."