Posted on June 1, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (FRBB) released a report titled “The Bank of North Dakota: A Model for Massachusetts and Other States?” The report confirms that the Bank of North Dakota (BND) is a prudent, well-managed financial institution that serves in partnership with community banks as an effective economic backstop to credit contractions. . . .
Read more here.
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Posted on May 30, 2011 by Ellen Brown
[T]hreatening to default should not be a partisan issue. In view of all the hazards it entails, one wonders why any responsible person would even flirt with the idea.
— Alan S. Blinder, Princeton professor of economics, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve
A game of Russian roulette is being played with the national debt ceiling. Fire the wrong chamber of the gun, and the result could be the second Great Depression. Continue reading →
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Posted on May 17, 2011 by Ellen Brown
California is the eighth largest economy in the world, and it has a debt burden to match. It has outstanding general obligation bonds and revenue bonds of $158 billion, largely incurred for infrastructure. Of this tab, $70 billion is just for interest. Over $7 billion of California’s annual budget goes to pay interest on the state’s debt.
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Posted on May 10, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Debate continues to rage between the inflationists who say the money supply is increasing, dangerously devaluing the currency, and the deflationists who say we need more money in the economy to stimulate productivity. The debate is not just an academic one, since the Fed’s monetary policy turns on it and so does Congressional budget policy.
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Posted on April 27, 2011 by Ellen Brown
“Deficit terrorists” are gutting governments and forcing the privatization of public assets, all in the name of “deficit reduction.” But deficits aren’t actually a bad thing. In today’s monetary scheme, in which most money comes from debt, debt and deficits are actually necessary to have a stable money supply. The public debt is the people’s money.
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Posted on April 16, 2011 by Ellen Brown
If the Gaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors, and whether education and health care continue to be free.
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Posted on March 31, 2011 by Ellen Brown
The Japanese government can afford its enormous debt because it owns the bank that is its principal creditor. But competitors are attempting to force the bank’s privatization. If they succeed, they could propel the country into debt servitude along with other credit-strapped nations.
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Posted on March 28, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Cut spending, raise taxes, sell off public assets – these are the unsatisfactory solutions being debated across the nation; but the budget crises now being suffered by nearly all the states did not arise from too much spending or too little taxation. They arose from a credit freeze on Wall Street. In the wake of the 2009 financial market collapse, banks curtailed their lending more sharply than in any year since 1942, driving massive unemployment and causing local tax revenues to plummet.
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Posted on March 7, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Public sector man sitting in a bar: “They’re trying to take away our pensions.”
Private sector man: “What’s a pension?”
— Cartoon in the Houston Chronicle
As states struggle to meet their budgets, public pensions are on the chopping block, but they needn’t be. States can keep their pension funds intact while leveraging them into many times their worth in loans, just as Wall Street banks do. They can do this by forming their own public banks, following the lead of North Dakota—a state that currently has a budget surplus.
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Posted on March 2, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Posted on February 16, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Responding to an unfilled need for credit for local government, local businesses and consumers, three states in the last month have introduced bills for state-owned banks — Oregon, Washington and Maryland – joining Illinois, Virginia, Massachusetts and Hawaii to bring the total number to seven.
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Posted on February 3, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices. But what caused the recent jump in food prices remains a matter of debate . . . .
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Posted on January 24, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Bills were introduced on January 18 in both the House and Senate of the Washington State Legislature that add Washington to the growing number of states now actively moving to create public banking facilities.
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Posted on January 16, 2011 by Ellen Brown
Posted on January 12, 2011 by Ellen Brown
The Federal Reserve was set up by bankers for bankers, and it has served them well. Out of the blue, it came up with $12.3 trillion in nearly interest-free credit to bail the banks out of a credit crunch they created. That same credit crisis has plunged state and local governments into insolvency, but the Fed has now delivered its ultimatum: there will be no “quantitative easing” for municipal governments.
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Posted on December 22, 2010 by Ellen Brown
“Doubtful it stood, as two spent swimmers that do cling together, and choke their art.”
–Shakespeare, “Macbeth”
The Greek bailout was supposed to be an isolated case, a test of the EU’s ability to quarantine an infected member, preventing it from spreading “debt contagion.”
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Posted on December 18, 2010 by Ellen Brown
We’ve seen behind the curtain, as the Fed waved its magic liquidity wand over Wall Street. Now it’s time to enlist this tool in the service of the people.
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Posted on December 2, 2010 by Ellen Brown
Unlike Zimbabwe, the U.S. can easily get the currency it needs without being beholden to anyone. But wouldn’t that dilute the value of the currency? No.
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Posted on November 19, 2010 by Ellen Brown
The deficit hawks are circling, hovering over QE2, calling it just another inflationary bank bailout. But unlike QE1, QE2 is not about saving the banks…
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/qe2.php
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Posted on November 5, 2010 by Ellen Brown
For two years, politicians have danced around the nationalization issue, but ForeclosureGate may be the last straw.
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/force_nationalization.php
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WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
“The Bank of North Dakota: A Model for Massachusetts and Other States?” — Response to the May 2011 Report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Last week, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (FRBB) released a report titled “The Bank of North Dakota: A Model for Massachusetts and Other States?” The report confirms that the Bank of North Dakota (BND) is a prudent, well-managed financial institution that serves in partnership with community banks as an effective economic backstop to credit contractions. . . .
Read more here.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 6 Comments »