Open Government Dialogue — Ellen Brown says: My proprosal to “Take Back the Power to Create Money from the Private Banking Industry”is now #6 overall on the President’s brainstorming website, out of 1864 ideas submitted.  It’s not too late to vote! Just click on the link below:

Money in a government-owned bank could give us the best of both worlds. We could have all the credit-generating advantages of private banks, without the baggage cluttering up the books of the Wall Street giants, including bad derivatives bets, unmarketable collateralized debt obligations, mark to market accounting issues, oversized CEO salaries and bonuses, and shareholders expecting a sizeable cut of the profits.

A state could deposit its vast revenues in its own state-owned bank and proceed to fan them into eight to 10 times their face value in loans. Not only would it have its own credit machine, but it would control the loan terms. The state could lend at 0.5% interest to itself and to municipal governments, rolling the loans over as needed until the revenues had been generated to pay them off.

According to Professor Margrit Kennedy in her 1995 book Interest and Inflation-free Money,
interest composes, on average, fully half the cost of every public project. Cutting costs by 50% could make currently-unsustainable projects such as low-cost housing, alternative energy development, and infrastructure construction not only sustainable but actually profitable for the government.  (06/03/09)

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