Hazel Henderson was a futurist.  She understood that what is really important in an economic system isn’t measurable in dollars, but rather in the health and well-being of those living in the economy, including that primary partner, Planet Earth.  On today’s program we revisit our last conversation with Hazel from 2020 — a tribute to an authentic, bold thinker who …

America’s early financial innovations led a remarkable flowering in world history of expanding economic prospect, at least until the late 20th century.  Since then, financial elites and banking cartels have shifted the emphasis from investing for public benefit to private profiteering through monetary manipulations and resource exploitation. In his latest book “Who We Are,” our guest, historian and author Anton Chaitkin, …

Another historic milestone in the emergence of public banks around the country has been reached in Philadelphia with an overwhelming vote of the City Council to establish a Municipal Public Financial Authority.  We talk with two of the citizens that helped realize this success, Vanessa Lowe and Conni Bille. And later in the program Ellen talks with author Michael Mechanic …

Celebrated economist Michael Hudson thinks that the world of academic economics is both deceptive and essentially wrong in its formulations of the role of money and debt.  Hudson says today’s oligarchic monetary systems invariably reinforce the flow of profits from labor to the top of the economic ladder.  The result is unsustainable debt, which he says is an historical pattern …

“The magic of compound interest” – interest on interest on borrowed principal – is a primary way monetary wealth grows, but it is at the expense of real economic growth. What if our money system were built on local exchanges directly between producer and consumer? Our guest Thomas Greco, a global voice for community currency systems and credit clearing exchanges, …

The Clash of Two Americas   Matt Ehret’s new book “The Clash of Two Americas – The Unfinished Symphony” provides an extraordinary tour of the historical landscape that created our economic and political history. A consummate historian and student of the issues that lead to the creation of the political and economic tenets and systems we’ve inherited. Ellen talks with …

For decades, the importance of public sector institutions has been undermined by powerful private corporate interests. How they have done it and how that process can be reversed is discussed by our guest Donald Cohen, the author of a new book called The Privatization of Everything – How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back.  Cohen …

Across the globe, public banks hold assets of about $50 trillion dollars in widely divergent countries and cultures.  While these publicly owned institutions have diverse types of organization and purpose, they share core principles of retaining local equities. In North America new efforts to create local public banks have emerged among First Nation tribes who have been obliged to use …

The trillion-dollar philanthropy industry has been accused of continuing a racist, colonialist system of economic and cultural suppression. That notion is in dramatic contrast to a broadly favorable appreciation for the largess of wealthy donors who contribute significant sums to thousands of public interest organizations and causes.  What lies underneath that patina of generosity?  Our guest Edgar Villanueva writes in …

The OCC That acronym is not well known by many Americans even though it represents one of the most critical functions of our federal monetary system.  The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the OCC, is the manager of our system of “national banks” which comprise two-thirds of the banks in the country managing assets of about $14 trillion …