It´s Our Money with Ellen Brown

It's Our Money - Local Power to the Rescue - 08.17.16

Improving the quality of life and local economies is a concern best addressed by local citizens. Today we revisit how the remarkable commitment of “Non-partisan” North Dakota citizens wrested state control from monopolist outsiders and produced lasting changes that continue to benefit them a century later. Guest David Morris, a co-founder of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, talks with Walt about how we need to reclaim the narrative that government can and should work well on our behalf. And Ellen talks with “The Earth Belongs to Everyone” author Alanna Hartzok about how our current method of taxation overlooks a more obvious and fair approach based on land and the Earth itself.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – Paradigm Shift: Going Local – 07.20.16

Globalization has given giant private interests virtually free reign to influence policies and institutions that undermine local interests. This dominant economic paradigm in which private interests trump public interest is being pushed back by emerging forces ranging from new financial technologies, social media and changing populist narratives about the importance of effective public governance. Ellen speaks with renown global economist, author and futurist Hazel Henderson about these changes, Walt talks with David Morris of the Institute for Local Self Reliance about those changing narratives and Matt Stannard discusses threads of endemic racism that manifest in private bank practices.  And we check in with one of our colleagues about why they will be demonstrating at the Philadelphia Democratic Convention about the role of money in our democracy.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – Heading for the Exits – 07.06.16

BREXIT, FREXIT, GREXIT – where’s everybody going? The recent vote in the United Kingdom to get out of the European Union is a telling example of how ill-served citizens in the political/financial union are feeling about their status. Such feeling suggests the potential for contagion with other European nations souring on the control of the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Ellen talks with a noted international observer Stephen Lendman about this vote and the politics that led up to it and are now playing out.

Matt Stannard reports on another political stage, in NC, where money for local infrastructure depends on compliance with onerous immigration policies.  And our What Wall Street Costs America report focuses on the tragic human costs inflicted on Puerto Rico by American hedge funds.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – It’s About Control – 06.22.16

Mayer Rothschild is famously quoted as saying “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!” – and so it is.  When we look at the distribution of capital, we see that those who control the franchise of creating money through loans and debt rule our world.  Ellen speaks with one of the planet’s oldest serving statesmen, Canada’s Paul Hellyer, about the nature of this controlling franchise and about the alternatives still available.  Walt McRee speaks with Lisa Cody, a researcher for the Service Employees International Union, who did a landmark study of the outrageous costs Los Angeles has paid private financiers as part of our ongoing series What Wall Street Costs America, and Matt Stannard comments on the increasingly popular idea of providing a basic income to people as one way of balancing the scales against the controlling interests.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – The Little Bank that Does – Part 2 – 06.08.16

We continue our conversation with the preeminent historian of the Bank of North Dakota, Dr. Rozanne Enerson Junker, about the founding factors and functional dimensions of America’s only state-owned public bank.  Ellen discusses block-chain technology with co-host Walt McRee while this week’s What Wall Street Costs America examines the impact of predatory banking costs on the city of Detroit --  Matt Stannard talks with Tom Stevens of “Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management.”

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – The Little Bank that Could, and Did, and Does – 05.25.16

The Bank of North Dakota started a century ago with the simple goal of service to citizen victims of the Wall Street monopoly. It now inspires the hopes of citizens nationwide, as they struggle to wrest their financial freedom from the same financial masters. Ellen talks with Dr. Rozanne Enerson Junker, who got her doctorate studying how this upstart institution took on the big banks and turned a challenged economy into a financial powerhouse of service to its owners, the people of North Dakota. Walt McRee talks with Tom Tresser about a new collaborative book called “Chicago is Not Broke – Funding the City We Deserve” -- there’s more money laying around than most citizens know. And Matt Stannard discusses What Wall Street Costs America with a focus on Detroit and Harrison, NJ – yet more victims of the global banking cartels that keep America under the thumb of debt servitude.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – Pursuing Populist Politics – 05.11.16

Almost 100 years ago, populist politics marched across America in reaction to the same sort of monetary monopoly that is depriving this century’s citizens of their hard-earned assets and wealth. That deprivation has mobilized an angry, fed-up backlash of folks willing to support any candidate who will talk straight and promise real change. Several candidates are rising to the challenge.  Ellen talks with Tim Canova, a law professor and Fed expert facing off against Congressional Democratic insider Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in South Florida – out West, a State House Representative candidate Pamela Powers-Hannley runs on a platform calling for a public bank to stave off the deteriorating state economy and using inspiration from 100-years ago; and Matt Stannard talks with the award-winning author David Dayen whose new book Chain of Title reveals how a few plucky citizens pushed back against the Goliath of Wall Street mortgage fraud.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – The Cancer Stage of Capitalism – 04.27.16

Economies are life forces – interdependent systems built upon the facts of life and living. “Life capital” as Ellen’s noted guest Dr. John McMurtry says, is at the heart of true economic reckoning, and money is merely one derivative. McMurtry describes Capitalism as being in a cancerous stage in which it’s being devoured from within by metastasizing greed and self-interest, devouring all living materials in its path. Similarly, we look at the new What Wall Street Costs America project and get specific about how that cancer reality looks in Jefferson County, AL, which declared bankruptcy after buying into toxic interest rates swaps from Wall Street salesmen. One thing though – we also talk about the antidote for that cancer: public banks!

 

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – You’ve Been Strip Mined! – 04.13.16

You’ve Been Strip Mined! That’s how Ellen’s guest Les Leopold describes what has happened to the constructive role of capital, such as investment in research and development, expansion and improvement of services and industries. He calls it “economic strip-mining” in which capital speculators like hedge funds strip the equity of companies, countries and consumers to feed their insatiable desire for short term profits - outcomes be damned.  We also introduce the new national project and campaign called “What Wall Street Costs America” – the start of a national conversation revealing the massive extraction of public dollars by Wall Street interests.  And Matt Stannard reviews presidential politics and bank reform on the Public Banking Report.

 

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – Cash Scrapped – 03.30.16

Kiss your cash goodbye! The word is that things would be more convenient, crooks would be confounded and diseases might be thwarted if we’d just get rid of filthy currency as the most essential form of personal financial liquidity. Currently circulating in the corridors of world financial powers, it may appear as an enlightened technical step forward to eliminate cash, but is it also a stalking horse for yet another way global bank interests can separate you from your assets?  Ellen speaks with renown author and media figure Stephen Lendmen about why this idea is appearing now and what’s happening behind the scenes that’s moving it forward.  Also behind the scenes is a huge and stark reality about municipal debt to Wall Street that the Public Banking Institute is targeting in its new project called What Wall Street Costs America.  Co-host Walt McRee speaks with PBI’s Matt Stannard on this groundbreaking campaign.