Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt  and of The Public Bank Solution will be making a presentation for the Community Forum of First Universalist Church on Sunday, October 30^th, at 12:30 p.m.  The event is being held at the First Plymouth Congregational Church at 3501 S. Colorado Blvd.

At the event, you’ll learn more about the progress and promise of public banking in the U.S. and in Colorado.  Please bring your questions and suggestions for this movement.

Many of you attended the nearly day-long event—the “Banking on Colorado” Conference held in Denver on January 31, 2015 at which Ellen Brown and a number of other national and international leaders in the movement for Public Banking and financial reform also presented—including Mike Krauss, Nomi Prins, Gwen Hallsmith, and Karl Beitel.  You can watch the entire conference at the “Banking on Colorado” website – http://bankingoncolorado.org/, or via direct link available on that website: http://bankingoncolorado.org/banking-on-colorado-bringing-our-money-home-conference-videos/, or on YouTube.  Others of you were part of the Main Street Stakeholders Group, or learned about this movement in other ways.   The movement is based in large part upon the success of the Bank of North Dakota (BND), the only state to go through the 2008 economic collapse without decline but record profits each year instead.  The BND works with private community banks to provide abundant lending to small and medium sized businesses, and to reduce the cost of public projects by the nearly half that consists of interest.

Santa Fe, New Mexico and Philadelphia have each made substantial progress toward establishing a public bank through city council action and are working on specific plans and a timetable to establish their own bank, with other cities working to catch up.

Since our conference, its lead sponsor, Be the Change of Colorado, has spun its public banking effort into a new organization called Rocky Mountain Public Banking Institute (RMPBI), founded in August 2015.  The RMPBI received a very helpful grant from The Denver Foundation which it has used to research the financial feasibility of public banks for several jurisdictions in Colorado, to address legal issues that will likely be raised as to whether a city, county, or the state can legally operate its own public bank. Efforts have also moved forward to improve and strengthen a proposed Ballot Initiative to establish a state-owned bank in Colorado with a view to making a serious move in 2018 or 2020. Leaders of the effort have also been consulting with some community bankers to get their valuable input and suggestions.