Posted on April 18, 2012 by Ellen Brown
The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers. Continue reading →
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Posted on April 8, 2012 by Ellen Brown
‘Cause I live and breathe this Philadelphia freedom
From the day that I was born I’ve waved the flag
Philadelphia freedom took me knee-high to a man
Yeah, gave me peace of mind my daddy never had.
— Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Philadelphia Freedom”
It is well known that Philadelphia was the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution and American democracy. Less well known is that it was also the birthplace of public banking in America. The Philadelphia Quakers originated a banking model involving government-issued money lent to farmers. The profits returned to the government and the people in a sustainable feedback loop that nourished and supported the local economy. Continue reading →
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Posted on April 1, 2012 by Ellen Brown
Even the world’s most resource-rich country has now been caught in the debt trap. Its once-proud government programs are being subjected to radical budget cuts—cuts that could have been avoided if the government had not quit borrowing from its own central bank in the 1970s.
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Posted on March 22, 2012 by Ellen Brown
Far from reducing risk, derivatives increase risk, often with catastrophic results.
— Derivatives expert Satyajit Das, Extreme Money (2011)
The “toxic culture of greed” on Wall Street was highlighted again last week, when Greg Smith went public with his resignation from Goldman Sachs in a scathing oped published in the New York Times. In other recent eyebrow-raisers, LIBOR rates—the benchmark interest rates involved in interest rate swaps—were shown to be manipulated by the banks that would have to pay up; and the objectivity of the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) was called into question, when a 50% haircut for creditors was not declared a “default” requiring counterparties to pay on credit default swaps on Greek sovereign debt.
Interest rate swaps are less often in the news than credit default swaps, but they are far more important in terms of revenue, composing fully 82% of the derivatives trade. In February, JP Morgan Chase revealed that it had cleared $1.4 billion in revenue on trading interest rate swaps in 2011, making them one of the bank’s biggest sources of profit. Continue reading →
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Posted on March 8, 2012 by Ellen Brown
Once the black sheep of high finance, government owned banks can reassure depositors about the safety of their savings and can help maintain a focus on productive investment in a world in which effective financial regulation remains more of an aspiration than a reality.
— Centre for Economic Policy Research, VoxEU.org (January 2010)
Public sector banking is a concept that is relatively unknown in the United States. Only one state—North Dakota—owns its own bank. North Dakota is also the only state to escape the credit crisis of 2008, sporting a budget surplus every year since; but skeptics write this off to coincidence or other factors. The common perception is that government bureaucrats are bad businessmen. To determine whether government-owned banks are assets or liabilities, then, we need to look farther afield. Continue reading →
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Posted on February 26, 2012 by Ellen Brown
Seventeen states have now introduced bills for state-owned banks, and others are in the works. Hawaii’s innovative state bank bill addresses the foreclosure mess. County-owned banks are being proposed that would tackle the housing crisis by exercising the right of eminent domain on abandoned and foreclosed properties. Arizona has a bill that would do this for homeowners who are current in their payments but underwater, allowing them to refinance at fair market value. Continue reading →
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Posted on February 20, 2012 by Ellen Brown
In an article titled “Still No End to ‘Too Big to Fail,’” William Greider wrote in The Nation on February 15th:
Financial market cynics have assumed all along that Dodd-Frank did not end “too big to fail” but instead created a charmed circle of protected banks labeled “systemically important” that will not be allowed to fail, no matter how badly they behave.
That may be, but there is one bit of bad behavior that Uncle Sam himself does not have the funds to underwrite: the $32 trillion market in credit default swaps (CDS). Thirty-two trillion dollars is more than twice the U.S. GDP and more than twice the national debt. Continue reading →
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Posted on February 4, 2012 by Ellen Brown
A foreclosure settlement between five major banks guilty of “robo-signing” and the attorneys general of the 50 states is pending for Monday, February 6th; but it is still not clear if all the AGs will sign. California was to get over half of the $25 billion in settlement money, and California AG Kamala Harris has withstood pressure to settle.
That is good. She and the other AGs should not sign until a thorough investigation has been conducted. The evidence to date suggests that “robo-signing” was not a mere technical default or sloppy business practice but was part and parcel of a much larger fraud, the fraud that brought down the whole economy in 2008. It is not just distressed homeowners but the entire economy that has paid the price, resulting in massive unemployment and a shrunken tax base, throwing state and local governments into insolvency and forcing austerity measures and cutbacks in government services across the nation. Continue reading →
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Posted on January 25, 2012 by Ellen Brown
The Wall Street Journal reported on January 19th that the Obama Administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the “robo-signing” scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation reveals that it did not just happen occasionally but was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and that it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes. If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail – fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion. Continue reading →
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Posted on January 20, 2012 by Ellen Brown
Posted on January 14, 2012 by Ellen Brown
An electronic database called MERS has created defects in the chain of title to over half the homes in America. Counties have been cheated out of millions of dollars in recording fees, and their title records are in hopeless disarray. Meanwhile, foreclosed and abandoned homes are blighting neighborhoods. Straightening out the records and restoring the homes to occupancy is clearly in the public interest, and the burden is on local government to do it. But how? New legal developments are presenting some innovative alternatives. Continue reading →
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Posted on January 9, 2012 by Ellen Brown
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow may have stopped the Pony Express, but the nation’s oldest and second largest employer is now under attack. Claiming the Postal Service is bankrupt, critics are pushing legislation that would defuse the postal crisis by breaking the backs of the postal workers’ unions and mandating widespread layoffs. But the “crisis” is an artificial one, created by Congress itself. Continue reading →
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Posted on December 16, 2011 by Ellen Brown
The campaign to “move your money” has gotten a groundswell of support. Having greater impact would be to “move our money” — move our local government revenues out of Wall Street banks into our own publicly-owned banks.
Continue reading →
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Posted on December 7, 2011 by Ellen Brown
On November 27, Bloomberg News reported the results of its successful case to force the Federal Reserve to reveal the lending details of its 2008-09 bank bailout. Bloomberg reported that by March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion in below-market loans and guarantees to rescuing the financial system; and that these nearly interest-free loans came without strings attached.
The Fed insisted that the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, but the Bloomberg report said the banks reaped a $13 billion windfall in profits; and “details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.”
The revelations provoked shock and outrage among commentators. But in a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Committees focused on the financial services industry, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke responded on December 6th that the figures were greatly exaggerated. Continue reading →
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Posted on December 2, 2011 by Ellen Brown
–Prepared in consultation with Timothy Canova, Professor of Law, Chapman University, and Robert Bows, board of directors, Public Banking Institute; revised February 12, 2012 in consultation with Colorado attorney Earl Staelin.
The recent interest in state-owned banks has provoked challenges on grounds that they violate state constitutional prohibitions against lending the credit of the state.
The argument that a state-owned bank violates the constitutional prohibition against lending the credit of the state is not valid, for at least two reasons:
(1) A number of states have owned banks historically, and many have infrastructure banks today, which are specifically authorized by 23 U.S. Code Section 610. The constitutionality of state infrastructure banks does not seem to have been challenged; and the constitutionality of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, which acts as a “bankers’ bank” and mini-Fed for the state, has been confirmed by the Supreme Court of North Dakota and the U.S. Supreme Court.
(2) The argument misconstrues the nature of banking. All states deposit their revenues and invest their capital in banks. This does not mean they are “lending the state’s credit.” The bank lends its own credit. If the state can put its capital and revenues in a privately-owned bank, it can put them in a publicly-owned bank.
Continue reading →
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Posted on November 29, 2011 by Ellen Brown
“To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches.”
So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week. . . .
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Posted on November 19, 2011 by Ellen Brown
It is no great surprise that with only days to go, the congressional “super committee,” given the herculean task of carving an additional $1.2 trillion out of the federal budget, has failed to reach agreement. Why should six Republicans and six Democrats with diametrically opposed views agree in a few weeks, when Congress couldn’t shake hands on it after months of wrangling, despite the guillotine blade of a federal default hanging over their heads?
Whether the super committee reaches agreement or not, however, the deficit hawks win. Continue reading →
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Posted on November 17, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Michael Rozeff has just posted a piece on LewRockwell.com called “The Many Fallacies of Ellen Brown,” responding to my article titled “Time for an Economic Bill of Rights” (below). Here is a short reply.
Mr. Rozeff seems to think that (1) saving the government money is a bad idea, and (2) keeping the status quo, in which private bankers get the inflated cost of money — a cost that is passed on to the consumer — is a good idea. . . .
Read full post here.
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Posted on November 12, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Henry Ford said, “It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
We are beginning to understand, and Occupy Wall Street looks like the beginning of the revolution.
Read full article here.
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Posted on November 9, 2011 by Ellen Brown
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
The European Stabilization Mechanism, Or How the Goldman Vampire Squid Just Captured Europe
The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers. Continue reading →
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