Customer Reviews

The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery, and Destructive Economics

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

You'll notice that people either love it or hate it. Please also notice that the detractors don't offer any summary to rebuke the book's basic thesis. Monetary reformists disagree with allowing banks to control money by the creation of money within the fractional reserve banking pyramid of "credit" (read DEBT). The debts of governments never decrease. Reduction of government debt actually hurts the economy (if you consider lack of growth to be a negative). Multiply the average per capita income of the U.S. by the popuplation of the U.S. and you'll yield a rough estimate of the amount of money in circulation (notice I said in circulation, not sent off to Swiss bank accounts). Guess what that number is always approximately equal to? It equals the debt of the U.S. government, about $6.4 trillion as I write this - a debt owed mainly to the financial establishment, the "elites" of the world who live off usury. How do the people who hate this book explain such facts? They don't. They can't explain the creation of money because they just don't get it. They are defenders of the status quo. They want us to believe that our money is honest so the privileged can retain the appearance of having earned their respected positions.

I don't think Rowbotham wants to abolish money. He's only asking for a more genuine and democratic monetary system. Let governments create money for themselves - no borrowing from the rich money that can never be paid back. Conservatives shout and wail that such a method would cause inflation. SO! Inflation happens in the current system. If you create more money, all vendors will raise their prices to try to scoop up those new dollars in circulation. The problem is that the wealthy control that very creation by fractional reserve banking - lending out more money than they really have to lend, which they are able to do because money is not a physical thing, but instead just numbers on ledgers. If you don't see a problem there, you've simply been duped by years of believing that banks are somehow honest institutions...

This is an essential book which explains the collapse in world stockmarkets, the recent Latin American debt crises, and YOUR debt problems. Basically everyone is running around madly trying to find too few dollars in an economy that is set up to favour the commercial banks. We have forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression. This book remembers them. Will we have to repeat the mistakes of the past in another Great Depression before the call for monetary reform becomes mainstream? Read this book. And pay off your debts.

The author's courage to put in print the cold and ruthless logic of the monetary system is to be admired. A great work by a brilliant man. I just hope he is still alive.

Grateful thanks to the equally courageous publisher for allowing this work to be printed and distributed.

This book makes you wonder what's really going on in most economics classes. Despite the subject matter being something fundamental to our daily lives (money supply), one feels privy to deep secrets when reading this book - not because they are secrets, but rather the power of the status quo seems to have lulled the public into an unquestioning unawareness. I've asked educated financial-types to explain money creation, and they only offered the standard obfuscatory responses about increased productivity magically creating wealth. Forget those things - this book gets right to the heart of the issue, and the answers you will find are disturbing.

Rowbotham also delves into globalization, banking history, and real-world examples of the destructiveness of debt-based money. Just plug "Michael Rowbotham" & "debt" into any search engine and you'll find a lot on this book and the Monetary Reform movement.

I give it 4 stars on literary merit because a couple of chapters (out of 18) did not hold my interest, and the author is occasionally repetitive. However, I must give it FIVE STARS for importance of message. Please read this book and then pass it on to others.

Kevin W Lomas & ClivKno are sadly mistaken about the source of the money loaned to borrowers under our current fractional reserve system.

Money deposited in banks which can be removed at any time (more properly demand deposits) only fraudulently can be loaned out. Time deposits, for which the banks agree to return the deposit at a future time with interest, become the property of the bank and could be properly loaned out. (See Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking for a much more complete explanation.)

What ClivKno fails to mention in his claim that banks extend loans backed by the assests of the bank is that THE ASSESTS BACKING THE LOAN DID NOT EXIST BEFORE THE LOAN WAS CREATED! When a borrower promises to repay the loan with interest, the banks's double entry bookeeping creates an asset in the amount of the principal of the loan based on the borrower's promise to repay and a balancing liability based on the principal of the outstanding loan. It should be noted that the interest to repay the loan was NOT created along with the principal.

This is explained in Ellen Hodgson Brown's book Web of Debt, especially in her recitation of the court foreclosure case of FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF MONTGOMERY VS. DALY, in which defendant Jerome Daly argued that there was no consideration (a legal term) for the loan, i.e., that the bank had put up no real money for the loan.

When the president of the bank, Mr. Morgan came to the stand he admitted "that the bank routinely created the money it lent 'out of thin air', and that this was standard banking practice."

Much more follows, and I highly recommend the book WEB OF DEBT by Ellen Hodgson Brown, along with this book.

I also think everyone should read this book - if only for the eye-opening British and American monetary history. I also noticed that the vicious attackers' comments all came close upon one another at two dates - Oct and Dec, clustered within a few days. Looks like this book is making some one/institution very nervous. I say that vouches for it's accuracy (and that they had nothing factual to offer, outiside of name-calling.) Please read this book.

Meaning Bertrand Russell when he said, "Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt
of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of
sheep against the practice of eating mutton." Well, I should say he is partially right , at this time. It is not by selective breeding, rather an intentional obfuscation of banking, money and economics that have the plebs ignorant of and/or defending their own slavery. The detractors of this book here are clearly blind to the debt slavery that is a consequence of banking practices. If you can't see this, with or without this book, hopefully you will, at least, enjoy your slavery.

A worthwhile read, especially for those who worship at the trough of economic theory ideology.

This book changed my entire outlook on the world and made me realize that economically most of us can't see the forest for the trees.

Often repetative and rambling, this work is not literarily the most acomplished work, however the concepts and ideas are profound.

I read this book myself a couple of years back. I am not an economist. I recommend the book whole heartedly - please buy it today. If Rowbotham's basic arguments are correct, the subject matter is a vital issue for us and our children. For me the book appealed on both an intuitive and rational basis - it rang so many bells, struck so many chords with me that I will refuse to believe that the key ideas proposed are fundamentally incorrect until someone gives me some specific counter arguments. I have read the reviews on this site, and have not found persuasive arguments anywhere in the negative ones (see below). I would agree with the reviewer(s) who say Rowbotham is weak on solutions to the problems he outlines. But this does not mean that there is a pressing need for the issues he raises to be highlighted and better understood.

A couple of negative reviewers do put opposing arguments together - "He doesn't understand that it is actually depositors' money that is lent out, limiting the amount that any bank can lend!" and similarly "Credit is not created out of thin air, but has to be backed by assets of the bank issuing the credit..." - I find it hard to believe that these reviewers have really read the book because this point is answered very clearly. "He also makes a huge point about the limited amount of cash (notes and coins) circulating in the economy and seems to think that this is some kind of banking conspiracy to enslave people into debt" - Rowbotham refers to the limited amount of notes and coins in circulation just to set the scene to help us to understand a banking system which allows the "new money as debt" scam to be perpetuated. This is covered early on in the book - pp10-11.

Other detractors say variously "Poorly written, poorly researched, full of errors of fact and logic..."; "This book is a good case study in getting the wrong end of the stick and swinging it wildly in all directions"; "...this is twaddle of the lowest order - full of first-year undergraduate errors"; "The conspiracy theories advanced stand no scrutiny and would have easily been explained to Mr Rowbotham had he taken the time to get his drafts read by someone with an iota of understanding of banking before he published" - but none of them produce a specific argument against the basic tenet of the book.

Buy the book. See what *you* think!

This book is one of the most profound books I have ever read. After reading this book, my entire view of the world changed. I can never again listen to a politician say "there is not enough money".

Rowbotham begins this book with the very interesting question, "If every country in the world is in debt, who are they all in debt to?", and then continues in a very easy to read, logical progression, laying out the root cause of most major problems in the world today, and how they affect every sector of the economy in every country.

The key notion is that almost all modern money is *created* as debt (loans from nowwhere, with interest), and if you truly understand this, you see that this is an impossible situation. Imagine if there were a new island with no money and just a group of stranded people. The elected leader of the island allows one person to create a "bank" which prints money (this would be counterfeiting if the bank hadn't been given a license) and then lends this created money out to people with interest, lying to the people by implying they are lending out someone else's money. The catch is that the bank only printed $100 but expects that $100 to be paid back at the end of the year, along with an extra $10 as interest. But where is this extra $10 to come from? It doesn't exist. The only way to pay the extra $10 is to take out a loan, which will have its own interest due. Do you see the problem?

There are two issues:
1) At any given time, the total amount of debt (ie. principal + interest) in the world is greater than the total amount of money (principal) in the world. Every dollar in every pocket is owed by someone to some bank and along with interest for as long as you hold the dollar.

2) The only way for the economy to work is if there is a constantly growing amount of debt to pay off all the currently owed interest. This is why the news constantly says that things are good ONLY if the economy is growing 3% per year. But the world is finite. Permanent 3% growth is impossible - hence the boom and bust cycle.

All of the above and much more is covered in this book in very easy to read fashion.

I highly, highly recommend this book.