Ellen Hodgson Brown - Web of Debt. The Shocking Truth about our Money System

I have been a banker for most of my career, and I can report that even most bankers are not aware of what goes on behind closed doors at the top of their field. Bankers tend to their own corner of the banking business, without seeing the big picture or the ramifications of the whole system they are helping to perpetuate. I am more familiar than most with the issues raised in Ellen Browns book Web of Debt , and I still found it to be an eye-opener, a remarkable window into what is really going on.

The process by which money comes into existence is thoroughly misunderstood, and for good reason: it has been the focus of a highly sophisticated and long-term disinformation campaign that permeates academia, media, and publishing. The complexity of the subject has been intentionally exploited to keep its mysteries hidden. Henry Ford said it best: It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

In banking schools and universities, I was drilled in the technology of money and banking, clearing houses, the Federal Reserve System, money creation through the multiplier effect, and the peculiar role of the commercial banker as the guardian of the public treasure. This idealized vision contrasted sharply with what I saw as I worked in the

U.S. banking sector. Although there are many financially sound banks that follow the highest ethical standards, corruption is also rampant that flies in the face of the stated ethical objectives of the American Bankers Association and the guidelines of the FDIC, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other regulators. This tendency is particularly evident in the large money center banks, in one of which I worked.

In my experience, in fact, the chief source of bank robbery is not masked men looting tellers cash tills but the blatant abuse of the extension of credit by white collar criminals. A common practice is for loan officers to ignore the long-term risk of loans and approve those loan transactions with the highest fees and interest paid immediately income which can be distributed to the principal executives of the bank. Such distribution is buried within the banks owner/manager compensation and is distributed to the principal owners as dividends and stock options. That helps explain why, in my home state of Kansas, a major bank in Topeka was run into bankruptcy after its chairman entered into a development and construction loan involving a mortgaged 5,000 acre residential development tract in the exurbs far outside of Houston, Texas. The development included curbs, gutters, pavement, street lighting, water, sewer, electricity everything but homes and families! If the loan had been metered out in small phases to match market absorption, the chairman of that once-fine institution would not have been able to disburse to himself and his friends the enormous up-front loan fees and interest owing to that specific transaction, or to the many loans he made just like it. During the 1980s, developers from across the country beat a path to sleepy Topeka and other areas sporting similar financial institutions, just to have a chance to dance with these corrupt lenders. The managers and developers got rich, leaving the banks shareholders and the taxpayers to pay the bill.