By Staff Report - January 29, 2014

http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/34980/Kindly-Ellen-Brown-Dishes-Out-Snake-Oil-as-She-Runs-for-CA-Treasurer/#comment-1223716004

My comments and the Daily Bell's (DB) counter-responses follow. I think it is instructive to see how the anarcho-capitalist mind-set works. Progressives can't ignore these people, as they facilitate the very worst in corporate-grabbing fascism, though they would venomously deny that, and actually make the counter-argument that it is progressives, with their support of the State - sometimes called by them, the Leviathan - that leads to corporatism (the term Mussolini said should have been used instead of fascism to describe the paradigm he founded).

Credit goes to Ellen Brown for bringing attention to this article in the Public Banking Google group, which I and several hundred other PB advocates participate in. Some slight reformatting has been done to improve readability. Additional comments by me will be in parentheses and italics.

Scott Baker

It's hard to know where to begin with this, as so many things are simply wrong. I'll try to list them:





1. Ellen Brown is not calling for money-printing by the State, at least not in advocating for STATE or municipal public banks (a number of us in the Public Banking Institute are advocating for large city or county level public banks too; hardly Big Government. See my presentation in Philadelphia for the PA chapter of PBI here: http://www.opednews.com/Diary/Using-Existing-Government-by-Scott-Baker-Banking-Crisis_Banks_Public-Banking_Public-Banks-140119-408.html. Only the Federal government has the power to "coin Money" constitutionally, a fact which Brown is well aware of.





2. The parties who have been profligate with money-creation and fraud are in the private sector, albeit abetted by both the Federal Reserve and the government - both of which, I, and more importantly, many economists and government watchdogs, have observed to be bought out and corrupted (I believe DB and Brown are in agreement that Corporate Personhood ought to be repealed ASAP). I have argued elsewhere that having a Public Option for Money would provide some balance to having nearly all money produced in the private sector, as would LETS and as did U.S. Notes under Lincoln during the Civil War, when the private NYC banks (them again!) wanted to bankrupt the North with 24-36% interest rates - hardly banks operating in the Public Interest (pun intended)!





3. DB's solution: "The solution is a simple one, however. People need to educate

themselves, take responsibility for their actions and also take "human

action" to support themselves, their families and their communities in

ways that provide self-sufficiency." would be laughably naive if it wasn't so dangerous. The fact is only a strong government with regulation that works (see Bill Black) can counter the oligopoly that is the current Big Banking system. It hasn't done so not because Government is too big and powerful, but because it is too small and weak, compared to the Banking-industrial complex. Brown is trying to provide a counterbalance to both the self-seeking private sector and ineffectual Washington Government (which she has said repeatedly cannot be counted on to pass anything meaningful in the present polarized environment - a fact with which Americans overwhelmingly agree, as indicated by persistent disapproval ratings of both executive and legislative branches). She is doing so by promoting Public Banking at the State, Regional and even, where it makes sense, city and town level (obviously, there is a point where economies of scale argue against Public Banking, but I just completed a preliminary analysis on little Luzerne County, PA for the Pennsylvania chapter of PBI, and haven't reached that point yet).

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