Proponents of public banking will gather in Denver on Saturday, January 31, 1:00-8:30 pm for a conference called Banking on Colorado: Bringing our Money Home. One of the speakers is Ellen Brown who co-founded the Public Banking Institute. Brown points to the single publicly owned depository bank in the US – in North Dakota as a model for other states. North Dakota is the only state that was consistently in the black after 2008 and has one of the lowest default rates on mortgages and credit card debt. Ellen Brown says that’s largely due to having a public bank. Efforts to bring a public bank to Colorado have failed in the past, but proponents are hopeful that it will be a reality in the near future.

Ellen Hodgson Brown, J.D., is the founder, first President and the inspiration and intellectual leader of the Public Banking Institute (PBI). She is currently President Emeritus and Senior Advisor to the PBI. She has degrees from UC Berkeley and UCLA School of Law and developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles.

In her first major publication on the subject of money and banking, Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free, she traces the history and evolution of the current private banking system and shows how it has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. In its sequel, The Public Bank Solution: From Austerity to Prosperity she moves the focus to more local, grassroots alternatives for getting back the money power, by owning some banks ourselves.

Ellen hosts a weekly show, It’s Our Money, on the Progress Radio Network. Each week she delves into a number of financial topics, including how public money is usurped from public service by financial interests that redirect it toward private profit. Ellen interviews experts, activists and others working on change, and reports on recent developments in the fields of banking, the economy, and our money. Her blog and written articles can be found at http://EllenBrown.com.

KGNU broadcasts at 88.5 FM in Boulder and Denver, 1390 AM in Denver, and 93.7 FM in Nederland. It can also be heard online at kgnu.org.