Posted on January 29, 2014 by Ellen Brown
“Epic in scale, unprecedented in world history.” That is how William K. Black, professor of law and economics and former bank fraud investigator, describes the frauds in which JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has now been implicated. They involve more than a dozen felonies, including bid-rigging on municipal bond debt; colluding to rig interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars in mortgages, derivatives and other contracts; exposing investors to excessive risk; failing to disclose known risks, including those in the Bernie Madoff scandal; and engaging in multiple forms of mortgage fraud.
So why, asks Chicago Alderwoman Leslie Hairston, are we still doing business with them? Continue reading →
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Posted on January 15, 2014 by Ellen Brown
Governor Jerry Brown and his staff are exchanging high-fives over balancing California’s budget, but the people on whose backs it was balanced are not rejoicing. The state’s high-wire act has been called “the ultimate in austerity budgets.”
Welfare payments, health care for the poor, and benefits for the elderly and disabled have been slashed. State workers have been downsized. School districts in need of cash have been reduced to borrowing through “capital appreciation bonds” bearing 300% interest. In one notorious case, the Santa Ana school district actually borrowed at 1,000% interest. And the governor acknowledges that California still faces a “wall of debt” amounting to $28 billion. Some analysts put it much higher than that. Continue reading →
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Posted on January 15, 2014 by Ellen Brown
After many months of preparation and peer review, the Vermonters for a New Economy group has finally completed the study of the economic impacts of a public bank in Vermont. Highlights include:
- over 2,500 new jobs created
- over $190M in new economic value added
- over $340M in additional gross state product
- the existing institutions already have the capital to establish a bank, no new appropriation or bonding needed.
- recommendation that VEDA’s authority be expanded to include banking, which is what S. 204 proposes this year.
Read the study here.
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WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
Enough Is Enough: Fraud-ridden Banks Are Not L.A.’s Only Option
“Epic in scale, unprecedented in world history.” That is how William K. Black, professor of law and economics and former bank fraud investigator, describes the frauds in which JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has now been implicated. They involve more than a dozen felonies, including bid-rigging on municipal bond debt; colluding to rig interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars in mortgages, derivatives and other contracts; exposing investors to excessive risk; failing to disclose known risks, including those in the Bernie Madoff scandal; and engaging in multiple forms of mortgage fraud.
So why, asks Chicago Alderwoman Leslie Hairston, are we still doing business with them? Continue reading →
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 39 Comments »