Interview 986 – Ellen Brown Explains the New G20 Bank Bail-in Rules
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Today attorney, author and researcher Ellen Brown of EllenBrown.com joins us to discuss her article on “The Global Bankers’ Coup: Bail-In and the Shadowy Financial Stability Board.” We talk about the G20 and their rubber-stamping of the FSB’s proposed bail-in rules, what this shadowy body is and how it interlocks with the Bank for International Settlements, and what this means for depositors in the wake of the next banking crisis.
SHOW NOTES:
New G20 Rules: Cyprus-style Bail-ins to Hit Depositors AND Pensioners
The Global Bankers’ Coup: Bail-In and the Shadowy Financial Stability Board
Russian Roulette: Taxpayers Could Be on the Hook for Trillions in Oil Derivatives
Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in resolution
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Interesting and scary interview all in one. One possible solution to protect one’s savings was provided, but in the short-term, I’m perplexed. In Canada, would credit unions immune to a bail-in? Or is stuffing cash underneath one’s own mattress the only guaranteed solution?
This is scary indeed, I mostly keep very little in my banking account, keep a lot of cash and buy prepaid credit cards, since a long time, it might look like what a drug dealer might do, but thankfully I live in Canada which isn’t a police state like the US yet where anyone who isn’t exactly acting like the next is viewed as a potential criminal by the majority of people.
The formation of a public banking system that functions on the local, state and national level is the answer. Putting back Glass-Steagall at all levels is part of this process. Roosevelt, however, was never able to end the private Federal Reserve and restore a full national banking system, but that is what our objective should be now. Since we cannot get Congress to act to restore Glass Steagall on the national level, Brown’s approach is to work on the establishment of city and state banks seems an excellent approach. North Dakota already has a state bank which has by all accounts I have heard been a big success. Why
would anybody put their money, earning zero percent interest, into a private banking system liable to crash, implode and be bailed in at any moment, when they could deposit it in a well-regulated public bank? Really, all this idea has to do is catch on, and the banksters are finished!
Honestly, I’d rather do away completely with banks and only have credit unions. I have a credit union account, and soon (on january 1st) I’ll get a deposit, which is the sum of its profits divided among all its members, a dividend yeah, that’s the word, usually 40-50 dollars but that’s just one part why credit unions are way better.
I’m curious why Ellen Brown is so focused on “public banking” as a solution, meaning government-owned banks. This idea of “we” and “our” interests being represented by government institutions seems antithetical to the idea of individual action and voluntary cooperation.
Some alternatives that we as individuals can look at right now are:
1. Local credit unions, as dn and NotDole suggested above, would be less susceptible to bail-ins because they are not as overleveraged as the megabanks.
2. Keep your savings out of the banks altogether. Whether it’s productive land, precious metals, a business with regular cashflow, or investing in your education (which they can’t take from you), there are many ways of limiting our interaction with the system.
I definitely thought of the same thing. Public banking is basically the functional equivalent of nationalizing banks from the private cartel, down to “the people.” Why would she propose such a solution?
My guess: I imagine that it would be very difficult to get most folks on board with the idea of doing away with the banking system entirely, since most will not be as sophisticated as those folks here who are keen on the concept. Presumably, this would be an intermediate step down a notch, at least to a level where most people accept a private oligarchy controls the money supply. The funny thing is, most folks would easily recognize one of those sham pyramid schemes that used to go door to door, or try to peddle get rich quick schemes or products that are dubious. Yet, when you point them to the fractional reserve banking as practiced and instituted by the banking families and state that it’s no different than those more primitive pyramid schemes, they will give you a blank stare and start using the word “tin” and “foil” in the same sentence.
It’s true that people find financial issues difficult to understand if not exposed to them on a regular basis. But in that case, there’s no reason they’d accept the public banking idea any more than other alternatives available to us right now.
Ellen Brown certainly didn’t frame public banking as an intermediate step toward a private, voluntary system. I think the danger is that people will see a local city or state bank as “our” bank, that “we” control, as Ellen Brown framed it, entrenching people’s acquiescence even more.
My feeling is, we should be clear about what we want and why. We shouldn’t muddy the waters with intermediate steps that are no easier to implement than the solutions we actually want. If people have a hard time understanding what we propose, we should work on our marketing!
Thanks for appreciating my idea. I always only keep the minimum in that credit union account too, just so the businesses I deal with who only deal with automatized bank withdrawals for payment (internet, some magazine subscription and internet services). Otherwise I withdraw it all. I once thought of using ING Direct since they actually have good interest but I think they crashed hard and don’t offer as much of a good service since 2008.
A national banking system is a credit union of all the citizens of the country. It is administered not by private bankers for the benefit of banks, but by the elected representatives of the people for the benefit of the nation as a whole. It pays dividends in the form of economic benefits and development of the whole country. It does not engage in speculation for private gain, but lends money at very low interest to enterprises large and small for economic development. It uses the power of sovereign credit to create money only for this purpose.
A private banking system cannot compete with a public one. The idea of a public bank is anathema to private bankers for a very good reason.
I don’t like to throw around loaded terms, but that honestly sounds straight out of communist propaganda from the old days. Instead of private property and profit, the government would control everything in the name of “the people”, to ensure that everyone has a guaranteed income and that society prospers as a whole. That philosophy was an unmitigated social and economic disaster.
Why? Because government’s defining characteristic is the monopoly on physical violence. Without that, it would not be a government at all, but simply civil society. Our task is to find ways to cooperate with each other by voluntary means, without resorting to the very coercion we are trying to resist.
The problem with the Federal Reserve is not that it is partly private. The problem is that it’s partly government. The part that has a legal tender monopoly, whose notes are required for tax payment, and supported by the US military’s destruction of markets in alternative currencies.
If these special privileges, made possible only by the government’s monopoly on force, did not exist, the Federal Reserve would simply be a private bank engaging in voluntary trade. It certainly would not have nearly the size and scope that it does today (and would probably be bankrupt), but it would not be an unethical institution just because private parties are profiting from voluntary transactions.
When we critique the current system, it’s also important that we correctly identify what the problem is with it. Otherwise, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past and recreating the very thing we’re trying to overturn.
I don’t think it’s unfair to use the label communist for this idea, since centralization of credit in the hands of a national bank is literally the fifth plank of the Communist Manifesto (see the end of Ch. 2 and see how many of these planks have actually been implemented today: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm)
For what it’s worth, my own feeling is that public banking as one among many alternatives is better than what we have now, but not the actual solution, of course. As I outlined in my July 20, 2014 subscriber editorial, I think the real solution is a decentralized free market of competing/complementary/alternative currencies, credit systems and financial structures. It’s messy and imperfect, but I think the real pitfall is in expecting that one totalizing monolithic system is somehow going to avoid being co-opted, manipulated, taken over, and steered toward the banksters’ interests.
Guaranteed income is a socialist idea but not necessarily a bad one. There’s good ideas in anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-syndicalism, balancing of the ideas of both systems is possible and was almost done until Gladio A decided to off the Swedish PM in ’86. (just mentioning the one idea I had come to mind right now, and I know the anarchist part wasn’t there either, but I think most of you will know what I’m speaking of).
I have been involved, for some years, with a UK based campaign, ‘Positive Money’ that lobbies to take the money creation power away from private banks and give it to ‘a democratic and accountable body’.
Positive Money has earned some recognition for its efforts in educating people on how the current system works, and putting forward a clearly laid out proposal for another UK system- where the Bank of England would create all new money (digital and cash) according to the decisions of a Money Creation Committee.
See their webpage if interested: http://www.positivemoney.org
I was first introduced to the money problem through reading Ellen Brown’s book, ‘Web of Debt’, and I think it is because of that route in, that I have been interested to compare the different angles taken by monetary reformers in North America and the UK. The founder and main spokesperson for Positive Money, Ben Dyson described the development of the current money system as “an accident of history”, which is in contrast to the view so well presented in James Corbett’s ‘The Century of Enslavement’ which describes a conspiratorial history of deliberate deceit and political chicanery. I think that this illustrates to a degree the different attitudes held toward state power by the populations on either side of the Atlantic- and there are obvious historical reasons for this.
This year I’ve read Adam Lebor’s book about the origins and functions of the Bank of International Settlements, and also Guido Preparata’s work on the influence of London financial elites (including the Bank of England) in propagating the two World Wars. In light of such knowledge, and the ongoing revelations of extreme state criminality, it is hard to support the handing of money creation power over to institutions that have such a ‘demonic’ past. This leaves me in a quandary. The pragmatist in me wants to continue supporting a successful and well organised campaign, that, if successful, would definitely improve the situation that we are all in. The idealist has the same concerns mentioned in other posts here, i.e. that state power is by definition coercive and violent, that centralised committees have a bad history, and that there is a general naivety (even in monetary reform campaigns like Positive Money) about the sheer scale of vision of the psychopaths who operate through state and private institutions to further their aims.
In short, the money question leads inevitably to the most fundamental political questions about the role of state power in our lives, and any campaign will- past a certain point, have to offer an answer to those questions also.
Good job on not just sitting on your butt, problem is so many of us are drained out of almost all energy (physical mostly) after work, and working nights as a chemistry tech at a paint factory is not as intellectually stimulating as it sounds. To think as a teen when starting college that I would be manufacturing drugs that cure people and the like. I could still get there but, the only meds that really cure are either antibiotics (and strangely there is no research into new classes of antibiotics, which are really needed and some theoretically exist, but that’s another subject entirely.)
I don’t think the focus should be on what her solution is. Understanding the problems on the horizon should be paramount. Then we can arrive at our own solutions. I try to keep as much of my money out of the banks as I can. This podcast is something that might help in the short term if you still need to use a bank. http://www.sovereignman.com/podcast/how-to-evaluate-if-your-bank-is-safe-and-what-to-do-if-its-not-podcast-15785/