Ralph Nader and Nomi Prins: Permanent Distortion: How Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever

Renew the Glass-Steagall Act

Image by Peg Hunter via Flickr

Dandelion Salad
April 2, 2023

with Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader Radio Hour on Apr 1, 2023

We are joined for the full hour by geopolitical financial expert and financial historian, Nomi Prins, to discuss her new book, Permanent Distortion: How Financial Markets Abandoned the Real Economy Forever, which highlights the huge gap between the high-flying stock market, versus back down here on earth, where average people struggle to make ends meet.

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Michael Hudson and Ralph Nader: The Real Purpose of The Federal Reserve

Capitalism Kills

Image by Infinite Ache via Flickr

by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
September 29, 2022

Ralph Nader Radio Hour on Sep 17, 2022

Ralph does a deep dive into the real purpose of the Federal Reserve and other aspects of the American economy with progressive economist, Michael Hudson.

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Chris Hedges: The Corporate Assault on the US Postal Service

US Post Office Marshfield VT 05658

Image by Mussi Katz via Flickr

Dandelion Salad

with Chris Hedges

RT America on Jan 20, 2022

On the show, Chris Hedges discusses the corporate assault against the US Postal Service with the author Christopher W. Shaw.

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Another Bank Bailout Under the Cover of a Virus, by Ellen Brown

Rich Uncle Pennybags

Image by Sean Davis via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog, May 18, 2020
May 19, 2020

Insolvent Wall Street banks have been quietly bailed out again. Banks made risk-free by the government should be public utilities.

When the Dodd Frank Act was passed in 2010, President Obama triumphantly declared, “No more bailouts!” But what the Act actually said was that the next time the banks failed, they would be subject to “bail ins” – the funds of their creditors, including their large depositors, would be tapped to cover their bad loans.

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Crushing the States, Saving the Banks: The Fed’s Generous New Rules, by Ellen Brown

Capitalism Is Crisis

Image by Steffi Reichert via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog, May 2, 2020
May 3, 2020

Congress seems to be at war with the states. Only $150 billion of its nearly $3 trillion coronavirus relief package – a mere 5% – has been allocated to the 50 states; and they are not allowed to use it where they need it most, to plug the holes in their budgets caused by the mandatory shutdown. On April 22, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he was opposed to additional federal aid to the states, and that his preference was to allow states to go bankrupt.

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Did Congress Just Nationalize The Federal Reserve? No. But… by Ellen Brown

Capitalism Is Crisis

Image by Steffi Reichert via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog, Apr. 3, 2020
April 4, 2020

Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open.

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Socialism at Its Finest after Fed’s Bazooka Fails by Ellen Brown

Class War #occupyboston

Image by Chase Elliott Clark via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog, Mar. 21, 2020
March 22, 2020

In what is being called the worst financial crisis since 1929, the US stock market has lost a third of its value in the space of a month, wiping out all of its gains of the last three years. When the Federal Reserve tried to ride to the rescue, it only succeeded in making matters worse. The government then pulled out all the stops. To our staunchly capitalist leaders, socialism is suddenly looking good.

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Mexico: The End of the Neoliberal Era by Ellen Brown

Make Capitalism History

Image by Adam Lederer via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
February 11, 2020

While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had failed; private banks were not serving the poor and people outside the cities, so the government had to step in.

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A Crisis of Capitalism is Being Faced by Millennials in South Korea by Ellen Brown

Death to Capitalism

Image by lisbokt via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
October 25, 2019

This 10-page paper was written for the Economics of Happiness Conference co-sponsored by Local Futures, held in Jeonju, Korea, on October 16-17, where I was the keynote speaker — a wonderful city and great experience!

Satisfaction in the workplace is a major component of the “happiness” index; but it is a satisfaction that young people joining the workforce today are not feeling. In a 2017 book titled Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, Malcolm Harris asks why the millennial generation – those born between 1981 and 1996 – are so burned out. His answer is, “the economy.” Millennials are bearing the brunt of the economic damage wrought by late 20thcentury capitalism, with economic insecurities throwing them into a state of perpetual panic. Harris argues that if they want to meaningfully improve their lives and the lives of future generations, they will have to overthrow the system and rewrite the social contract.

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The True Roots of Money & Banking and How to Pull Off a Modern Debt Jubilee by Ellen Brown

cancel the debt

Image by Friends of the Earth International via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
September 1, 2019

We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes in his provocative 2018 book, “…and forgive them their debts,” debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. The question, he says, is how they won’t be paid.

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NATO’s China Double-Think by Finian Cunningham + Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China by Ellen Brown

Stop NATO manifestation, Krakow

Image by Gosia Malochleb via Flickr

by Finian Cunningham
Writer, Dandelion Salad
East Africa
Crossposted from Sputnik
August 9, 2019

The US-led NATO alliance this week designated a whole new hemisphere to itself for “security” operations. No longer merely an “Atlantic” organization, it’s assuming the role of policing the Pacific. Quite a self-promotion.

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How to Pay for It All by Ellen Brown

For All Debts...

Image by AK Rockefeller via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
July 10, 2019

The Democratic Party has clearly swung to the progressive left, with candidates in the first round of presidential debates coming up with one program after another to help the poor, the disadvantaged and the struggling middle class. Proposals ranged from a Universal Basic Income to Medicare for All to a Green New Deal to student debt forgiveness and free college tuition. The problem, as Stuart Varney observed on FOX Business, was that no one had a viable way to pay for it all without raising taxes or taking from other programs, a hard sell to voters. If robbing Peter to pay Paul is the only alternative, the proposals will go the way of Trump’s trillion dollar infrastructure bill for lack of funding.

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The Bankers’ “Power Revolution”: How the Government Got Shackled by Debt + New Book: Banking on the People by Ellen Brown

The Bankers’ "Power Revolution": How the Government Got Shackled by Debt + New Book: Banking on the People by Ellen Brown

Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog, May 31, 2019
June 2, 2019

This article is excerpted from my new book Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age, available in paperback June 1.

The U.S. federal debt has more than doubled since the 2008 financial crisis, shooting up from $9.4 trillion in mid-2008 to over $22 trillion in April 2019. The debt is never paid off. The government just keeps paying the interest on it, and interest rates are rising.

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Why Is the Federal Reserve Paying So Much Interest to Banks? by Ellen Brown

Rich Uncle Pennybags

Image by Sean Davis via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
April 4, 2019

“If you invest your tuppence wisely in the bank, safe and sound,
Soon that tuppence safely invested in the bank will compound,

“And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest as your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors who invest as propriety demands.”

Mary Poppins, 1964

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Funding A US Green New Deal Without Raising Taxes by Ellen Brown

Green New Deal

Image by Bart Everson via Flickr

by Ellen Brown
Writer, Dandelion Salad
The Web of Debt Blog
March 21, 2019

As alarm bells sound over the advancing destruction of the environment, a variety of Green New Deal proposals have appeared in the US and Europe, along with some interesting academic debates about how to fund them. Monetary policy, normally relegated to obscure academic tomes and bureaucratic meetings behind closed doors, has suddenly taken center stage.

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