Money & Banking

Public banks have the potential to address a host of economic, social, and ecological crises, but it is important to get the institutional structure right. This report offers recommendations for a Los Angeles public bank and addresses key questions of who the public bank serves and how. read more

One of the signs that a crisis is systemic, rather than purely political or economic, is that key indicators decline or stay the same regardless of changes in political power or business cycles. This first edition of the Index of Systemic Trends is an effort to quantify, track, and visualize this crisis. It shows the need to move in the direction of a new system that can and will produce better outcomes. read more

The Community Reinvestment Act was passed by Congress in 1977 to spur lending and investing in communities of color and lower-income neighborhoods. What updates would be needed to continue to meet this mandate and support community wealth building? read more

To keep carbon safely in the ground, the government should secure control of fossil fuel reserves by promoting a federal buyout of the top US-based, publicly-traded fossil fuel companies, using the power of the Federal Reserve to deploy newly created money into the financial system. By focusing on major companies in the first links of the fossil fuel supply-chain, the federal government could detach growth- and profit-driven interests from reserves and halt otherwise inevitable extraction. read more

When the next financial crisis hits, we need to be ready for more than another round of no-strings-attached bailouts and weak regulations that corporate finance can roll back a few years later. It’s time to put permanent public ownership on the table as a policy option for how we rescue banks that are still too big to fail. read more

Against infrastructure strategies that depend on private investment and public-private partnerships (PPPs), Democracy Collaborative Fellow Ellen Brown, founder and president emeritus of the Public Banking Institute, shows how public strategies for investing in infrastructure can deliver far more at lower costs for the public good. read more