Pope Francis’ revolutionary encyclical addresses not just climate change but the banking crisis. Interestingly, the solution to that crisis may have been modeled in the Middle Ages by Franciscan monks following the Saint from whom the Pope took his name.
Pope Francis has been called “the revolutionary Pope.” Before he became Pope Francis, he was a Jesuit Cardinal in Argentina named Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the son of a rail worker. Moments after his election, he made history by taking on the name Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, the leader of a rival order known to have shunned wealth to live in poverty.
Pope Francis’ June 2015 encyclical is called “Praised Be,” a title based on an ancient song attributed to St. Francis. Most papal encyclicals are addressed only to Roman Catholics, but this one is addressed to the world. And while its main focus is considered to be climate change, its 184 pages cover much more than that. Among other sweeping reforms, it calls for a radical overhaul of the banking system. It states in Section IV: Continue reading
Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: financialization, Pope Francis' encyclical, public banking | 37 Comments »
WEB OF DEBT BLOG 
The Wealth Concentration Engine: Rethinking America’s Financial Plumbing
A Jan. 17 article on Quartz Markets by Catherine Baab reports that JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America returned nearly all of their 2025 profits to shareholders. Goldman Sachs returned $16.78 billion on $17.18 billion in earnings, meaning 97.7% of its earnings went to shareholders. Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Bank of America collectively returned tens of billions more. Across the six largest banks, roughly $100 billion flowed to shareholders in a single year.
They are currently paid 3.65% on their reserves (substantially more than the banks pay on their customers’ deposits), simply for holding them in reserve accounts rather than using them to capitalize new loans. Tens of billions of dollars that were once remitted to the Treasury now land on bank balance sheets with no public benefit attached.
We subsidize the banks’ safety, underwrite their liquidity, and reward them for sitting on assets, without requiring them to invest in communities, build public wealth, or serve any public purpose. It all seems pretty outrageous; but as it turns out, the banks are doing what U.S. corporate law requires them to do. If they don’t follow the “shareholder primacy rule,” they could actually be sued by their shareholders.
Continue reading →Filed under: Ellen Brown Articles/Commentary | Tagged: bank buybacks, Bank of North Dakota, community banks, corporate governance, economic inequality, Ellen Brown, financialization, JS, NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE BANK, public banking, shareholder primacy, Wall Street extraction | 4 Comments »