LUCERNE — The author, lawyer and historian Ellen Brown will speak before an audience in Lake County Thursday evening.
Brown, a bestselling author who is widely acknowledged to be America’s foremost expert on public banking, will speak at New Paradigm College, in Lucerne, on Thursday at 7 p.m.
Red-haired, freckled, brilliant but surprisingly mellow and up for fun, she will guide us through the labyrinths and mystifications of America’s banking system, assess the remarkable options presented by public banks and digital currencies, and explain the opportunities for Lake County brought by the passage into law less than a week ago of AB 857—a bill that allows California cities and counties to create their own publicly owned banks. As the founder of the Public Banking Institute, Brown was instrumental in developing policies that were influential in the writing of this bill.
Tickets are $25 online or $30 at the door. (The public is also invited to come early to enjoy our free Founders Launch Celebration, which will run from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. This informal pre-lecture social gathering will feature live music by noted jazz pianist John Mackay and bassist Paul Augspurger.)
Ellen Brown’s lectures are never anything less than revelatory. Few people know, for example, that when the Continental Congress sent Benjamin Franklin to London to be our Ambassador to the United Kingdom his primary mission was to persuade the British Parliament to lift its ban on the issuance of paper money by the New England colonies, not to get relief from British taxes. When Franklin arrived in London he was surprised to find the city’s streets filled with beggars and paupers. As Brown reported in her book “Web of Debt,” Franklin, when asked how the colonies were able to support America’s poor houses, is said to have replied: “We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had some there would be nobody to put in them, sincere there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps.”
When the directors of the Bank of England asked him what was responsible for the Colonies’ boom economies, Franklin answered: “That is simple. In the colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue to pay the government’s approved expenses and charities. We make sure it is issued in proper proportions to make the goods pass easily from the producers to the consumers…In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay to no one.”
Brown will also discuss her just-published “Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age,” which has already won extraordinary praise from leading economic thinkers. Michael Hudson, Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, said it “shows a that there is a much better alternative to Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.” Gar Alperowitz, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, called it “a compelling and fast-moving primer on the new monetary revolution by the godmother of the public banking movement now emerging throughout the country.” And Hazel Henderson called it “a must read for those who see the promising future as we seek to widen democracies and transform to a cleaner, greener, shared prosperity.” This is a must-see event for anyone who wants to know the quickest, best, and most practical route to shared prosperity and public well-being.
— Bill Stranger, New Paradigm College
Find tickets at www.newparadigmcollege.org.
