A Postal Savings Bank: Infrastructure That Doesn’t Cost Taxpayers a Dime

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Sep 23, 2013 Necessary banking services the post office performed efficiently in the past, such as infrastructure funding, serving the "underbanked," and providing a safe place to save your money, could be revived with a single legislative stroke. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

The Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction from Derivatives

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Sep 19, 2013 Increased regulation and low interest rates are driving lending from the regulated commercial banking system into the unregulated shadow banking system. Although free of government regulation, these banks are propped up by a guarantee hidden in the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act pushed through by Wall Street. The result is a perverse incentive for the financial system to self-destruct. Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )

The Leveraged Buyout of America

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Aug 26, 2013 Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How did they pull this off, and where did they get the money? Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

Truthdigger of the Week: Ellen Brown

BLANK Aug 25, 2013 Ellen Brown is a major public intellectual and a tireless promoter of a tried and tested solution that may represent Americans' best chance at taking their society back from predatory bankers. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

The Detroit Bail-In Template: Fleecing Pensioners to Save the Banks

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Aug 5, 2013 The Detroit bankruptcy is looking suspiciously like the bail-in template originated by the G20’s Financial Stability Board in 2011, which exploded on the scene in Cyprus in 2013 and is now becoming the model globally. Dig deeper ( 5 Min. Read )

Green Light for City-Owned San Francisco Bank

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Aug 2, 2013 Moving San Francisco's money into a municipal bank would protect the city's deposits and reduce its debt burden. A chief roadblock to forming such a bank was recently overcome by a legal opinion issued by one of the city's deputy attorneys. Dig deeper ( 5 Min. Read )

Collateral Damage: QE3 and the Shadow Banking System

By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt Jul 26, 2013 Rather than expanding the money supply, quantitative easing has actually caused it to shrink by sucking up the collateral needed by the shadow banking system to create credit. This “failure” has prompted the Bank for International Settlements to urge the Fed to shirk its mandate to pursue full employment, though the sort of QE that could fulfill that mandate has not yet been tried. Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )

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 )

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 )

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 )