Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age

Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.

Ellen Brown is the founder and chairman of the Public Banking Institute and a Fellow at The Democracy Collaborative.

"In Banking on the People, attorney Ellen Brown provides a much-needed roadmap for reforming monetary and credit systems and the central banks now strangling our common human future. More lucidly that any other expert I know, she shows how we can break the grip of predatory financialization now extracting value from real peoples' productive activities all over the world. Her in-depth research and systemic overview of the global and local politics of money-creation and credit allocation include all the viable proposals of global experts and reformers. She reviews many of these reforms: from financial transaction taxes, to a universal basic income to provide purchasing power for the cornucopia of goods and services now produced, to expanding the public banks she so ably promotes via the Public Banking Institute, to returning the Fed and all banks to serving the public utility functions that economies require. This book is a must read for citizens in all societies who see the promising future as we seek to widen democracies and transform to a cleaner, greener, shared prosperity, based on the renewable abundance of free daily energy from our sun."
--Hazel Henderson, CEO of Ethical Markets Media and author of Mapping the Global Transition to the Solar Age and other books

"Banking on the People is a compelling and fast-moving primer on the new monetary revolution by the godmother of the public banking movement now emerging throughout the country. Brown shows how our new understanding of money and its creation, long concealed by bankers and others capturing the benefits for their own purposes, can be turned to support the public in powerful new ways."
--Gar Alperovitz, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, Co-Founder of The Democracy Collaborative and author of America Beyond Capitalism and other books

"Ellen Brown shows that there is a much better alternative to Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Public banks can safeguard public funds while avoiding the payday loans, redlining, predatory junk-mortgage loans and add-on small-print extras for which the large commercial banks are becoming notorious."
--Michael Hudson, Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and author of Killing the Host and other books

"As we pay the consequences of the global financial crisis and face a new global crisis of climate finance, Ellen Brown's message has never been more urgent: we must have public banks working in the public interest. Away with the hyper-exploitative and unaccountable monopoly of private banks! Banking on the People offers a tour de force for those activists, NGOs, and academics wanting to understand the forces at play when we talk about the democratization of finance. A must read!"
--Thomas Marois, Senior Lecturer, SOAS University of London, author of States, Banks and Crisis and other publications