Trillions to the 99%: Ellen Brown explains monetary and credit reform

Carl Herman, Contributor
Activist Post

The first 41 minutes of the video below from Claremont Colleges’ Center for Process Studies’ conference, “Money-Creation in a Finite World,” is Ellen Brown’s presentation to explain how credit and monetary reform causes trillions of dollars in annual benefits for Americans (remainder of the video is panel and audience discussion).

The 99% must achieve factual command of the basic facts how money and credit are created, or else continue their debt-damned existence under an oligarchic and Robber Baron-era structure.

Monetary and credit reform can be understood with three simple areas of facts that are taught in basic economics and easily verified:

The US does not have a money supply; we have its Orwellian opposite as a debt supply. This is because the US leading banks won legal right through passage of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act to have private banks and the Fed create debt for what we use as money, and then charge the 99% for its use.
The policy choice of a debt supply compounded with interest causes ever-increasing aggregate debt that can never be repaid. It can’t be repaid because this is what we use for money. The US national debt now pushing $16 trillion has a gross annual interest payment over $400 billion a year; $4,000 per US family of $50,000 annual income (if your household earns $100,000, then your gross annual interest payment is approx. $8,000 every year).
Monetary reform creates debt-free money that extinguishes the debt (details here), and allows government to become employer of last resort for infrastructure investment (hard and soft). This creates full-employment, optimal infrastructure, and because infrastructure historically creates more value to the economy than cost, falling overall prices. Credit reform allows for public loans (interest directly pays for public goods/services) as another monetary tool for stable money supply.

Obviously, monetary and credit reform benefits 100% of humanity because it guarantees full employment, optimal infrastructure, and no government debt/interest cost. The current parasitic system benefits a 1% banking oligarchy that causes cyclical unemployment and poverty, decays infrastructure (especially as debt and interest costs accelerate as they do today), and damns the 99% to permanent and escalating debt.

Americans cannot be responsible citizens without understanding this fundamental structure of money.

Ellen Brown is probably the world’s leading writer to explain monetary and credit reform. Her articles are here; her work initiated the Public Banking Institute for 17 states at various stages for credit reform.

Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher in economics, government, and history. His hobby is research, education, and lobbying for improved public policy. He can be reached at [email protected]