Tag Archives | public works

The Seattle Loop: Reclaiming the Public Interest

Scott Ferguson and Tyler Suksawat

A palpable, but indecisive enthusiasm permeated a recent Seattle arts forum, revealing a city desperate for a future that no one quite knows how to build, let alone finance. Despite the proliferation of sticky notes with compelling schemes, as Amanda Manitach describes in The Stranger, the arts roundtable lacked a cohesive strategy for gathering its aspirational potpourri […]
Out of the Shadows: Public Banking for Municipal Finance

Scott Ferguson and Tyler Suksawat

In a recent essay, we advanced a proposal for sub-federal governments to sell municipal bonds to their own public banks. We took the city as our primary point of departure, but the same lessons are applicable to U.S. counties and states. Establishing a public bank that regularly purchases municipal debt, we argued, would not only significantly […]

Democracy Needs Public Media w/ Victor Pickard
Scott Ferguson

Victor Pickard returns to Money on the Left six years after his first appearance on the show to discuss the state of the U.S. media system under Trump 2.0. Pickard is C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication and Co-Director at the Media, […]
Public Employment & Training from the Great Society to the “End of Welfare as We Know It”
Scott Ferguson

This month, Scott Ferguson speaks with Mario Rendina about the politics of public employment and training in the United States as they shifted over the course of the late 20th century. Rendina brings over thirty years of hands-on experience working within municipal government in Tampa Bay, Florida—specifically within Hillsborough County. Grounded in his extensive career […]
The Public Banking Institute
Scott Ferguson

In this episode, we speak with Walt McRee (President) and Peter Winslow (Vice President) of the Public Banking Institute (PBI) about their past and ongoing advocacy for public banking. Founded in 2011 by author Ellen Brown and a core collective of advocates, PBI aims to break the monopoly of Wall Street’s private banking system by […]