It´s Our Money with Ellen Brown

It's Our Money - Too Broke for Bankruptcy

Too Broke for Bankruptcy

It’s a grim irony that only the moneyed can afford the protections of bankruptcy. Even as major companies declare bankruptcy to get relieved of overwhelming debt, expensive pension obligations and union contracts under bankruptcy protection, financially strapped individuals often can’t afford to apply for the same relief.  Enter Upsolve, a free online app designed to help people complete the challenging and often expensive process of claiming bankruptcy protection. Our guest, Rohan Pavuluri Upsolve’s founder and CEO, discusses how their celebrated and highly successful app works.  Later, we continue a discussion with Dr. Robert Hockett about how this moment in Federal Reserve history needs to reclaim some of its original intent.   

Its Our Money - Go Ahead and Build It!

Recent decades of American politicians have sidestepped making serious national plans to invest in the country’s debilitated infrastructure. Now our country needs multiple-trillions to restore, improve and create a wide array of public infrastructure projects, from highways to high-speed broadband. A new national grassroots campaign called the National Infrastructure Bank Coalition proposes that we return to our historical routes for financing those projects by creating a public bank to do the job, at no cost to taxpayers!  Ellen speaks with economist Alphecca Muttardy of the NIB Coalition about how that bank would work, and later we talk with Dr. Robert Hockett about how the Federal Reserve could play an active role in making it happen. 

It's Our Money - Why Capitalism Will Always Fail Us

Economist Richard Wolff’s new book “The Sickness is the System” lays out the mechanics of why  capitalism inevitably produces systemic inequities and market failures despite significant market successes. Wolff’s thesis is powerfully illustrated by the economic struggling and deprivation of the current pandemic as well as recurring cycles of booms and busts that shift even more wealth to the capitalist elite.  Ellen talks with Wolff about a better system that is both more equitable and more democratic and why it is increasingly urgent that we move toward it.    

 

Rest in Power

The sudden passing of Kevin Zeese has removed from the stage of social, political and economic activism a powerful voice and a tireless worker. Whether leading occupation of the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC in defiance of the government’s intention to bring down their democratically-elected government, leading national efforts against war, helping launch the Occupy movement or a host of other causes, Kevin Zeese made profoundly inspiring and practical contributions to this new era of American democratic action. Zeese was optimistic about the changes brewing over the next few years – we revisit some of his insightful reckonings about this moment in our national history.   

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It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown - “It’s a War”

So says renowned economist Michael Hudson in the concluding part of our recent interview with him.  Hudson makes no bones about the deadly serious game being played by the world’s financial powers and their intention to create a new feudal economic order. Hudson sees the privatization of public assets and institutions, like the Fed’s take-over of the Treasury a hundred years ago, as evidence that our struggle for people-focused public policy is being overwhelmed by debt at the hands of capitalism and greed. But people are rising-up as our guest Rickey Gard Diamond, author of “Screwnomics”, says in her recent article in Ms. Magazine “How Public Banks Make Black Lives Matter”.  She talks with us about women and minorities becoming agents for change in the evolving public discourse about our money.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown - Killing the Host

Killing the Host

Michael Hudson’s landmark 2015 book “Killing the Host” exposed how the empires of finance, insurance and real estate captured the global economy through neo-liberalism and sold us down the road to neo-feudalism. Michael returns to the show to describe why the current global economic demise is the fruit of consummate greed, crony politics and rapacious finance – and what we must do if we are to ever get off this road. On a very positive note that shows that The People aren’t taking all this lying down, Ellen talks with one of the team members behind California’s new infrastructure bank bill, AB 310, which may set a national example for accelerating implementation of new state public banks.

 

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown - Bailing Out Wall Street, Sacrificing Main Street

Bailing Out Wall Street, Sacrificing Main Street

 

The bank-owned Federal Reserve has been taking unprecedented actions of late propping up capital markets, corporations and banks in response to the economic impact of the Covid pandemic and the covert collapse of the financial system dating back to mid-2019. Among their recovery mechanisms has been the purchase of grouped market assets called Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) managed under a no-bid contract with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager and ETF manager. Ellen discusses Blackrock’s place in the monetary stratosphere, the glaringly obvious conflict of interest and self-dealing in its arrangement with the Fed, and how this backdoor bailout has served Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Then she talks with ETF scholar and expert Ryan Clements, who takes us on a deep dive into the mechanics of these super-large and unregulated funds, how they exploded on the scene, and what it means for the real economy. Meanwhile, America’s states and cities are struggling to address significant pandemic-driven budget shortfalls, for which the Fed has not been very helpful.  Walt talks with economist Dr. Robert Hockett about how the Fed’s Municipal Liquidity Facility needs to be revised to enable real Main Street financial support.

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown - Rethinking the Fed, Payment Systems and Vaccine Speculation …

Rethinking the Fed, Payment Systems and Vaccine Speculation … 

After 100+ years, it’s high time we give serious thought to how well our central bank is meeting its objectives of stabilizing the banking system, ensuring employment levels and keeping a lid on inflation. The report card is not good.  Today’s guest Graham Steele, Director of Stanford’s Corporations and Society Initiative, talks with Ellen about the many ways the Fed has taken on a much more expansive role of salvaging financial markets while avoiding Main Street economic concerns. Dr. Robert Hockett describes his “Inclusive Value Ledger” (IVL) concept that would create a public payment system and give everyone access to a digital wallet.  And Ellen talks about the speculative rush to get a Covid vaccine to market without proper safety precautions.

 

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown - Covid Coverups

Covid Coverups

 

The axiom “never waste a good crisis” has been a reliable tool for Wall Street interests over decades. Under cover of various national economic phenomena, Wall Street interests via the Federal Reserve have managed to direct trillions of dollars into their own accounts. Ellen describes how the new Fed funding channels intended to relieve the financial stress of citizens are being used to save the investor class under the guise of helping Main Street America. We get a front-line report of how that isn’t working at the street level from Carlos Marroquin, who has been serving the immediate needs of people in Los Angeles left out of the Fed-funding circle.  And we talk with Ameya Pawar, a former Chicago elected official who is now helping lead the Economic Security Project on how this crisis can lead to new economic systems that bring forward a new era of sufficiency and well-being – and how public banks can help make that difference.   

It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown - Time to Think Hard About Local Community Investment

Time to Think Hard About Local Community Investment

 

Amid the devastating economic impacts of Corvid-19, Ellen discusses her observations of an evident “War on the States” in which states find themselves fighting for parity in Fed funding for virus recovery. With this forced-refocusing on local financial resources, individuals and communities must reconsider where they’ve been investing their money. Global financial markets have dominated and distorted our systems of economic investment and have done very little for the important concerns of community vitality and public interest, namely local businesses. But security laws have begun to slowly open new opportunities for local investments and our guest, noted author, economist and leading protagonist of crowd-funding Michael Shuman, argues that local investment is key to generating lasting health in local economies, and public banking plays an important role in bringing it forward.