Why We Should Own the Banks

Banks create money – nearly all of it. Should we recapture the sovereign power to create money by reclaiming ownership of the banks?

Today virtually the entire circulating money supply consists of bank credit issued as loans. Banks get the profits from the interest and determine who gets credit and on what terms. By law, when we put our money in the bank, it becomes the property of the bank, to do with as it will; and we have seen from a long litany of frauds and abuse that private banks have not managed this privilege well.

Founder and President of the Public Banking Institute Ellen Brown argues that we need to own the banks – or at least some of them – in order to ensure the safety of our deposits, public and private; to reclaim the profits for the public interest; to reclaim control over where our credit goes and on what terms; and to cut the costs of government.