Banking on a Promise: The illusive story of money, debt and the banks that create it

What if the money in your bank account isn't created by government, but by commercial banks?

Money is no longer a public utility - it's a private promise.

In Banking on a Promise, Frank Michael Brun traces the hidden mechanics of modern finance: how private banks generate money "out of nothing" through accounting, and why this system sits at the heart of capitalism's recurring crises. From the Great Depression to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Brun explores how excessive credit creation and debt expansion drive economic instability, inequality, and political upheaval.

Drawing on the ideas of Henry Simons, Irving Fisher, and Frank Knight, he revisits the Chicago Plan of the 1930s and the modern Sovereign Money movement-two reform efforts separated by nearly a century yet united by a common goal: to reclaim money creation as a public, sovereign function.

Accessible, rigorous, and deeply relevant, Banking on a Promise challenges the reader to reconsider who really controls the lifeblood of the economy-and whether it's time to bring money back under democratic control.