Book Review -- The Public Bank Solution, by Ellen Brown -- A Must Read!

     Some books are truly seminal, timely, and a must read.  This great new work by Ellen Brown is definitely in that category.  

    The banking question is surely the biggest issues of our time, and of the ages.  That is why everyone should read this book, and especially our representatives who will be called upon to lead us out of the monetary prison in which we find ourselves.  I encourage you to buy a copy for yourself and an extra copy to send to your representative.

    The time for "our" state and national legislators to act on this issue is now, and to do that they must have a complete, and un-dogmatic, understanding of the current reality and our alternatives. Ellen Brown lays out the reality of the current corrupt system and the public banking solution -- a vital perspective.

    Today, we are on the precipice of another catastrophic banking and market failure caused by the very nature of "our" fascist monetary and private credit system.  Until we have an understanding of the history of the debate, and the modern methods employed around the world today to escape from the money-as-debt trap, we cannot move forward and save our selves from immense tragedy generated by a corrupt banking system.  

   With the internet now having made many millions around the world more aware of their banking system's faulty structures and endemic failures, the time has come to recapture the heritage of the founders of our country, whose revolution, and ours, was made to escape from the tyranny of the "Bank Of England"  - a private credit cartel and monetary monopoly in whose hands we remain enslaved today.

  

Some excerpts from the book:

   "The common perception of government-owned banks is that hey are less efficient, less profitable and more susceptible to political corrupion than banks operated for private profit. Recent studies , however, have found the reverse. Strong public banking sectrors are linked to strong, productive economies" Removing our myopic U.S./ blinders, we find that internationally, not only are publicly-owned banks quite common, but that countries with strong public banking sectors generally have strong, stable economies". All the leading banks in the BRIC half of the globe are state-owned. The largest banks globally are also state-owned.. the world's seven safest banks are also publicly-owned."

    "A major competitive advantage of public, not-for-profit banks is that their costs are less.'Government banks produce more public policy for less cash" decisions are made by stakeholders -- community members , employees and creditors who have a stake in preserving the business as a viable concern -- rather than by shareholders whose chief interest is in maximizing their own short-term profits."

    "Conditions of weak corporate governance in banks provide fertile ground for quick enrichment for both bankers and politicians -- at the ultimate expense of the taxpayer. In such circumstance politicians can offer bankers a system of weak regulation in exchange for party political contributions" Government owned banks, on the other hand, have less freedom to engage in speculative strategies that result in quick enrichment for bank insiders and politicians."

    "The EU evolved from a trade union into a currency union in 1999 with 17 signatories" The Eurozone countries turned the power to issue their own national currencies over to the European Central Bank -- ECB -, which alone can issue euros. Under the terms of the Treaty, the ECB cannot lend to governments but can lend only to banks" Countries on this restrictive system cannot expand their revenues, because their is nowhere to get the money" More is always owed back on loans than was lent out."

   "The burgeoning debts of Eurozone countries have been blamed on their large welfare state, but their social systems were set up before the 1970s, well before European governments were crippled with national debt. What caused their debts to shot up was not that they overspent on social services but that they switched bankers.  Before the 1970s, European governments routinely borrowed from their own central banks. That made the money effectively interest-free, since they owned the banks  and got the profits back as dividends. After the European Monetary Union was established, member countries had to borrow from private banks at interest -- often substantial interest."

   "Governments without the flexibility to expand their money supplies to meet economic needs are reduced to trying to balance their budgets through brutal cuts to government programs and personnel, and sales of public assets at fire sale prices."

   "It was left to tiny Iceland to stand up to the banks and say no to the bankers attempts to impose their debts on the backs of the people" As President Olafur Grimson replied "we introduced currency controls, we let the banks fail, we provided support for the poor, we didn't introduce austerity measures of the scale you are seeing in Europe. And the end result four years later is that Iceland is enjoying progress and recovery very different from the other countries that suffered thru the financial crisis'"

   "Rapid privatization of banking in the 1980s and 1990s led to disastrous results in Mexico, Chile, and other Latin American countries" hyperinflation -- the kind that goes into triple digits and beyond, is not caused by domestic spending but is virtually always a foreign debt problem" "Every hyperinflation in history has been caused by foreign debt service collapsing the exchange rate.""

   "Banks serve critical functions in modern economies. They create our circulating money supply in the form of credits and debits, and they manage the flow of its circulation.. This bank credit is the grease that allows the wheels of industry to turn. The systemic flaw in the scheme is that banks are privately owned and controlled, with a mandate to serve the limited interests of their shareholders, and whose interests and the public interest often conflict. What is good for Wall Street is not necessarily good for the economy. "Independent" central banks overseen by secretive global regulators have been given a mandate to maintain the value of the currency and the stability of the banking system. These could be considered worthy goals" but they have been construed to mean preserving the international banking system at all costs, without regard to the needs of the people, the environment, governments, or social stability. The private banking edifice is a massive piece of machinery with the principal [purpose of preserving itself. What is being preserved is an extractive form of banking that is proving unsustainable and has reached its mathematical limits" To be sustainable, a banking system needs a broader mandate, one that includes the needs of the people and of the earth itself. The simplest and most direct way to transition from an unsustainable to a sustainable banking system is to transform it into a public utility, responsive to the will and needs of the people."

   This and so much more in this very important book by Ellen Brown from Third Millennium Press..

Kent Welton,