
Ellen Brown
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how the power to create money has been usurped from the people, and how we can get it back.
April 3rd, 2020 | Was the Fed Just Nationalized?
Web of Debt - Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open. Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was […]
March 22nd, 2020 | Socialism at Its Finest after Fed’s Bazooka Fails
Web of Debt - In what is being called the worst financial crisis since 1929, the US stock market has lost a third of its value in the space of a month, wiping out all of its gains of the last three years. When the Federal Reserve tried to ride to the rescue, it only succeeded in making matters worse. […]
March 10th, 2020 | The Fed’s Baffling Response to the Coronavirus Explained
Web of Debt - When the World Health Organization announced on Feb. 24 that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points, or 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, the Federal Reserve on March 3 slashed the […]
February 8th, 2020 | Mexico Is Showing the World How to Defeat Neoliberalism
Web of Debt - While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had […]
January 9th, 2020 | The Fed Protects Gamblers at the Expense of the Economy
Web of Debt - Although the repo market is little known to most people, it is a $1-trillion-a-day credit machine, in which not just banks but hedge funds and other “shadow banks” borrow to finance their trades. Under the Federal Reserve Act, the central bank’s lending window is open only to licensed depository banks; but the Fed is now […]
December 26th, 2019 | The Key to Solving the Climate Crisis Is Beneath Our Feet
Web of Debt - The Green New Deal resolution that was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives in February hit a wall in the Senate, where it was called unrealistic and unaffordable. In a Washington Post article titled “The Green New Deal Sets Us Up for Failure. We Need a Better Approach,” former Colorado governor and Democratic presidential candidate John […]
December 12th, 2019 | Paul Volcker’s Long Shadow
Web of Debt - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called Paul Volcker “the most effective chairman in the history of the Federal Reserve.” But while Volcker, who passed away Dec. 8 at age 92, probably did have the greatest historical impact of any Fed chairman, his legacy is, at best, controversial. “He restored credibility to the Federal Reserve […]
November 5th, 2019 | Is the Run on the Dollar Due to Panic or Greed?
Web of Debt - What’s going on in the repo market? Rates on repurchase (“repo”) agreements should be about 2%, in line with the Federal Reserve funds rate. But they shot up to over 5% on Sept. 16 and got as high as 10% on Sept. 17. Yet banks were refusing to lend to each other, evidently passing up […]
September 26th, 2019 | The Disaster of Negative Interest Rates
Web of Debt - The dollar strengthened against the euro in August, merely in anticipation of the European Central Bank slashing its key interest rate further into negative territory. Investors were fleeing into the dollar, prompting President Trump to tweet on Aug. 30 When the ECB cut its key rate as anticipated, from a negative 0.4% to a negative […]
September 18th, 2019 | Central Bankers’ Desperate Grab for Power
Web of Debt - Conceding that their grip on the economy is slipping, central bankers are proposing a radical economic reset that would shift yet more power from government to themselves. Central bankers are acknowledging that they are out of ammunition. Mark Carney, the soon-to-be-retiring head of the Bank of England, said in a speech at the annual meeting of central […]
August 29th, 2019 | The Key to a Sustainable Economy Is 5,000 Years Old
Web of Debt - We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes in his […]
August 8th, 2019 | Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China
Web of Debt - When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week, commentators were asking why. According to official data, the economy was rebounding, unemployment was below 4% and gross domestic product growth was above 3%. If anything, by the Fed’s own reasoning, it should have been raising rates. Market pundits explained that we’re in a trade war […]
July 24th, 2019 | The Cheapest Way to Save the Planet Grows Like a Weed
Web of Debt - Philip Steffan / CC BY 2.0 Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. So states a Guardian article, citing a new analysis published in the journal Science. The author explains: As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions […]
July 10th, 2019 | How to Pay for It All: An Option the Candidates Missed
Web of Debt - The Democratic Party has clearly swung to the progressive left, with candidates in the first round of presidential debates coming up with one program after another to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the struggling middle class. Proposals ranged from a Universal Basic Income to Medicare for All to a Green New Deal to student […]
June 26th, 2019 | Facebook May Pose a Greater Danger Than Wall Street
Web of Debt - Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies, as has already been demonstrated—not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly for free. In 2018 these cashless payments […]
June 13th, 2019 | The American Dream Is Alive and Well—in China
Web of Debt - Michael Levine-Clark / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Home ownership has been called “the quintessential American dream.” Yet today less than 65% of American homes are owner occupied, and more than 50% of the equity in those homes is owned by the banks. Compare China, where, despite facing one of the most expensive real estate markets in […]
Web of Debt - This article is excerpted from my new book Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age, available in paperback June 1. The U.S. federal debt has more than doubled since the 2008 financial crisis, shooting up from $9.4 trillion in mid-2008 to over $22 trillion in April 2019. The debt is never paid off. The […]
April 17th, 2019 | The Public Banking Revolution Is Upon Us
Web of Debt - As public banking gains momentum across the country, policymakers in California and Washington state are vying to form the nation’s second state-owned bank, following in the footsteps of the highly successful Bank of North Dakota, founded in 1919. The race is extremely close, with state bank bills now passing their first round of committee hearings […]
April 1st, 2019 | Why Is the Fed Paying So Much Interest to Banks?
Web of Debt - “If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound, Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound, And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.” — “Mary Poppins,” 1964 When “Mary Poppins” was made into a […]
March 19th, 2019 | The Secret to Funding a Green New Deal
Web of Debt - As alarm bells sound over the advancing destruction of the environment, a variety of Green New Deal proposals have appeared in the U.S. and Europe, along with some interesting academic debates about how to fund them. Monetary policy, normally relegated to obscure academic tomes and bureaucratic meetings behind closed doors, has suddenly taken center stage. […]
February 21st, 2019 | The Fed’s Dramatic About-Face
Web of Debt - “Quantitative easing” was supposed to be an emergency measure, but the Federal Reserve is now taking a surprising new approach toward the policy. The Fed “eased” shrinkage in the money supply due to the 2008-09 credit crisis by pumping out trillions of dollars in new bank reserves. After the crisis, the presumption was the Fed […]
January 24th, 2019 | The Financial Secret Behind Germany’s Green Energy Revolution
Web of Debt - The “Green New Deal” endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.-N.Y., and more than 40 other House members has been criticized as imposing a too-heavy burden on the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it. However, taxing the rich is not what the Green New Deal resolution proposes. It says funding would come […]
January 1st, 2019 | Universal Basic Income Is Easier Than It Looks
Web of Debt - Calls for a Universal Basic Income have been increasing, most recently as part of the Green New Deal introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and supported in the last month by at least 40 members of Congress. A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a monthly payment to all adults with no strings attached, similar to Social Security. Critics […]
December 16th, 2018 | This Radical Plan to Fund the ‘Green New Deal’ Just Might Work
Web of Debt - With what author and activist Naomi Klein calls “galloping momentum,” the “Green New Deal” promoted by Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop. Her plan would give a House select committee “a mandate that connects the […]
November 10th, 2018 | Update on the L.A. Measure for a City-owned Bank — A Valiant Effort!
Web of Debt - The Los Angeles charter amendment to approve a city-owned bank did not pass, but it did get 42 percent of the vote, a remarkable feat considering that the dynamic young Public Bank LA advocacy group effectively only had a month to educate 4 million voters on what a public bank is and why passing the […]