Ellen Brown, Public Banking Institute: The Global Debt Crisis

Precipitated by the credit collapse of 2008, countries everywhere are facing a debt crisis: Public services are being slashed and public assets are being sold off, in a futile attempt to balance budgets that can no longer be "balanced", because even our money supply has shrunk. The collapse was not in "government", but in our banking system, and in the credit which is responsible for creating and sustaining it: Most of our money today is NOT created by governments, but is created by private banks as loans. The "private" system of money creation has grown so powerful over the centuries so that it now dominates even the world's governments. Unfortunately, it also contains the seeds of its own destruction. In other words, the source of its power is also a fatal design flaw! Normally, banks advance "bank credit", which must be paid back with interest, without an obligation to spend the interest they collect, so that borrowers can earn it repeatedly, as they must, in order to retire the debt. The money is often invested in casinos beyond the borrowers' reach. This leads to a continual cycle for for more bank credit money, and more debt with more attached interest. Today, this problem is especially evident in the "Euro", a fixed currency system that does not allow for expansion to meet the demands of the "private lending casino".