May 28, 7:45 PM ·
Carl Herman - LA County Nonpartisan Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y201...
Attorney and author of the brilliant Web of Debt, Ellen Brown, is among the leading US advocates of monetary reform and state-owned banks.
Among Ellen’s
articles is one worth highlighting for how quickly a national
economy can turn from ruin to astounding productivity: Nazi Germany’s
direct creation of money to pay for public goods and services.
This fundamental shift allows central government to create debt-free money to pay for full-employment and renewed
infrastructure. In addition, if the infrastructure investment causes
greater overall productivity than its cost (historically true), then
society has the included benefit of decreasing prices.
The monetary system we still have today doesn’t create debt-free money; it allows privately-owned
banks to create loans (credit, not money) that along with its interest
cost causes societal ever-increasing and unpayable debt. The US national
debt is ever-increasing; no political “leader” speaks of the obvious
and only solution: stop having and increasing a national debt-supply
rather than a money-supply and create a money-supply to pay the debt
(details here).
As Ellen explains in detail below, Germany suffered from tragic-comic hyperinflation caused by a privately-owned
central bank and short-selling of the nation’s currency, and high
unemployment; three central features of our “modern” economic system
today. As soon as Germany created a form of money in exchange for
productive goods and services, the government could respond to the
market failure of unemployment while addressing the nation’s public
service needs.
Of course, the point of this article is not a history lesson, but an application of history to the US economy of the
present. Full-employment is possible and available now as a policy
response (details here).
The idea of government-created money has been advocated by many of America’s
brightest historical minds; the absence of its consideration in
“leadership” conversation, I assert, is evidence that the US is under an
Orwellian government that has chosen the economic policies of an
oligarchy rather than the public good. That’s a cognitive dissonance
evoking conclusion, I understand, but the evidence to prove it is
here if this topic of trillions of our dollars is of sufficient
interest for you.
Ellen Brown and I agree that a powerful entry-point to break open the oligarchy is through state-owned banks.
This allows opportunity for state government (or county, city,
university, etc.) to use existing bank law to create credit at cost. The
only solvent state in the US today, North Dakota, uses this strategy. I
recommend perusing Ellen’s articles to
understand further. Ellen is interviewed in and consulted for the
creation of the outstanding economics film, Zeitgeist Addendum, below.
Here’s her article of how quickly a nation’s economy can become powerfully productive. Of course, economic power is amoral and must be focused with policy for productive
ends.
THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX:
HOW A BANKRUPT GERMANY SOLVED ITS
INFRASTRUCTURE PROBLEMS
Ellen Brown, August 9th, 2007
http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/bankrupt-germany.php