Today's Stories

July 2, 2009

Wendell Potter
Obama's False Friends of Health Care Reform

July 1, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Iran and Us

Alberto Vallente Thorensen
Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal

Paul Craig Roberts
Pirates of the Mediterranean

Robert Weissman
150 Years

Manuel García, Jr.
The New Crisis in Aviation

Victor Figueroa-Clark / Pablo Navarrete
Honduras, a Coup With No Future

Norman Solomon
The NYT and Troop Deaths: Abstract Quality Journalism

Franklin Lamb
Remembering Amnon Kapeliouk

Martha Rosenberg
When Doctors Boo

Diane Rejman
Mothers and Military Lies

Website of the Day
The Color of the Race Problem is White

June 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Debt Deflation Arrives

Esam Al-Amin
Iran and Washington's Hidden Hand

Benjamin Dangl
Showdown in Honduras

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Doctors Collude in Torture

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah After the Elections

George Wuerthner
Beetle Hysteria ... Again: the Truth About Bugs, Fires and Ecosystems

Todd Gordon
Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression

Ron Jacobs
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

Kenneth Libby
Conditions for Citizenship

Julian Vigo
Feeling Michael Jackson

Website of the Day
Inside the Mega-Churches

June 29, 2009

Ishmael Reed
The Persecution of Michael Jackson

Nikolas Kozloff
The Coup in Honduras: Obama's Real Message to Latin America?

Clifton Ross
Coups and Constitutions: From Bolivia to Honduras

Patrick Cockburn
Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet

Uri Avnery
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran

Conn Hallinan
Dealing With North Korea: Why Threats and Sanctions Will Backfire

James G. Abourezk
Where the Money Isn't Going

Ralph Nader
The Holes in Obama's Financial Regulation Plan

Carol Miller
Why Fiscal Conservatives Should Love Medicare-for-All

Greg Moses
Jobs First

Website of the Day
Key Leaders of Honduran Coup Trained in the US

June 26-28, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Hate Crimes Bill: How Not to Remember Matthew Shepard

Jeffrey St. Clair
Meet the Retreads: Obama's Used Green Team

Doug Peacock
Elk River: History and the Yellowstone

Daniel Wolff
The Night Before: a Glimpse of the Lenape

Mike Whitney
What the Big Banks Have Won

John Ross
The New York Times and Stolen Elections

David Rosen
Cry, Hypocrite, Cry: the Tradition of Sex Scandals and American Politicians

Emily Ratner
Thoughts on Manhood From the Rafah Tunnel

Gareth Porter
Airstrike Report Belies "Blame Taliban" Line

Farid Marjai
Green, But Not Velvet

Nadia Hijab
The Rift in Iran: Memo to the "Do Something" Brigade

Paul Craig Roberts
Gun Control: What's the Agenda?

Fred Gardner
FDR's Real Defining Moment: Ending Prohibition

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Father's Day

Paul Watson
Fear and Loathing in Madeira

David Ker Thomson
Nothing

Farzana Versey
The Man in the Mirror: Michael Jackson as Tramp

Geoff Berne
Obama and Charter Schools: The Showdown at Schottenstein

Todd Alan Price
Ohio: Birthplace of Charter Education ... and Opposition to It

Ramzy Baroud
People for Sale in a Hungry World

Jeff Sher
Health Care Showdown

Dr. Carol Paris Despite My Arrest by Max Baucus, I Will Continue to Advocate for Quality Health Care for All

Walter Brasch Adultery as Family Value?

Glen Johnson
The Village and the Wall

Charlotte Laws
Hold the MSG!

Charles R. Larson
Dickens in Morocco, Sort Of

Kim Nicolini
The Erasure of Art

David Yearsley
Yankee Prof Takes on Dallas

Lorenzo Wolff
When the Songs Remain the Same

Poets' Basement
Larson, Davies, McLellan and Gardner

Website of the Weekend
Kayakers vs. Shell Oil

June 25, 2009

Kathy Kelly
Now We See You, Now We Don't

Jack Bratich
You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War: the Media and the Iranian Protests

Wendell Potter
The Health Insurance Industry v. Health Care Reform: a Former Insurance Industry Insider Tells All

Charles R. Larson
Don't Cry for Him, Argentina! GOP Sex Scandal of the Week

Alan Farago
The Tears of Mark Sanford

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Firms Accused of Profiting Off Holocaust

Gareth Porter
Khobar Bombings: Telltale Signs of Saudi Fraud

Bitta Mostofi /
Bill Quigley
"You Will Not Get Past Us"

David Macaray
Six Ways to Reinvigorate Labor

Mark Schuller
Haiti's Elections: "Beat the Dog Too Hard"

Website of the Day
Worst Slide Story

June 24, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
How the U.S. Has Secretly Backed Pakistan's Nuclear Program From Day One

Dean Baker
Making Financial Regulation Work

Andy Worthington
The Story of Abdul Rahim al-Ginco

James Bovard
Obama and the Torturers

Diana Gibson /
Ray McGovern
Torture Eats the Soul

P. Sainath
The Age of the Everyday Billionaire

Gareth Porter
Investigating the Khobar Tower Bombing: Why Was Al Qaeda Excluded From the Suspects List?

Robert Alvarez
The Department of Energy's Nuclear Albatross

Dave Lindorff
Medicare for All

Steven Colatrella Remembering Giovanni Arrighi

Website of the Day
Protest as Terrorism

June 23, 2009

David Price
Obama's Classroom Spies

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reels Toward a New Era

James Ridgeway /
Jean Casella
Bi-Partisan Bull on Health Care: Three Ex-Senators Get It Up for the Health Care Industry

Dave Lindorff
Using the Economic Crisis to Attack Workers

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Puerto Rico: Biotech Island

Gary Leupp
Dennis Ross Moves to the White House

Brian M. Downing
The Erosion of the Mullahs' Monolith

Robert Bryce
Are Theocracies Doomed?

Nicholas Dearden
The G8 is Dead

Yousef Munayyer
Seeing Through Israeli Delay Tactics

Website of the Day
The Great White Father of America

June 22, 2009

Michael Hudson
Obama's (Latest) Surrender to Wall Street

Esam Al-Amin
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election? A Hard Look at the Numbers

Chris Floyd
Dexter's Legions in Afghanistan

Jack Z. Bratich
The Fog Machine: Iran, Social Networks and Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations

Atash Yaghmaian
We Children of the Revolution

Laura Carlsen
Victory in the Amazon

Paul Craig Roberts
The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran

Vijay Prashad
Gun v. Butter: Now You are Only Poor

Fred Gardner
Charles Lynch Gets a Year and a Day (No Thanks to Eric Holder)

Andy Thayer
The Blank Check: How We Got the Obama-DOMA Debacle

David Macaray
Unions and the Newspaper Crisis

Website of the Day
The Most Spied Upon Town in America?

June 19 - 21, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
I Become an American

Jeffrey St. Clair
Firebrand: Rod Coronado's Flame War

Patrick Cockburn
Who Will Control Iraq's Oil?

Al Giordano
What the Left Should be Learning From Iran

Henry A. Giroux
The Iranian Uprisings and the Challenge of the New Media

Anthony DiMaggio
The Electoral Façade

Paul Craig Roberts
Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"

John Ross
46 Dead Mexican Toddlers: Sacrificed on the Altar of Neoliberalism

Gareth Porter
Spinning Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan

Carl Ginsburg
Obama's Bix Fix: Placating the Bankers, Again

Tommi Avicolli Mecca
40 Years After Stonewall: From Smash the Church to Going to the Chapel

Joe Bageant
Workers' Rights: No Balls, No Gains

Serge Halimi
Protectionism: We've Been Here Before

P. Sainath
Price of Rice, Price of Power in India

Jim Goodman
The Claim Deniers: Why the Health Insurance Industry Doesn't Deserve Our Trust

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Health Care Waterloo

Rannie Amiri
Bush Jumps Over Maine, Carter Lands in Gaza

Robert Fantina
Iran, Obama and McCain

Harvey Wasserman
Big Nuke's Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Walter Brasch
They Got Away With Murder: 12 Angry White People

David Ker Thomson
This Moment's Bill of Rights

Charles R. Larson
No Voice: Telling Her Mother's Story

David Yearsley
Escape From the Torture Chamber

Kim Nicolini
When the Closet is the Culprit

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini and the Art of Ambiguity

Poets' Basement
Beatty and Kowitt

Website of the Weekend
Grown in Yellowstone, Slaughtered in Montana

June 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Case of Netanyahu and the Curious Incident

Robert Sandels /
Nelson P. Valdes
U.S. Cuba Policy: a Case of Post-Diplomatic Strees Disorder

Anthony DiMaggio
The Iranian Elections and the Faith-Based Media

Robert Weissman
Obama's Financial Sector Reform Plan: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Joshua Frank
These Are Obama's Wars Now

Jonathan Cook
Canadian Ambassador Honored in Illegal Park Built on Razed Palestinian Homes

Reza Fiyouzat
Iranians in the Streets

Norman Solomon
Obama and the Antiwar Democrats

Ali Jawad
Reformists are Islamists, Too

James Ridgeway
Am I on Crack When It Comes to Flight 447?

Website of the Day
The Death of the Ghost Prisoner

June 17, 2009

Carl Boggs
Torture: an American Legacy

Dr. Bryant Welch
Torture, Psychology and Sen. Daniel Inouye: the True Story Behind Psychology's Role in Torture?

Winslow T. Wheeler
How Obama Will Outspend Reagan on Defense

Liaquat Ali Khan
Obama's Gift to Pakistan: a Civil War

Jonathan Cook
Beating and Torturing Children

Binoy Kampmark
Gordon Brown's War Inquiry

Karim Makdisi
The Lebanese Elections: a Box Office Success?

Dave Lindorff
Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black

David Swanson
In Congress: 32 Heroes, 21 Frauds

Gene Marx
How Fox News is Helping to Nationalize the GI Sanctuary Movement

Website of the Day
The Diamond Mine That Ate Mirny

June 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq's Looming Peril: a Plague of Snakes

John Ross
Undermining Mexico

Afshin Rattansi
Guarding the Revolution

Marc Levy
How I Nearly Won the War

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?

Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Youth Make History

Brian M. Downing
Democracy in Iran

Merle Lefkoff
Israel's Angels in America

David Macaray
Charles Manson and Me

Robert Jensen
Finding a Stubborn Hope to Live in a Dead Culture

David Swanson
An Exit Strategy That Keeps Wars Going

Website of the Day
Rachel Corrie Soccer Tournament Fundraiser

June 15, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Ending of America's Financial-Military Empire

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iranian Elections: Sure They Stole It...Up Front and Honestly

Patrick Cockburn
A Whole New Ballgame in Iraq

James Ridgeway
Did Composite Parts Bring Down Air France Flight 447?

Marjorie Cohn
Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam

Rannie Amiri
Iran and the End of the "Obama Effect" Myth

Dave Lindorff
How Obama is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform

Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Elections and the Hysterical Media

Leonard Schwartz
The Angel of History and the Ghetto of Gaza

Martha Rosenberg
Start Your Engines, Drug Reps!

Website of the Day
Single-Payer v. Public Option

June 12-14, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Who Needs Yesterday's Papers?

Gareth Porter
The CIA's Drone Wars

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Parlor Trick

Mark Ames
Elmer Fudd Nation

Esam Al-Amin
What Really Happened in the Lebanese Elections?

Franklin Lamb
Carter in Lebanon

Patrick Cockburn
Prisoner Swap in Iraq

Andy Worthington
The Long Ordeal of Mohammed El-Gharani

Heather Gray
A New Perspective on the Confederacy: Southern Greed During the Civil War

Felice Pace
Why NPR Refuses to Report on the Single Payer Movement

Ron Jacobs
Flashback to the End of a War That Really Did End

George Wuerthner
Burning Questions: Why the National Fire Plan is a Trojan Horse for Logging

Jeffrey Buchanan /
Trinh Le
Biloxi Trailer Blues

David Ker Thomson
Americana

Renaud Lambert
Brazil: More Dependent Than Ever

Kevin Zeese
Congress and the Health Business Lobby

David Macaray
SAG Vote: A Lesson in Solidarity ... Not

Evelyn Pringle
FDA Throws Lifeline to Antipsychotic Pushers

Chris Genovali
Blood Sport Auction: Why eBay Should Stop Selling Guided Hunts for Bears, Wolves and Cougar

David Michael Green
The Rhetorical President

Brian J. Foley
Our Solar System is Not a Suicide Pact!

Charles R. Larson
No Safe Return

Kim Nicolini
Foreclosure is Hell: Sam Raimi's Frightfest

David Yearsley
Bach on Torture: Mr. Cheney, They're Playing Your Song

Lorenzo Wolff
Intent to Discord

Poets' Basement
Chris Jordan

Website of the Weekend
The Red Room

June 11, 2009

Kathy Kelly /
Dan Pearson
Down and Out in Shah Mansoor: With the Swat Refugees

James Bovard
The Latest Torture Cover-Up Scam

Tristan de Bourbon
The Toy Makers of Chenghai: the Financial Crisis Seen From China

Dave Lindorff
The Wheels are Coming Off the Recovery Program

Kevin Zeese
The Case for Disbarment of the Torture Lawyers

Ralph Nader
The Craft of Sam Maloof: a Visionary Woodworker

Harvey Wasserman
The GOP's Trillion Dollar Reactor Plan Goes Radioactive

Nicole Colson
The Anti-Abortion Movement's Climate of Violence

Mark Weisbrot
Showdown Over the IMF

Dan Bacher
Big Water's Big Lie Unravels

Website of the Day
Top 10 Most Absurd TIME Covers

June 10, 2009

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Obama's Doublespeak on Iran

Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine
The Dangerous World of Indefinite Detentions: From Vietnam to Abu Ghraib

Kathy Kelly
Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Fear Rules

Rev. William E. Alberts
First the Torture of Truth ...

Peter Lee
Obama and North Korea: a Warm-Up in the Offing?

Carol Miller
Why We Need a Holistic, Cradle-to-the-Grave National Health Care System

Emily Ratner
Dreams of Flight in Gaza

Robert Weissman
The IMF's Accountability Moment

Dave Lindorff
The Sutra of the Crushed Volvo

Website of the Day
Starving in Gitmo

June 9, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Back From the Dead: Pentagon Pork!

Mike Whitney
Is Hyper-Inflation Around the Corner?

Stan Cox
Biofuel's Drug Problem

Sibel Edmonds
The Battle Against the State Secrets Privilege

Jonathan Cook
Where the Victim is the Guilty Party

David Macaray
A Bad Time for Unions

Robert Jensen
In South Africa, Apartheid is Dead, But White Supremacy Lingers On

Nadia Hijab
The Obama Difference

Mark Weisbrot
Vulture Funds Descend on Argentina

Website of the Day
Waging Non-Violence

June 8, 2009

John Ross
Mexico: Politics as Drugs / Drugs as Politics

Paul Wright
Deconstructing Gus: How a Former Prisoner Took On and Took Down Corrections Corporation of America's Top Lawyer (and Cheney Pal)

Paul Craig Roberts
Long-Term Economic Memory Loss

Franklin C. Spinney
"Natural Growth:" Israel's Demographic Hogwash

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon's Elections: Return to the Status Quo

Uri Avnery
The Tone and the Music

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Loyalty Oaths

Eric Toussaint
/ Damien Millet
The Partisans of Capitalism Have Lost All Credibility

Jim Goodman
The Dairy Oligarchy

Norman Solomon
Words and War

Reza Fiyouzat
When Accusations Fly: the Spectacle of the Iranian Elections

Website of the Day
Latino Jobless Rate Soars

June 5 -7, 200

Alexander Cockburn
High Words, Low Truths

George Galloway
Our Convoy to Gaza

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama in Cairo

Jennifer Loewenstein
How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?

Franklin Lamb
Watching Obama's Speech in Lebanon

Mike Whitney
The Biggest Rip Off Ever?

Andy Worthington
Death at Guantánamo

Missy Comley Beattie
Peace Be Upon You?

Farzana Versey
Walk Like an Egyptian: the Oprahfication of Obama

Stanley Heller
Obama's Non-Starter

John V. Whitbeck
Nothing Comes From Nothing

Robert Weissman
GM: the Path Not Taken

Lee Sustar
The Fall of GM: Why Workers Will Pay the Price

Dave Lindorff
What a State-Run GM Could Do

William Blum
The Great, International, Truly Demonic Iran Threat

Ernest Callenbach /
Harvey Wasserman
A Green-Powered Trip Through Ecotopia

Greg Moses
By George! Austin Leads the National Recovery

Ron Jacobs
The Meaning of Yasser Arafat

David Yearsley
Art Set in Concrete:
the Desolate Urban Landscape of High Culture

Tim Stelloh
Pot Home Invasions: Bud and Blow Torches

Belén Fernández
The Joksters: Obama and Thomas Friedman

David Ker Thomson
The Academics

Karyn Strickler
Clean Coal: a Dirty Joke

Christopher Brauchli
Judicial Amnesia and the Federalist Society

Charles R. Larson
Leaving Tangier: Exile and Exploitation

Kim Nicolini
"Hunger:" Art With a Punch

Lorenzo Wolff
Good Head (Or Why the End of Hand-Crafted Music Isn't (Necessarily) the End of Music)

Poets' Basement
Jenkins, Orloski and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tankman

July 2, 2009

Turning Crisis Into Opportunity

California's Empty Wallet

By ELLEN HODGSON BROWN

“Our wallet is empty, our bank is closed and our credit is dried up.”

– Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, June 2, 2009

California State Controller John Chiang has warned that without a balanced budget in place by July 1, he will begin using IOUs to pay most of the state’s bills. On June 25, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected a plan that would save the state $3 billion by cutting school spending, saying he would rather see the state issue IOUs than delay the funding problem with a piecemeal approach. The state’s total budget deficit is $24.3 billion.

Meanwhile, other funding doors are slamming closed. The Obama administration has said it will not use federal stimulus money to prop up California; and Fitch Ratings, a bond rating agency, announced that it was downgrading the credit rating of the state, which already has the lowest in the nation. Once downgraded, California’s rating is likely to fall below the minimum level legally required for most money market funds, forcing the funds to sell their California bonds. The result could be a cost of millions of additional dollars in higher interest rates for the state.

What to do? Perhaps California could take a lesson from the island state of Guernsey, located in the English Channel off the French Coast, which faced similar funding problems in the 19th century. Toby Birch, an asset manager who hails from there, tells the story in Gold News:

“As weary troops returned from a protracted foreign war [the Napoleonic Wars ending in 1815], they encountered a land racked with debt, high prices and a crumbling infrastructure, whose flood defenses were about to be overwhelmed . . . . While 1815 brought an end to the conflict on the battlefront, . . . severe austerity ensued on the home front. The application of the Gold Standard meant that loans issued over many years were then recalled to balance the ratio of money to precious metals. This led to economic gridlock as labor and materials were abundant, but much-needed projects could not be funded for want of cash.

“This led to a period of so-called ‘poverty amongst plenty’. . . . The situation seemed insoluble; existing borrowing costs were consuming 80% of the island’s revenues. What was already an unsustainable debt burden would need to be doubled to fund the two most essential infrastructure projects. This was when a committee of States members was formed . . . . The committee realized that if the Guernsey States issued their own notes to fund the project, rather than borrowing from an English bank, there would be no interest to pay. This would lead to substantial savings. Because as anyone with a mortgage should understand, the debtor ends up paying at least double the amount borrowed over the long-term.”

To prevent an unwanted inflation of the money supply, the Guernsey States issued the notes with a date due, and on that date the bearer was paid in gold. The money came from rents on the finished infrastructure, supplemented with a tax on liquor. Birch goes on:

“The end result of the Guernsey Experiment was spectacular – new roads, sea defenses and public buildings were established, fostering widespread trade and prosperity. Full employment was achieved, no deficits resulted and prices were stable, all without a penny paid in interest. What started as a trial led to a string of construction projects, which still stand and function to this day. Money was used in its purest form: as a convenient mechanism for oiling the wheels of commerce and development.”

Like Guernsey, California is facing “poverty amidst plenty.” The state has the eighth largest economy in the world, larger than Russia’s, Brazil’s, Canada’s and India’s. It has the resources, labor, and technical expertise to make just about anything its citizens put their minds to. The only thing lacking is the money to do it. But money is merely a medium of exchange, a means of getting suppliers, laborers and customers together so that they can produce and exchange products.

As has been explained elsewhere, today money is simply credit. All of our money except coins is created by banks when they make loans. The current crisis stems from a credit freeze that began on Wall Street in the fall of 2007, when banks were required to revalue their assets due to a change in accounting rules, from “mark to fantasy” to “mark to market.” Banks that were previously considered in good shape, with plenty of capital for making loans, suddenly came up short. Lending fell off, and so did the available money supply.

Just understanding the problem is enough to see the solution. If a private bank can create credit on its books, so can the mighty state of California. It merely needs to form its own bank. Under the “fractional reserve” lending system, banks are allowed to extend credit – or create money as loans – in a sum equal to many times their deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this:

“[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people – or the government – deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up.”

The 10 percent reserve requirement is now largely obsolete, in part because banks have figured out how to get around it. What chiefly limits bank lending today is the 8 percent capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the head of the private global central banking system in Basel, Switzerland. With an 8 percent capital requirement, a state with its own bank could fan its revenues into 12.5 times their face value in loans (100 ÷ 8 = 12.5). And since the state would actually own the bank, it would not have to worry about shareholders or profits. It could lend to creditworthy borrowers at very low interest, perhaps limited only to a service charge covering its costs; and on loans the bank made to the state, the state would ultimately get the interest, making the loans essentially interest-free.

Precedent for this approach is to be found in North Dakota, one of only three states currently able to meet its budget. North Dakota is not only solvent but now boasts the largest surplus it has ever had. The Bank of North Dakota, the only state-owned bank in the nation, was established by the legislature in 1919 to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. The bank’s surplus profits are returned to the state’s coffers. The bank operates as a bankers’ bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It makes 1% loans to startup farms, has a thriving student loan business, and purchases municipal bonds from public institutions.

Looking at California’s budget figures, projected state revenues for 2009 are $128 billion. At a reserve requirement of 10%, if California deposited all $128 billion in its own state-owned bank, it could issue $1.28 trillion in loans, far more than it would need to cover its $23 billion budget shortfall. To lend itself the money to cover the shortfall, it would need only $2.3 billion in deposits and about $2 billion in capital (assuming an 8% capital requirement). What Sheldon Emry wrote of nations is equally true of states:

“It is as ridiculous for a nation to say to its citizens, ‘You must consume less because we are short of money,’ as it would be for an airline to say, ‘Our planes are flying, but we cannot take you because we are short of tickets.’”

As a card-carrying member of the banking elite, California could create all the credit it needs to fund its operations, with money to spare.

Ellen Hodgson Brown is the author of Web of Debt: the Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. She can be reached through her website.

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