Jan. 17, 2011

The Daily Bell did an interview with Ellen Brown.

It is a follow-up on two highly critical articles on her fiat money system.

The Rise of Brownianism

Brownian Schism

Here is a brief extract from the interview.

Daily Bell: Hard money economist Dr. North has made many criticisms of your work. How do you respond?

Ellen Brown: I haven't actually spent much time reading Dr. North's theories. He said in an email that I was a threat to the Tea Party movement, that his intent was to destroy me, and that there would be no compromise, so I've decided that arguing with him is an unproductive venture. He can have his theories and I'll have mine; may the best human win. If you want to present me with a particular criticism, I could respond to that. ***

She has decided not to argue with me because I destroyed her position on 31 historical facts. She responded to those, and I refuted her on every response where she did not admit that I was correct.

She has remained deathly silent on my 21 criticisms of her economic theory.

She admitted in the interview that she has had no training in economics.

As Mike Whitney says, I'm really just a writer in search of a good subject. My first degree was in English literature from Berkeley, but when I figured out that I couldn't make a living as a writer in my twenties I went to law school (UCLA). I married another law student, practiced civil litigation for 10 years in L.A. and had two delightful children. My husband (now ex-husband) finally burned out on Beverly Hills law and signed up to be a lawyer for USAID, taking us abroad for 11 years -- to Kenya, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua -- giving me a chance to try my hand at writing again. I wrote 10 books on health and the politics of health, including one co-authored bestseller that sold 285,000 copies ("Nature's Pharmacy").

I jumped from there into economics after reading Ed Griffin's "World Without Cancer," linking the pharmaceutical cartel to the banking cartel, which actually got its power through the private creation of money. When I discovered that "The Wizard of Oz" was written as a monetary allegory, growing out of the populist money reform movement of the 1890s, I had the plot line to make a dry subject interesting, and I proceeded to write.

I spent six years exploring the issues and perfecting my prose, until the two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed in June 2007, when I figured it was time to forget about art and rush to press. "Web of Debt" was in print two weeks later, self-published by print on demand through Lightning Source.

She is just another self-published Greenbacker. They have been around for 140 years.

I have been their one published critic in the libertarian-conservative movement since 1973. I started with a long paper written for my father-in-law in 1965. No one else thought they were worth the time or trouble.

Ellen Brown says she does not think responding to me is worth her time or trouble.

She is making money on her self-published book. As an entrepreneur-publisher, she is making the correct decision. As someone promoting an international banking reform position, she is a gutless wonder and a fraud.

She is Bernanke's cheerleader now. My view: her decision to switch sides is Bernanke's loss and conservatism's gain.