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Michael Moore just came out with
“Michael Moore’s Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now,” which lists as #4:
“Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota.”
It’s currently on the front page of Reddit (one of the world’s most popular websites).
Filed under: In the News | 21 Comments »
The credit crunch is getting worse on Main Street, despite a Wall Street bailout now in the trillions of dollars. The Fed may have played all its cards, but state and local governments still hold a few aces. Some local politicians are looking into the feasibility of opening their own publicly-owned banks, providing them with their own credit machines.
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/publicly-owned.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 9 Comments »
The Daily Bell, a Swiss journal in the hard-money camp, interviewed me (here) , then had Larry Parks respond (here). Now they’ve critiqued my latest article, on the IMF (here). They’re not budging from their hard-money position, but they are so diplomatic! They say, “we will comment on it and hope that Brown doesn’t mind we have returned to her work. She shouldn’t write such interesting articles!” If anybody wants to jump in and defend the Greenbacker position, that would be great.
P.S. They did a followup here. Quite fun. Here is my favorite part:
Most people need backing of some sort to break through and capture a share of the public mind, but Ms. Brown has seemingly accomplished this all by herself, without funding of any kind. It almost defies comprehension. If we wore a thousand hats, they would all be doffed in respect to Ms. Brown’s courageous and apparently independent intellectual journey.
We are impressed enough with Ms. Brown’s approach to award her a title all her own, in fact. There are in our opinion, in modern economic thought, now Keynesians, Austrians and Brownians.
Of course, then they proceed to lay into all my best tenets, but whatever; let the games proceed!
There is more here, titled “The Brownian conundrum: Is a state solution possible?” (Daily Bell, October 10, 2009). Thanks, trusty bloggers and Daily Bell!
Oct 12, 2009: They’re still at it. They seem to have found our crowd congenial sparring partners. I think they’re congenial too! Anyone who wants to take a tilt at the hard-money windmill, it’s here.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 34 Comments »
Many people have written asking for help with their foreclosures, following several articles I wrote on that subject. I’m not actively practicing law now, just writing, so I thought I would suggest some alternatives here. For legal help, you could try these websites —
http://livinglies.wordpress.com/in-trouble-right-now-press-here/lawyers-who-get-it-work-in-progress/
http://www.succeedwithloanmods.com/
http://www.citizensreformcenter.com
For steps to follow if you want to do it yourself, try this —
http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2009/09/01/fight-foreclosure-make-em-produce-the-note-5/
http://cyclopswarrior.blogspot.com/2010/02/primer-on-how-to-successfully-challenge.html
A free book may be downloaded here —
“Debt Hope: Down and Dirty Survival Strategies” http://www.scribd.com/doc/25443175/Debt-Hope-Down-and-Dirty-Survival-Strategies-Evaluation-Version-Complete
Bobby Wilbert adds:
Please let your readers know about these sources for lawyers who fight foreclosures and who get it (some like me handle cases at no costs to clients). These lists have the best of the best in foreclosure defense —
Click to access Boot_Camp_MasterList.pdf
http://naca.networkats.com/members_online/members/directorya.asp?token=
http://www.lsc.gov/map/index.php
Good luck!
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 39 Comments »
“A year ago,” said law professor Ross Buckley on Australia’s ABC News last week, “nobody wanted to know the International Monetary Fund. Now it’s the organiser for the international stimulus package which has been sold as a stimulus package for poor countries.”
The IMF may have catapulted to a more exalted status than that. According to Jim Rickards, director of market intelligence for scientific consulting firm Omnis, the unannounced purpose of last week’s G20 Summit in Pittsburgh was that “the IMF is being anointed as the global central bank.”
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/imf.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 8 Comments »
A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose – on 60 million mortgages…
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/mers.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 31 Comments »
The disastrous collapse of Lehman Brothers on 9-11-08 was the catalyst that changed the rules of the game for the big Wall Street financial players. The banks would henceforth be bailed out by the taxpayers, no matter what the cost. Was the Lehman bankruptcy the result of “market forces” or was it engineered? If the bank was pushed over the brink by invisible hands, whose hands were they and what goal was being served?
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/economic9-11.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 15 Comments »
The government seems to be speaking out of both sides of its mouth, as the President preaches one thing and the FDA does another. If we are going to have “smarter medicine that really works,” we need to get politics, lobbies and cronyism out of science.
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/mercury_mischief.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 4 Comments »
A response to a critique of a publicly-owned bank solution posted on the American Monetary Institute blog.
Read response here.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 6 Comments »
While the U.S. spends trillions of dollars to bail out its banking system, leaving its economy to languish, China is being called a “miracle economy” that has decoupled from the rest of the world. As the rest of the world sinks into the worst recession since the 1930s, China has maintained a phenomenal 8% annual growth rate. Those are the reports, but commentators are dubious. They ask how that growth is possible, when other countries relying heavily on exports have suffered major downturns and remain in the doldrums.
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/secret_of_china.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 45 Comments »
President Obama has repeated his call for a public option in health care, in order to create some competition for the insurance companies and keep them honest. We the people need to call for a public option in banking, in order to create some competition for private banks and keep them honest.
Read more here-
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/public_option.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 12 Comments »
California has over $17 billion on deposit in banks that have refused to honor its IOUs, forcing legislators to accept crippling budget cuts. These austerity measures are unnecessary. If the state were to deposit its money in its own state-owned bank, it could have enough credit to solve its budget crisis with funds to spare.
Read more here-
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/california_iou.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 14 Comments »
Since Wall Street has failed to provide a functioning credit system, California would be totally justified in providing its own. The other choice is to accept debt peonage.
Read more here-
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/sunshine_state.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 11 Comments »
“As goes California,” says the adage, “so goes the nation.” All eyes are therefore on the Golden State as it attempts to solve its $26 billion budget deficit. The world’s eighth largest economy is not going quietly into that pit of debt and devastation that has devoured Third World countries whole. The State’s voters have drawn a line in the sand against further tax hikes, while Democratic leaders have drawn a line at further cuts in services or selloff of public assets. State legislators are deadlocked, caught between the rock of tax ceilings and the hard place of debt limits.
Read more here:
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/california_dreamin.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 10 Comments »
On June 25, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a plan that would save the state $3 billion by cutting school spending, saying he would rather see the state issue IOUs than delay the funding problem with a piecemeal approach. The state’s total budget deficit is $24.3 billion. Meanwhile, other funding doors are slamming closed. The Obama administration has said it will not use federal stimulus money to prop up California; and Fitch Ratings, a bond rating agency, announced that it was downgrading the credit rating of the state, which already has the lowest in the nation. What to do? Perhaps California could take a lesson from the island state of Guernsey . . . .
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/california_wallet.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 11 Comments »
Buried on page 83 of the 89-page Report on Financial Regulatory Reform issued by the U.S. Administration on June 17 is a recommendation that the new Financial Stability Board strengthen and institutionalize its mandate to promote global financial stability. Financial stability is a worthy goal, but the devil is in the details. The new global Big Brother is based in the Bank for International Settlements, a controversial institution that raises red flags among the wary . . . .
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/big_brother_basel.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 21 Comments »
While contrarians are screaming “hyperinflation!”, the money supply is actually shrinking. This is because most money today comes into existence as bank loans, and lending has shrunk substantially. That means the Fed needs to “monetize” debt just to fill the breach.
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/quantitative_easing.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 39 Comments »
Ralph Foster, author of “Fiat Paper Currency — The History and Evolution of Our Money,” points out that the quote opening my article of May 19, 2009 on the Weimar inflation came from his book. (“It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. The shelves in the grocery store were empty. You could buy nothing with your paper money.”) My source was a secondary one that omitted that attribution, so I’ll make it here with apologies. Here is an endorsement of Foster’s groundbreaking book by Ruth Hanham, Ph.D., of Harvard University:
“[Foster] states his case clearly, drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, touching upon many diverse cultures, from the Chinese to the European to the North American. His professional familiarity with all types of currency and coinage grounds the book, making it refreshingly free of airy theories and complicated jargon, accessible to any intelligent reader. I highly recommend it.”
Ruth S. Arnon Hanham
Ph.D. History
Harvard University 1978
Ralph Foster’s book is available at home.pacbell.net/tfdf.
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 8 Comments »
Prophetically, GM named one of its now-extinct brands the Firebird. Like the fabled Firebird, GM could be reborn as something else. We now own a car company. To finance its transformation into something better, we just need to own a bank.
Read more here –
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/gm.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 5 Comments »
PRN.FM Radio Show, 3pm EST Wednesdays. Click image for archives.
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
CUT WALL STREET OUT! HOW STATES CAN FINANCE THEIR OWN RECOVERY
Pouring money into the private banking system has only fixed the economy for bankers and the wealthy; it has not done much to address either the fundamental problem of unemployment or the debt trap so many Americans find themselves in.
Read more here-
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/cut-wallstreet.php
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | 12 Comments »