Think Your Money Is Safe in an Insured Bank Account? Think Again

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Jul 5, 2013 An international trend to shift responsibility for bank losses onto blameless depositors lets banks take and gamble away your money. Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )

The Crime of Alleviating Poverty: A Local Community Currency Battles the Central Bank of Kenya

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Jun 28, 2013 Former Peace Corps volunteer Will Ruddick and several residents of the Bangladesh slum in Kenya face a potential seven years in prison after developing a cost-effective way to alleviate poverty in Africa’s poorest areas: a complementary currency issued and backed by the local community. The solution has brought charges of forgery from the country's central bank. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

Hundreds Gather for Public Banking and Economic Justice

By Matt J. Stannard, Political Context Jun 24, 2013 Earlier this month, leading scholars, activists and other concerned people met in San Rafael, Calif., to explore the idea of public banks: democratically run, fiscally transparent institutions designed to serve community stakeholders rather than capital shareholders. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

Bail-Out Is Out, Bail-In Is In

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Apr 30, 2013 The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive allow for the use of creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks. In the event of another crisis, access to your money would depend on the security of the FDIC. The question, then, is how reliable is the FDIC? Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

Winner Takes All: The Super Priority Status of Derivatives

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Apr 10, 2013 With taxpayer bailouts no longer an option, a major derivatives crisis could transfer money currently held by state and local governments and citizens -- secured and unsecured, insured and uninsured -- into the hands of derivative claimants. Dig deeper ( 8 Min. Read )

Truth Telling Is Offensive

Alexander Reed Kelly / Truthdig Apr 7, 2013 Paul Craig Roberts was an assistant secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan. Like many Americans, he has been wounded by the government he helped create, and he's tired of being called offensive and depressing for talking about it. Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Why Is Socialism Doing So Well in Deep-Red North Dakota?

By Les Leopold, AlterNet Mar 30, 2013 North Dakota's thriving state bank makes a mockery of Wall Street's casino banking system -- and that's why financial elites want to crush it. Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )

The Confiscation Scheme Planned for U.S. and U.K. Depositors

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Mar 28, 2013 Confiscating customer deposits in Cyprus banks was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England, dated Dec. 10, 2012, shows these plans have been long in the making. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

A Safe and a Shotgun or Publicly Owned Banks? The Battle of Cyprus

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Mar 22, 2013 For now, the government of Cyprus has overwhelmingly rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits as a condition for a European bailout. But if technocrat bankers can push through their confiscation scheme, precedent will be established for doing it elsewhere when bank bailouts become prohibitive for governments. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

How Congress Could Fix Its Budget Woes Permanently

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Feb 14, 2013 Money today is simply a legal agreement between parties. Nothing backs it but “the full faith and credit of the United States.” The United States could issue its credit directly to fund its own budget, just as our forebears did in the American colonies and as Abraham Lincoln did in the Civil War. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

The Trillion Dollar Coin: Joke or Game-Changer?

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Jan 19, 2013 The trillion dollar coin represents one of the most important principles of popular prosperity ever conceived: the creation of money by sovereign governments, debt-free. Dig deeper ( 8 Min. Read )

Fiscal Cliff? Let’s Call Their Bluff

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Dec 20, 2012 Taxpayers and governments that are pushed too far have been known to resort to radical policy measures, and there are some on the table that could fix the problem at its core. Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )