Ellen Brown: New Jersey and Several U.S. Cities Moving to Establish Public Banks

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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New Jersey and Several U.S. Cities Move to Establish Public Banks

Posted Dec. 27, 2017

Interview with Ellen Brown, chair of the Public Banking Institute, conducted by Scott Harris

For many Americans, Wall Street and giant U.S. banks are the hated symbol of unbridled greed, which are often implicated in ripping off average workers. For example, Wells Fargo, one of the nation's largest banks, was fined $185 million in civil penalties in 2016 for secretly opening millions of unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts that harmed their customers. Other familiar names in the banking industry, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup have all been hit with millions of dollars in federal fines for engaging in improper conduct in recent years, including behavior that triggered the subprime mortgage collapse that led to the 2008 meltdown of the global economy.

While there’s no shortage of criticism of the big financial institutions, some progressive economists and activists have proposed alternatives to private for-profit banking to better serve the interests of consumers, small business and the nation as a whole.

Among those ideas is an option known as public banking, inspired by the successful example of the Bank of North Dakota, the nation’s only statewide publicly-owned bank established in 1919. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Ellen Brown, chairwoman of the Public Banking Institute, who discusses the pledge made by Governor-Elect Phil Murphy of New Jersey who says he’ll work to establish a public bank in the state, and other cities across the U.S. that are also working to adopt North Dakota’s public banking model.

ELLEN BROWN: Public banks are banks that are owned by government as opposed to – it doesn't mean a publicly-listed bank – it would be a city-owned bank or a state-owned bank, or it could even be a national bank. Globally, 25 percent of banks are publicly-owned. In the 1970s, there were 50 percent of banks that were publicly-owned. Then we went through a wave of privatization – it's now down to 25 percent. So, we're behind the curve in having only one, which is the Bank of North Dakota, which has been around for (almost) a century now.

But we do have quite a bit of interest in public banking. But probably the biggest news we've heard is in New Jersey. Phil Murphy ran as Democrat for governor and won, and he made a state bank a centerpiece of his platform. We're all looking on to see how that works. Hopefully, he'll be the first or the second, and everybody else will see how well it works and jumps on.

Phil Murphy was a banker at Goldman Sachs so he understands how banking works. And I think that's why he was so quick to pick up on the idea, whereas generally speaking, most people don't understand how banking works and they don't trust government. I mean, even legislators themselves – they have this perception that we're talking about putting bureaucrats in charge, which we're not. We're talking about putting seasoned bankers, doing actual banking to show that the major advantage of a public bank – what you do is you take your own revenues – the state's or the city's own revenues – and you put them in a bank, which allows you to leverage your money by a factor, technically, a factor of 10.

So let's say, if you had a billion dollars, let's say, you could either keep that in a loan fund, lend it out at three percent, wait for the money to come back, lend it out again. Every city has loan funds, and that's what they do.

But you could take that same money, put it in a bank and then you can lend out 10 times that much. That's what banks do, or it actually works out to you would make out five times what you would make with a revolving fund. So it's lucrative. You can save a lot of money on infrastructure. Fifty percent of the costs of infrastructure is financing. So if you are doing it yourself, if you own the bank, you get to finance that money back so, you can save up to 50 percent. In theory, it would be 50 percent instead of it going to your deposits and your capital going to a Wall Street bank, which might be investing overseas or might even actually be doing things that hurt the state. You have no control over where they put that money.

But if you put it in your own bank, you can make loans as needed in your state, so you can generate credit for your local community where you need it, and make a profit for the city or state.

BETWEEN THE LINES: With the election of Phil Murphy in New Jersey as governor, as you said, he ran on a platform of establishing a public bank for the state of New Jersey. What exactly was he saying were the benefits? Were there any specifics coming out of the campaign pledge to establish a public bank?

ELLEN BROWN: Well, there were three things he said he would focus on: infrastructure, student loans and affordable housing. All things for which there's a big need. Some of those things may sound like they're risky. But that's the thing. If you're a banker, you understand there's a way to do all those things that isn't risky.

BETWEEN THE LINES: There are a number of U.S. cities that you're in touch with that are interested in establishing public banks, including Los Angeles and Oakland, California; Seattle, Washington; and Sante Fe, New Mexico. Give us an update on what's the status of the move towards establishing a public bank in these municipalities?

ELLEN BROWN: Well, the farthest along would be Santa Fe. They've done it. They got a feasibility study approved. They established that it would be a moneymaker for them, which is a very small city. So if it's a moneymaker for them, it's basically a moneymaker for anyone.

But where they are right now is figuring out all the relevant laws and how they can comply with all the laws. So they're sort of in that technical cart now.

I've said they're setting up a bank in Oakland. They got $75,000 approved for a feasibility study. So they're proceeding with that. In Los Angeles, the city council has approved looking at a city-owned bank. In Seattle, too, they're just looking at it. But the state has gotten $75,000 for a feasibility study approved and so that's what they're proceeding with now.

BETWEEN THE LINES: You've been at this for this for a long time. Do you have a sense that the wheels are turning, finally?

ELLEN BROWN: Hopefully, yes. It's one of those things where it needs to percolate up before people get the idea of what you're talking about.

Like for example, when I was up in Washington state. Other times when we've presented to legislators, you do get a lot of pushback and a lot of questions. But, in this case, everybody was so positive. It was like, "OK, how do we do this?" I mean, they were looking at the way forward rather than being hesitant and seeing obstacles.

For more information, visit the Public Banking Institute at publicbankinginstitute.org.