Award-winning author Steven Fenberg of Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism and the Common Good was joined by Ellen Brown, Public Banking Institute chair and author of Web of Debt and former IMF senior economist Alphecca Muttardy for a timely Zoom roundtable discussion, National Banking in Times of Crisis.

This forum occurs during the most ominous financial crisis of the past fifteen years. Comparisons are being made to the 2008 financial meltdown and to the devastation that followed the 1929 stock market crash. Steven Fenberg described how the federal government’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) successfully addressed the financial catastrophe of the Great Depression and how those strategies can be applied today. 

The RFC was central in stabilizing the banking system in 1932, first by providing loans to financial institutions and then by buying their preferred stock to recapitalize them so they could pay depositors and lend again. The RFC followed those actions by spearheading the nation’s industrial and economic expansion in anticipation of World War II. Author and financial historian Ellen Brown traced the roots of those policies to the founding of the United States of America when the generation of credit spurred industrial expansion that built our nation into a great powerhouse during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. 

Alphecca Muttardy explored the parallel of today’s proposed National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) legislation to the RFC and the earlier versions of national banking and economic expansion. The United States can come full circle and apply the lessons learned from those previous efforts to solve the onrushing financial crisis of today. 

To quote Mark Twain, “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” 

Watch video here

Speakers:

Steven Fenberg, Author of Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism and the Common Good, Houston, TX

Ellen Brown, Chair and Founder, Public Banking Institute, Los Angeles, CA

Alphecca Muttardy, former Senior Economist, International Monetary Fund, Fairfax, VA

Moderator: Julie Olsen, MBA, Small business owner, Anchorage, AK