Ellen Brown

Move Our Money: Should we create more state banks?

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We may not be able to beat the banks, but we don’t have to play their game. We can take our marbles and go home. The Move Your Money campaign has already prompted more than 600,000 consumers to move their funds out of Wall Street banks into local banks, and there are much larger pools that could be pulled out in the form of state revenues.

Occupy the US: How do we create new political structures that work?

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The year 2011 has breathed new life into horizontal models of democratic decision-making. With the rise of the take-the square movement and the occupy movement horizontal decision-making became one of the key political structures for organising responses to the current global economic crisis. While this decision-making process has arguably never been as widely practiced as it is today, it has also never seemed as difficult and complicated as it does today…It is no longer just activists trying to use and teach each other these decision-making processes but it is hundreds or thousands of people who have a far greater disparity in terms of backgrounds, starting assumptions, aims and discursive styles. This is incredibly good news, but it is not easy.

Presenting the Community Resilience Guides

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We’re excited to announce the publication of our first Community Resilience Guide: Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity by PCI Fellow Michael Shuman. This book series will be part of a larger new effort we have launched—the Community Resilience Initiative.

 

Canada’s mining of oil sands has become an environmental issue

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On Thursday 23 February a panel of experts including representatives from all the 27 EU member nations voted on the position they would take to a suggestion that Canada’s oil sands be classified as a dirtier fuel than conventional oil. The vote did not give either side of the question a qualified majority – 54 experts agreed with the suggestion while 128 disagreed. I do not know if Canada’s threat of, among other things, trade sanctions was decisive but obviously Canada was concerned.

A Fog of Mendacity

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Those frightening sounds, sights, and odors on the wind this foreboding snowless winter — like emanations from some back ward of a global psychiatric hospital — are the signs of a nation going completely mad. The traumatic rise of oil prices above the $100 level is one irritant, prompting a range of people-who-oughta-know-better to gibber and fulminate as though they’d been locked in the nation’s attic since Thanksgiving with nothing to do but play with a box of pencils. Meanwhile, several absurd “narratives” circulate around the mainstream media that are sure to cause this country more trouble — as any set of pernicious untruths will.

Global economy expanded more slowly than expected in 2011

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The global economy grew 3.8 percent in 2011, a drop from 5.2 percent in 2010. Economists had anticipated a slowdown, but this was even less growth than expected, thanks to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, unrest in oil-producing countries, the debt crisis in Europe, and a stagnating recovery in the United States. As richer economies struggle to recover from the financial crisis of 2008–09, poorer countries are facing high food prices and rising youth unemployment. Meanwhile, growing income inequality and environmental disruption are challenging conventional notions of economic health.

REconomy and Me

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If Transition is to succeed – to deliver on its promise of happier, more resilient communities – then it’s always seemed obvious to me that the work we do is fundamental to this change. If we can find ways to create enough work that contributes to the resilience of our area, that is more fulfilling, in tune with our own particular skills and values, and that pays the bills, then many of the outcomes we want will naturally emerge.

How do you find a million more farmers?

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Let’s not be shy about the matter; the dominant picture of agriculture in this country is pretty grim. Set upon the foundations of unequal land distribution, the expansion of neo-liberal policies into agriculture since the 1950′s have accounted for a halving of agricultural employment, the systematic industrialisation of farming techniques, the consolidation of larger farms and the tightening of corporate control on food markets. We have been left with an economy in which new entrants to farming can expect to pay up to £10,000 an acre for land but receive less than 10% of the money spent on food by consumers.

Bay Bucks — Get Them & Use Them!

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This discussion turns to the theme of economics and the subject is Bay Bucks, the local currency circulating in the larger Traverse City region. Dave is joined by long time Bay Bucks advocate Sharon Flescher, discussing the reasoning behind the creation of a local currency, the seven year history of Bay Bucks and a look to future growth. Local currencies generate the full impact of their multiplier effect in the local economy. None of that economic value is exported to outside economic interests.  The key to that success is to get more and more of the local currency in use. Bay Bucks is set to push for another round of expansion.