Episodes
Wednesday Jun 18, 2014
It's Our Money with Ellen Brown - Why We Need Public Banks Now - 06/18/14
Wednesday Jun 18, 2014
Wednesday Jun 18, 2014
Unexamined assumptions often lock us into limited choices, especially when
it comes to the topic of managing public money. We assume there's only so
much of it and that if we need more we must deal with the de facto guardians
of its distribution, the big banks. Discovering that the public can source
its own money for public interests has generated a groundswell of new
efforts to create publicly-owned banks. On today's show, Ellen speaks with
Mike Krauss, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Project, about the need and the
issues underlying the growing public banking movement; on this week's
Public Banking Report, co-host Walt McRee talks with an elected public
official, Ed Brominski of Luzerne County, PA, who is leading the charge for
change despite the entrenched resistance of his colleague's unexamined
assumptions about municipal money management.
Wednesday Jun 04, 2014
Wednesday Jun 04, 2014
One of the best kept deceptions within common civic parlance is that our cities, states and communities are “broke” – a meme perpetuated by a lack of public knowledge about what governments do with their money and a highly profitable investment industry that uses those funds for substantial private profits that suck outrageous sums out of our common wealth.
This week It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown provides a look into where our “buried” civic treasure can be found and how we can use it to create substantial public benefit. Ellen shows how private financing of civic projects has created repeated windfalls for banks and investors, and she later talks with Professor Tom Greco about how communities can create credit-based economies to get free of the all-encompassing web of civic debt.
On the Public Banking Report, co-host Walt McRee discusses the location and contents of every community’s “treasure chest” with Scott Baker, an expert at evaluating how to determine how much is in it and how it can be used to dramatically change local economic prospects.