Ellen Brown
Ellen Brown is an attorney and founder of the Public Banking Institute. She is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling Web of Debt, and her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, which explores successful public banking models historically and globally.
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, December 26, 2019 The Key to Solving the Climate Crisis Is Beneath Our Feet The Green New Deal resolution that was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives in February hit a wall in the Senate, where it was called unrealistic and unaffordable. In a Washington Post article titled “ The Green New Deal Sets Us Up for Failure. We Need a Better Approach ,” former... Read more |
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Views Thursday, December 12, 2019 Paul Volcker’s Long Shadow Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called Paul Volcker “ the most effective chairman in the history of the Federal Reserve.” But while Volcker, who passed away Dec. 8 at age 92, probably did have the greatest historical impact of any Fed chairman, his legacy is, at best, controversial... Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 07, 2019 Is the Run on the Dollar Due to Panic or Greed? What’s going on in the repo market? Rates on repurchase agreements (“repo”) should be around 2%, in line with the fed funds rate. But they shot up to over 5% on September 16 and got as high as 10% on September 17. Yet banks were refusing to lend to each other, evidently passing up big profits to... Read more |
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Views Monday, September 30, 2019 The Disaster of Negative Interest Rates The dollar strengthened against the euro in August, merely in anticipation of the European Central Bank slashing its key interest rate further into negative territory. Investors were fleeing into the dollar, prompting President Trump to tweet on Aug. 30: The Euro is dropping against the Dollar “... Read more |
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Views Friday, August 09, 2019 Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates on July 31st for the first time in more than a decade, commentators were asking why. According to official data, the economy was rebounding, unemployment was below 4%, and GDP growth was above 3%. If anything, by the Fed’s own reasoning, it should have... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 11, 2019 How to Pay for It All: An Option the Candidates Missed The Democratic Party has clearly swung to the progressive left, with candidates in the first round of presidential debates coming up with one program after another to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the struggling middle class. Proposals ranged from a Universal Basic Income to Medicare for All... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, June 26, 2019 Facebook May Pose a Greater Danger Than Wall Street Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies, as has already been demonstrated—not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly... Read more |
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Views Thursday, April 18, 2019 The Public Banking Revolution Is Upon Us As public banking gains momentum across the country, policymakers in California and Washington state are vying to form the nation’s second state-owned bank, following in the footsteps of the highly successful Bank of North Dakota, founded in 1919. The race is extremely close, with state bank bills... Read more |
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Views Friday, February 22, 2019 The Fed's Dramatic About-Face “Quantitative easing” was supposed to be an emergency measure, but the Federal Reserve is now taking a surprising new approach toward the policy. The F ed “eased” shrinkage in the money supply due to the 2008-09 credit crisis by pumping out trillions of dollars in new bank reserves. After the... Read more |
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Views Friday, February 08, 2019 The Venezuela Myth Keeping Us From Transforming Our Economy Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is getting significant media attention these days, after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview that it should “be a larger part of our conversation” when it comes to funding the “Green New Deal.” According to MMT, the government can spend what it needs... Read more |