Podcast: My interview with Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt and Public Bank Solution

Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt and Public Bank Solution.

Ellen Brown will be on my podcast tomorrow!

I am excited to have Ellen Brown (Ellenbrown.com) on my podcast tomorrow. I am a big fan. Ellen has been outspoken about the rapacious financial sector and a big  proponent of public banking and banking/finance for the public purpose. Looking forward to speaking with her. Stay tuned for the podcast, which I will post here.

Ellen Brown — EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid

Greece can regain its sovereignty by defaulting on its debt, abandoning the ECB and the euro, and issuing its own national currency (the drachma) through its own central bank. But that would destabilize the eurozone and might end in its breakup. 

Will the troika take that risk? 2015 is shaping up to be an interesting year.

Good post by Ellen, but the conclusion above is unrealistic at this point if the opposition wins the election. The Greek people overwhelmingly want to stay in the EZ, so there is as yet no popular support for withdrawing. The question is how the opposition can pressure the troika to relax austerity without raising that sledgehammer.

Web of Debt
EU Showdown: Greece Takes on the Vampire Squid
Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown — Public Banking in Costa Rica: A Remarkable Little-known Model

In Costa Rica, publicly-owned banks have been available for so long and work so well that people take for granted that any country that knows how to run an economy has a public banking option. Costa Ricans are amazed to hear there is only one public depository bank in the United States (the Bank of North Dakota), and few people have private access to it....

Web of Debt
Public Banking in Costa Rica: A Remarkable Little-known Model
Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown — What We Could Do with a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure that Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is the nation’s second largest civilian employer after WalMart. Although successfully self-funded throughout its long history, it is currently struggling to stay afloat. This is not, as sometimes asserted, because it has been made obsolete by the Internet. In fact the post office has gotten more business from Internet orders than it has lost to electronic email. What has pushed the USPS into insolvency is an oppressive 2006 congressional mandate that it prefund healthcare for its workers 75 years into the future. No other entity, public or private, has the burden of funding multiple generations of employees who have not yet even been born....

The Postal Service Modernization Bills brought by Peter DeFazio and Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, would allow the post office to recapitalize itself by diversifying its range of services to meet unmet public needs.

Needs that the post office might diversify into include (1) funding the rebuilding of our crumbling national infrastructure; (2) servicing the massive market of the “unbanked” and “underbanked” who lack access to basic banking services; and (3) providing a safe place to save our money, in the face of Wall Street’s new “bail in” policies for confiscating depositor funds. All these needs could be met at a stroke by some simple legislation authorizing the post office to revive the banking services it efficiently performed in the past.

Web of Debt
What We Could Do with a Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure that Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime
Ellen Brown

Washington's Blog — Public Banking Conference good news: all solutions already here for deficits, debt, full-employment

Some interesting stuff from the Public Banking Conference, and not just public banking.

Washington's Blog
It Only Takes $20 Million to Start a Public Bank

Posted by Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture
(h/t Keven Fathi via email)

Ralph Musgrave — How private bankers enslaved Canada

This is a brilliant article by Ellen Brown about how the Canadian government used to borrow from its own central bank at a zero rate of interest till 1974, when it was persuaded by the Basel Committee to borrow instead from private banks.

Of course the private banks didn’t actually have the funds to lend to the Canadian government: those banks just created the money out of thin air. They did a few book keeping entries and charged billions for doing so: something the Canadian central bank had long been doing for decades and at no cost to taxpayer/citizens.

The incompetence and the stupidity are a wonder to behold. Or perhaps, as Ellen Brown points out, it’s not stupidity at all: it’s very likely a case of private bankers pulling wool over the eyes of politicians and central bank staff. And to some extent it will be a case of private bankers who manage to get into positions of power at central banks pulling wool over everyone’s eyes, and as a reward, being offered lucrative jobs at a private bank on leaving their central bank.

Ralphonomics
How private bankers enslaved Canada
Ralph Musgrave

Ellen Brown — The Trillion Dollar Coin: A Debt Solution for the People

The coin lives on.

Far from being a gimmick, having the U.S. Treasury mint high-denomination coins is a solution that cuts to the root of America’s financial problems. And Benjamin Franklin would have liked it, too.

Yes!
The Trillion Dollar Coin: A Debt Solution for the People
Ellen Brown
(h/t Dan Lynch in MMT Deficit Owl USA Committee at FaceBook)

Ellen handwaves a bit in explaining the existing system of creating money in a sentence or two, but it's no big thing. Otherwise, good framing of the issues and citation of expert opinion. Word is getting around.

BTW, props to Ellen for first noticing the potential of coin issuance.