Interview Transcript: Ellen Brown; Public Banking-- the Bottom Up Solution to a Lot of Economic Ills

 

Ellen Brown:   I started writing about it when - Lehman brothers went down in September 2008, and then they were reporting that all these states were in trouble.  First there were four states that were still in the black, and then there were three, and then there were two, and then there was one - and it was North Dakota.  I knew that North Dakota was the only state with it's own publicly owned bank, so I was cheering when I was watching the news, watching these figures (laughs).  It came on top, and so I gave a lecture in November of 2008 in Michigan on public banking.  Then I got flooded with email, and then we formed a Google Group, and then finally in our Google group we went round, and round, and round on all these issues, and finally we figured we were the experts, and that it was time to get out there and actually do something, so we formed the Public Banking Institute. 

 

So what I've written on many articles now is the Bank of North Dakota and how brilliantly well it has done.  It's had it's own bank since 1919 when the farmers were going through the same sort of challenges that we're going through now.  They were losing their farms to the Wall Street banks, and at the time it was one big cartel.  It was a Rockefeller Bank, a Rockefeller railroad, and a Rockefeller granary, and the granary wasn't taking their grain.  Well, it's kind of a long story, but when they realized they were being cheated by the Wall Street banks, they banded together and formed the Non-Partisan League (showing it wasn't a political issue, it was a keep our money at home issue), and they got this bank implemented.  Of course, North Dakota is an extremely Republican State, so it's kind of anomalous that they have this apparently Socialist Institution that's a stalwart of supporting their State.  But it's done very well for the last century, and done particularly well for /

 

Rob Kall:   Yet North Dakota has elected Democratic Senators in the past.  I think they even have one right now, don't they?

 

Ellen Brown:   I guess. I just don't know.

 

Rob Kall:   They had Byron Dorgan, and I think he was replaced by a Democrat; a very close election.  So they've got something going on there that's a little interesting, at least. (laughs)

 

Ellen Brown:   There are a couple of movies on it, how the Bank of North Dakota was formed.  They were Norwegian and Swedish Farmers, and they didn't speak English very well, and they weren't going to have anything to do with any kind of Socialist movement, you know - until they realized that there was this concerted effort to get their farms.  So when they realized that they had to band together in order to do something, they formed this bank.  The Republicans opposed it, the Big Banking interests, and then the Republicans won the next election!  They discovered they had this fully funded bank on their hands, and they took it, and ran with it, and operated it like a bank, and got it up and running, and it's been doing