Money is one of humanity’s greatest social innovations.  It’s been transformed in form and function for thousands of years and our digital age has accelerated that metamorphosis.  Banking institutions have also been changing dramatically with shadow banking taking over large swaths of the conventional bank credit marketplace.  Our guest, noted author and prominent leader of the Modern Monetary Network Dr. Rohan Grey, talks with Ellen and Walt about his design for digital eCash, the dramatic changes implied by MMT, and the emergence and importance of creating public banks.  

America’s deteriorating infrastructure challenges government officials to come up with financing for a numerous critical needs that may well cost over $5 trillion dollars, according to experts. While costly public-private partnerships have been touted as a way forward, they can’t really scale to anywhere near that size. Founding father Alexander Hamilton would appear to have the answer – the American System of self-financing which established America in its earliest years and in its most difficult years of growth and challenge.  Ellen, Prof. Robert Hockett and members of a coalition backing Congressional bill HR3339, examine why Hamilton’s genius financing idea is a perfect model for a proposed National Infrastructure Bank – capable of fixing all of America’s needs without raising the national debt or taxes!

Hazel Henderson was a futurist.  She understood that what is really important in an economic system isn’t measurable in dollars, but rather in the health and well-being of those living in the economy, including that primary partner, Planet Earth.  On today’s program we revisit our last conversation with Hazel from 2020 -- a tribute to an authentic, bold thinker who raised the consciousness of markets worldwide with the simple notion that our economic systems must operate with values that prioritize life. 

America’s early financial innovations led a remarkable flowering in world history of expanding economic prospect, at least until the late 20th century.  Since then, financial elites and banking cartels have shifted the emphasis from investing for public benefit to private profiteering through monetary manipulations and resource exploitation. In his latest book “Who We Are,” our guest, historian and author Anton Chaitkin, observes that America’s positive economic dynamism has morphed into a form of self-interest that has transformed America’s image on the world stage to one of destructive predator. Chaitkin urges a return to the America we once were

The Bank of North Dakota (BND) has set the US standard for how a public bank can serve the economic interests of a state or local economy, and many local governments want to emulate its success. This podcast opens with a recent clip of Eric Hardmeyer, CEO of the BND for over 20 years, describing the founding and operational principles that led the bank to outperform even the big Wall Street banks for profitability while taking an aggressive approach to fiscal problem solving.  Ellen then speaks with Braxton Brewington of the Debt Collective, a non-profit debt-reduction organization that has relieved thousands of debtors from life-sapping obligations while promulgating a national effort to reduce the massive debt loads carried by students, medical patients and other debt stressed citizens.

Another historic milestone in the emergence of public banks around the country has been reached in Philadelphia with an overwhelming vote of the City Council to establish a Municipal Public Financial Authority.  We talk with two of the citizens that helped realize this success, Vanessa Lowe and Conni Bille. And later in the program Ellen talks with author Michael Mechanic about his new book “Jackpot: How the Super Rich Really Live and How Their Wealth Harms Us All.” 

Celebrated economist Michael Hudson thinks that the world of academic economics is both deceptive and essentially wrong in its formulations of the role of money and debt.  Hudson says today’s oligarchic monetary systems invariably reinforce the flow of profits from labor to the top of the economic ladder.  The result is unsustainable debt, which he says is an historical pattern that goes back a couple thousand years. Something has to give. Ellen and Michael spend the hour discussing what that might look like.

Inflation is the latest economic lament over whether the national economy is in good shape or in trouble. The topic is frequently oversimplified into monetary categories of either too much money in circulation or too few goods, with the Fed trying to resolve inflation with too few, and wrong, tools. Our guest is the renowned economist Dr. Robert Hockett, who says that the Fed needs substantive revisions which mirror its earliest days in order to balance the demand (monetary) side of the supply/demand equation with supply (goods and services). Bob and Ellen explore these historical and monetary principles in depth, engaging in subject matter that influences many more far-reaching economic concerns than just inflation.    

“The magic of compound interest” – interest on interest on borrowed principal – is a primary way monetary wealth grows, but it is at the expense of real economic growth. What if our money system were built on local exchanges directly between producer and consumer? Our guest Thomas Greco, a global voice for community currency systems and credit clearing exchanges, discusses how these systems sidestep the monetary debt trap and open the door to new socio-economic prospects.  Later in the program Ellen completes her conversation with historian Matt Ehret, whose latest volume of “The Clash of Two Americas” explores the political and economic dynamics that produced two divergent 20th century Americas.

The Clash of Two Americas   Matt Ehret’s new book “The Clash of Two Americas – The Unfinished Symphony” provides an extraordinary tour of the historical landscape that created our economic and political history. A consummate historian and student of the issues that lead to the creation of the political and economic tenets and systems we’ve inherited. Ellen talks with Matt about how those principles and vested interests animated the American Revolution and the international intrigue that accompanied it.  And we complete our conversation with Dr. Thomas Marois, a global scholar on public banks whose new book “Public Banks: Decarbonization, Definancialization and Democratization” describes how public banks have taken leadership investment roles in initiatives for green energy production.

For decades, the importance of public sector institutions has been undermined by powerful private corporate interests. How they have done it and how that process can be reversed is discussed by our guest Donald Cohen, the author of a new book called The Privatization of Everything – How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back.  Cohen is Executive Director of In the Public Interest, a national non-profit focusing on public goods and services.  Ellen also discusses the emerging concerns about central bank digital currencies, and historian and author Matt Ehret opens a discussion about the corporate supra-national movement that wants to privatize nature itself.  What could go wrong?

Across the globe, public banks hold assets of about $50 trillion dollars in widely divergent countries and cultures.  While these publicly owned institutions have diverse types of organization and purpose, they share core principles of retaining local equities. In North America new efforts to create local public banks have emerged among First Nation tribes who have been obliged to use Wall Street banks for their substantial casino revenues. Our guest interviews today include a memorial tribute conversation with Dennis Ortblad, a former diplomat who opened that discussion with Pacific NW tribes and many other public banking initiatives, and with Dr. Thomas Marois, author of “Public Banks: Decarbonization, Definancialization and Democratization”.  

The trillion-dollar philanthropy industry has been accused of continuing a racist, colonialist system of economic and cultural suppression. That notion is in dramatic contrast to a broadly favorable appreciation for the largess of wealthy donors who contribute significant sums to thousands of public interest organizations and causes.  What lies underneath that patina of generosity?  Our guest Edgar Villanueva writes in his latest book “Decolonizing Wealth” that philanthropy is a vestige of a privileged society disassociated and disengaged from the financial realities that created the vast wealth that fosters it. On the flipside, according to Edward Quevedo and Mark Watson, our guests in a second segment, philanthropy can be a source of restitution and regeneration,. A new alliance for sharing the wealth is in the making.

The OCC   That acronym is not well known by many Americans even though it represents one of the most critical functions of our federal monetary system.  The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the OCC, is the manager of our system of "national banks" which comprise two-thirds of the banks in the country managing assets of about $14 trillion dollars.  As an independent bureau of the Treasury department, it oversees an industry that at times seems to go its own way with risky bank behaviors. But the OCC may be acquiring a tougher posture if President Biden’s nominee for its Director, Saule Omarova, is approved.  Our guest, Dr. Robert Hockett, is a close associate of Omarova and sees indications that we may be entering a new period of support for the public interest in our federal financial institutions.      

We’re Still Fighting the American Revolution   Our guest is Matthew Ehret, author of the new book The Clash of the Two Americas Volume 1: The Unfinished Symphony. In it he shows how the young United States, guided by Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and their successors, established a new financial model based on democratic sovereignty. But proponents of the old British model of colonial exploitation disrupted and continue to disrupt that visionary paradigm shift. Ehret points to the opportunity and the need to restore our visionary historical tradition by creating our own credit for the benefit of the people, following the original design of America’s Founders.  

When costly projects like infrastructure stare down government budgets, taxpayers and politicians understandably get nervous.  If federal financial support doesn’t take the lead, states and municipalities must come up with large amounts of money on their own usually through bonds and raised taxes.  Another approach widely touted is “public-private-partnerships” – a financial collaboration that shares responsibilities and outcomes between private investors and public resources.  Sometimes it works out.  Often it doesn’t. Our guests, Drs. Alphecca Muttardy and Stephen Hubbard of the National Infrastructure Coalition, are experts in the field of infrastructure finance and PPP’s and delve into what America urgently needs in the way of infrastructure investment right now,  and why PPP’s aren’t the reliable go-to partners they claim to be.

Constructing the Democratic Public Bank  As the movement to create publicly owned banks across America picks up speed, new questions arise about how to make them truly focused on serving public interests. Our guest Michael Brennan, a Research Fellow at the Democracy Collaborative and Board Director at the Public Banking Institute, says public banks can be either “good” or they can be “bad”.  The difference depends on how these new institutions are designed and constructed.  Brennan has articulated clear design principles in a new paper titled “Constructing the Democratic Public Bank” to help ensure these banks are able to achieve the public interest missions they’re created to serve.  Brennan says that prospect can and must be designed into the bank before they even get started.

How did America’s financial system, founded to be a democratic tool of economic development, wind up instead a tool of oligarchic control?  Alexander Hamilton intended that America’s financial system would enable individual initiative and collective well-being through a system of sovereign money and credit, independent of the British financiers who wanted to recapture their lost colony as an economic vassal of the mother country. Our guest Nancy Spannaus, professor and author of Hamilton vs. Wall Street, discusses the significance of Hamilton’s economic vision and principles, and how those principles have been eroded today.

As America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve is the hub of our banking world and connects institutional monetary participants and systems to its critical functions and resources. Access to this network is not guaranteed for those wanting to start a new bank, and the process is arduous. But when five Native American nations began exploring the possibility of creating their own bank to keep their money under tribal control, they were surprised to find active Fed support for their pursuit. Our guest Dennis Ortblad, a former diplomat stationed in Germany, discusses his work with these nations and how the Fed seems to know its policies need improvement when it comes to launching minority depositories. Dennis also talks about Germany’s Sparkassen banks, which for the past 200 years have helped drive that country’s economic success and are one of the models inspiring the American public banking movement.  We’re also joined by Dr. Robert Hockett of Cornell University, who talks with Ellen about digital currencies and the prospect of China taking over as the host of the world’s reserve currency. 

Big Corp Moves In   As money systems diversify through new digital systems at all levels of governments internationally, some large corporations are capturing mega-markets through exclusive payment systems.  Primarily in developing countries at this point, these corporations have created systems similar to Visa and Mastercard which can take exclusive, competition-free control of national payment processing.  This dystopic prospect of corporations being able to turn on and turn off transactional payments is the focus of our guest Nick Brown, who helped set up Visa’s debit card network.  We also visit with Dr. Robert Hockett, an expert on all things monetary including the Federal Reserve, who says it’s time for our central bank to focus on funding real production for the national interest rather than being a funder of boundless financial specialization.