Reports

For-profit energy utilities exercise their political and economic power to roll back climate regulation. Transitioning energy utilities to public ownership could help dismantle barriers to climate action and catalyze the redesign of power generation and distribution. A movement could simultaneously harness the opportunity for more democratic engagement in public utilities to accelerate energy democracy, while also taking for-profit utilities into community hands to reorient their focus towards the public good. 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

Exploring strategies for combating displacement, expanding ownership, and building community wealth. 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

Ted Howard’s remarks to the Environmental Funders Network in Cambridge, England, on February 2nd, 2018. read more

We know we have to consume less. But a real systemic alternative would make this the more attractive option. read more

If we want a new economy and real democracy, we need to tackle the media question. Laura Flanders explores what a people-powered 21st century media ecosystem could look like at scale. read more

The US economy’s deep systemic inequalities of income, wealth, power, and opportunity are part of global inequality trends, but US-style capitalism and public policy make inequalities more acute. What are the systemic interventions needed to deconcentrate wealth and move towards a more equal America? 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