Trained as an attorney, Ellen Brown helps lead a crusade to create state banks, as North Dakota has, not in place of private banks but in friendly competition with them. Author of The Web of Debt, she asks why our Federal currency should be issued by an entity subservient to private interests, what we know as the Federal Reserve. Apart from its chair, this entity is governed ultimately by the big banks. The government could issue currency without paying anybody, but under the present system, taxpayers are forced to give "interest" to the bankers. In contrast, she envisions banks as public utilities.