I was prompted to write this article after reading Ellen Brown's recent article in this journal on the need for a "reset that serves the people." [1] Ms. Brown knows that I have promoted her Public Banking Institute initiative enthusiastically in my books. What I want her and readers of this journal to know is that I disagree with her excessive concerns about national debt, her misreading of U.S. history, and her proposed solution for a reset.
About National Debt
As I stated years ago, there is good national debt and there is bad national debt. [2] Good debt means enough federal spending on programs to help meet real economic and social needs such as more employment, better education, and better and affordable health care that once better met will require far less government spending in the future, by then only maintenance spending in contrast to remedial spending. Bad debt means going into the red from unreasonably and unfairly low taxing of the wealthy; from more rather than less corporate welfare, especially warfare welfare; and federal spending on initiatives our society doesn't really need, actually suffers from, and shouldn't be burdened by.
National debt is a political and socioeconomic phenomenon. Both presidents Bush and Clintons' policies contributed in no small measure to the Second Great Depression of 1998; and attempts to recover from it simply inflated the debt. Today, the national debt seems to be around $30 trillion. Meanwhile, the social needs of the country have been festering from underfunding of education, health care, and employment programs, the very needs that had they been attended to would have, as I said, resulted in good and shorter-term debt.
The World Economic Forum and Eurasian Economic Union
What prompted Ms. Brown's article was the annual meeting of corporate billionaires at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The forum's theme is "the great reset." With debt everywhere on earth unsustainably high, Ms. Brown agrees that a reset is needed but claims that any changes emanating from the (WEF) or particularly from the newer Eurasian Economic Union (EAU) would leave most people as tenants, (that outcome should surprise no one) and is, moreover, concerned that the status of the Western capitalist system would remain uncertain. This last concern is what particularly prompted her OEN article.
Brown's Misreading's of History
Any GP worth being a GP would not begin treatment of a new patient without first taking a thorough history of the patient's medical situation. I consider myself a well-read GP of America's history having now spent 61 years researching and writing about America's history, its organizations, their leaders and their wrongdoings and evildoings. It is my contention here that Ms. Brown's misreading of history misleads her to the wrong proposals.
She asserts that 'our forefathers had some innovative solutions.' One of them she trots out is Abraham Lincoln. To fund the Civil War, she notes he used paper money. What she does not note is that bankers profit immensely from the deaths of others, the Civil War no exception. She also ignores other unpleasantries about Lincoln. He was a surrogate murderer (war is an act of war explained Einstein), he started a Civil War that killed thousands of soldiers on both sides to save the Union as a defense against potential foreign enemies not to emancipate the slaves for he was an unabashed racist. [3] Had there been left two Americas, probably neither could have grown powerful enough to become a deadly menace to the world as the undivided America became. [4]
A Grand Reset
Ms. Brown ends her article stating that the ongoings of the WEF and the EAU are a rare opportunity for a "People's Great Reset" that produces an economic system serving the people. I will end this article by broadening her enthusiasm to state that a Grand Reset could be possible that changes America from a corpocracy of the power elite to a genuine democracy of the American people. Were that to happen, not only would there be good capitalism for Americans there would no longer be an America of ruinous domestic policy and dangerous and deadly foreign policy. Could that ever happen before it is too late? Maybe. Maybe not.
Notes
1. Brown, E. A Reset that Serves the American People. OpEdNews, May 22, 2022.
2.Brumback, G.B. The Devil's Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Author House, 2011, p. 158.
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