The 1913 Federal Reserve Act let powerful bankers usurp money creation authority in violation of the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, giving only Congress the power to "coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof...." Thereafter, powerful bankers used their control over money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment, bankrolling and colluding with Congress and administrations to implement laws favoring them. As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and casino capitalism followed, producing asset bubbles, record budget and national debt levels, and depression-sized unemployment far higher than reported numbers, albeit manipulated to look better. After the financial crisis erupted in late 2007, even harder times have left Main Street in the early stages of a depression, with recovery pure illusion. Today's contagion has spread out of control, globally. Wall Street got trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to socialize losses, privatize profits, and pump life back into the corpses by blowing public wealth into a moribund financial sector, failing corporate favorites, and America's aristocracy. While Wall Street boasts it has recovered, industrial America keeps imploding. High-paying jobs are exported. Economic prospects are eroding. Austerity is being imposed, with no one sure how to revive stable, sustainable long-term growth. This book provides a powerful tool for showing angry Americans how they've been fleeced, and includes a plan for constructive change. Incisive chapters include: -- Dirty Secrets of the Temple: how privatized money control lurches the economy from one crisis to another; -- Capitalism and Freedom Unmasked; -- Greenspan's Dark Legacy; -- A Short History of Government Handouts to bankers and other corporate favorites; -- Quantitative Easing: Elixir or Poison? -- Systematic Washington-Sanctioned Fraud; -- Obama's Anti-Populist Budget; -- The Recession Is Over, the Depression Just Beginning; -- Manipulation: How Markets Really Work; -- Waging War on America's Workers; -- Permanent Debt Bondage from America's Student Loan Racket; -- On the Chopping Block: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; -- Banking in Venezuela: An Alternative Banking System favoring citizens and the country; -- Ending Today's Economic Crisis Simply and Easily, in America and Globally; and -- Public Banking: An Idea Whose Time Has Come.
How Wall Street Fleeces America
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"Steve Lendman is one of America's leading critics...Fearless, thoroughly documented and judicious, Lendman's essays are a major contribution to the struggle for social justice in America." -- James Petras
"I think this text is terrific, just what is needed, very clear, informative beyond most people's ken, easy to read, and of ultimate importance to steering economic and political recovery." JOHN McMURTRY Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System
"A comprehensive understanding of Wall Street's manipulations of markets, money and power to the detriment of working people everywhere ." Peter Phillips, PROJECT CENSORED
"I think this text is terrific, just what is needed, very clear, informative beyond most people's ken, easy to read, and of ultimate importance to steering economic and political recovery." JOHN McMURTRY Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System
"A comprehensive understanding of Wall Street's manipulations of markets, money and power to the detriment of working people everywhere ." Peter Phillips, PROJECT CENSORED
About the Author
is a writer and broadcaster. His work is exceedingly widely distributed online, with his articles carried on numerous listservs and websites such as Information Clearing House, Countercurrents, Rense, AltNews, Uruknet, Global Research, Counterpunch, and more. In early 2007, he began regular radio hosting, now The Progressive Radio News Hour on The Progressive Radio Network. He is co-author with J.J. Asongu of The Iraq Quagmire: The Price of Imperial Arrogance.He holds a BA from Harvard and an MBA from Wharton..
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've had this book in my stack of "to be read" books for some time now, and now that I have read it, I deeply regret not getting to it sooner. Although I have read and reviewed a number of vital serious books in this field, and list ten of them below, I have to say this is easily the single best book of the lot, and I put it into 6 stars and beyond -- out of the 1,800 plus books I have reviewed at Amazon, fewer than 10% get this rating.
Perhaps because I had already read the ten books below, I was absolutely floored by the clarity, organization, precision, simplicity, intelligence, and general integrity of this book and its author. Please do take advantage of the Look Inside the Book feature that Amazon offers (click on book cover above). In seventeen chapters, the author has brought to the public a work of elegant explosive yet balanced and measured, FACTS with CONTEXT.
If you read only one book on the destruction of the US economy, the destruction of the US Republic, the destruction of legitimate governance in the USA, this is the one book I recommend. It should not only be read, but also shared. As I go back over the table of contents thinking about what to highlight (I no longer mark up books now that I donate them all as I finish reading them), I am just blown away by the medticulous, sensible, systematic, intuitively coherent manner in which the author starts with the fraud and treason of the Federal Reserve (neither Federal nor a reserve), and ends with his prescription for public banking that I heartily respect.
This book is both a good undergraduate and public reader, and a very fine introductory overview for graduate students. It manages to cover, in one concise volume, the tri-fecta of fraud: the banks led by the Federal Reserve and the global banking system that is privately owned and certainly never acting in the public interest; the illegal, inept, and often treasonous behavior of the US Government and the two political parties that have betrayed the public trust and helped both loot the US Treasury and destroy the US labor market; and the 1% class warfare against the 99%.
If there were one book that captures all that Occupy should be addressing but is not, this is that book.
Here are ten books (my limit--to see a whole range of lists of my reviews, both positive and negative, go to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog and click on Books in the top menu).
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It (BK Currents)
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
No Logo: 10th Anniversary Edition with a New Introduction by the Author
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism
I cannot say enough good things about this book. Wow. A public service and an intellectual contribution of the first order.
Perhaps because I had already read the ten books below, I was absolutely floored by the clarity, organization, precision, simplicity, intelligence, and general integrity of this book and its author. Please do take advantage of the Look Inside the Book feature that Amazon offers (click on book cover above). In seventeen chapters, the author has brought to the public a work of elegant explosive yet balanced and measured, FACTS with CONTEXT.
If you read only one book on the destruction of the US economy, the destruction of the US Republic, the destruction of legitimate governance in the USA, this is the one book I recommend. It should not only be read, but also shared. As I go back over the table of contents thinking about what to highlight (I no longer mark up books now that I donate them all as I finish reading them), I am just blown away by the medticulous, sensible, systematic, intuitively coherent manner in which the author starts with the fraud and treason of the Federal Reserve (neither Federal nor a reserve), and ends with his prescription for public banking that I heartily respect.
This book is both a good undergraduate and public reader, and a very fine introductory overview for graduate students. It manages to cover, in one concise volume, the tri-fecta of fraud: the banks led by the Federal Reserve and the global banking system that is privately owned and certainly never acting in the public interest; the illegal, inept, and often treasonous behavior of the US Government and the two political parties that have betrayed the public trust and helped both loot the US Treasury and destroy the US labor market; and the 1% class warfare against the 99%.
If there were one book that captures all that Occupy should be addressing but is not, this is that book.
Here are ten books (my limit--to see a whole range of lists of my reviews, both positive and negative, go to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog and click on Books in the top menu).
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It (BK Currents)
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
No Logo: 10th Anniversary Edition with a New Introduction by the Author
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism
I cannot say enough good things about this book. Wow. A public service and an intellectual contribution of the first order.
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The struggle of man against power is
the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Lendman's book reminds me of the early American spirit of pamphleteering. This, in the sense, that those writings culminated in the classic 1776 pamplhet: Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Remember that struggle? Benjamin Franlin leaves us his autobiography of the times and in it, he tells us, in no uncertain terms, that/The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had not England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonist to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of King George 111 and The INTERNATIONAL BANKERS was the PRIME REASON for the Revolutionary War.
Thomas Jefferson was furious when the U.S. allowed The 1st Bank of The United States(chartered 1791) the power of issuing our own debt by private bankers(our original continental script was massively conterfeited by (bank of) England to worthless paper. Jefferson thought our country may recover the power to issue it's own currency(reason for revolutionary war) when the Bank's charter came up for renewal in 1811. The head of the Bank of Engand warned that the United States would find itself involved in a most disasterous war if the Bank's charter was not renewed. The banks renewal was defeated by one vote in Congress(those were the days!). The War of 1812, was again a currency war, like the American Revolutionary War before.
The struggle of man against power is
the sruggle of memory against forgetting.
Indeed it is a continuous battle. Lincoln tried to get financing for the Civil War from the bankers. The wanted usurious rates around 24% to 36%(Rothschild's hands all over this war). Lincoln basically told them to go to hell. His sentiment's may have cost him his life. International banksters despised him after Congess passed the 1862 Legal Tender Act(those were the days!), empowering the Treasury to issue paper money called greenbacks interest free. The Union won the war. After Lincoln's death, a new banking law was passed. The Greenback law was rescinded, once again requiring the government to pay interest on its own money. It's an outrageous fraud, but it's the law.
The struggle of man against power is
the struggle of memory against forgetting
In 1913 The Fedral Reserve Act was passed giving The International Banksters the power to issue the currency of the United States of America. I'am sure that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, & Abraham Lincoln would have considerred this an act of treason.
Please pick-up Lendman's American Revolutionary Pamphlet/How Wallstreet Fleeces America - Privitized Banking, Government Collution And Class War. Find out what so many have forgotten. Become an American Revolutionary; not only in spirit, but in action.
It is a struggle against power for you & yours -
Forget? ....
Then you & yours don't stand a chance.
the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Lendman's book reminds me of the early American spirit of pamphleteering. This, in the sense, that those writings culminated in the classic 1776 pamplhet: Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Remember that struggle? Benjamin Franlin leaves us his autobiography of the times and in it, he tells us, in no uncertain terms, that/The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had not England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonist to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of King George 111 and The INTERNATIONAL BANKERS was the PRIME REASON for the Revolutionary War.
Thomas Jefferson was furious when the U.S. allowed The 1st Bank of The United States(chartered 1791) the power of issuing our own debt by private bankers(our original continental script was massively conterfeited by (bank of) England to worthless paper. Jefferson thought our country may recover the power to issue it's own currency(reason for revolutionary war) when the Bank's charter came up for renewal in 1811. The head of the Bank of Engand warned that the United States would find itself involved in a most disasterous war if the Bank's charter was not renewed. The banks renewal was defeated by one vote in Congress(those were the days!). The War of 1812, was again a currency war, like the American Revolutionary War before.
The struggle of man against power is
the sruggle of memory against forgetting.
Indeed it is a continuous battle. Lincoln tried to get financing for the Civil War from the bankers. The wanted usurious rates around 24% to 36%(Rothschild's hands all over this war). Lincoln basically told them to go to hell. His sentiment's may have cost him his life. International banksters despised him after Congess passed the 1862 Legal Tender Act(those were the days!), empowering the Treasury to issue paper money called greenbacks interest free. The Union won the war. After Lincoln's death, a new banking law was passed. The Greenback law was rescinded, once again requiring the government to pay interest on its own money. It's an outrageous fraud, but it's the law.
The struggle of man against power is
the struggle of memory against forgetting
In 1913 The Fedral Reserve Act was passed giving The International Banksters the power to issue the currency of the United States of America. I'am sure that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, & Abraham Lincoln would have considerred this an act of treason.
Please pick-up Lendman's American Revolutionary Pamphlet/How Wallstreet Fleeces America - Privitized Banking, Government Collution And Class War. Find out what so many have forgotten. Become an American Revolutionary; not only in spirit, but in action.
It is a struggle against power for you & yours -
Forget? ....
Then you & yours don't stand a chance.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Luc REYNAERT
Format:Paperback
In this hard-hitting book Stephen Lendman paints a bleak portrait of the US today, while indicating the measures that have to be taken in order to save Main Street and democracy from extinction. His analysis is partly inspired by Ellen Brown's mightily important book `Web of Debt'.
A money-printing monopoly
A Wall-Street headquartered banking cartel controls the nation's money (supply), giving it virtually limitless power. Working together with the (its) government and corporate allies, it controls (rigs) world markets, resources and (cheap) labor in order to maximize profits.
Its power base is the Federal Reserve Board (Fed), controlled by the major shareholders of the big private banks which fully own it. The Fed possesses the sole right in the US to print money out of nothing and loaning it for profit. In the words of the author: it is `the world's greatest ever racket'.
This monopoly is exactly the contrary of the letter and the spirit of Milton Friedman's free market ideology.
Class war (pitting private wealth against public good)
Corporate profits are at record levels, while Main Street remains in depression, ravaged by very high unemployment (more than 20 % of the population), growing poverty, hunger, homelessness, foreclosures and austerity. Unprecedented concentration of wealth is created at the expense of middle class and lower incomes. Moreover, the wealthy are closing the door behind them by making education unaffordable for Main Street.
Actually, the US government is soaking households by attacking Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid with draconian cuts, while eroding constitutional freedoms and waging imperial wars for global dominance.
The future
After a Bubble Maestro, the Fed is governed by a Printing Maestro, who doubled the US money base in 112 days.
This mind-boggling tactic could generate hyperinflation and dramatic interest rate rises, create asset bubbles and, ultimately, debase the dollar heavily.
Instead of economic competition, we could see currency wars all over the place.
What to do?
For Stephen Lendman, the Fed should be abolished or nationalized, giving the money creating power to Congress. A publicly-owned banking system should be created, while big private banks, which are `too big to fail', should be broken up. This is not a pipe dream, for such a system exists already in North Dakota.
Other draconian measures propagated by the author are a 50 % cut of the US defense budget, a Tobin-tax, affordable public education and generous Social Security with a guaranteed living wage. For him, these measures are a minimum in order to save the middle class, which is a buffer against tyranny. If not, the US could become a perfect new version of (the Fall of) the Roman Empire.
This harsh and uncompromising pamphlet is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
A money-printing monopoly
A Wall-Street headquartered banking cartel controls the nation's money (supply), giving it virtually limitless power. Working together with the (its) government and corporate allies, it controls (rigs) world markets, resources and (cheap) labor in order to maximize profits.
Its power base is the Federal Reserve Board (Fed), controlled by the major shareholders of the big private banks which fully own it. The Fed possesses the sole right in the US to print money out of nothing and loaning it for profit. In the words of the author: it is `the world's greatest ever racket'.
This monopoly is exactly the contrary of the letter and the spirit of Milton Friedman's free market ideology.
Class war (pitting private wealth against public good)
Corporate profits are at record levels, while Main Street remains in depression, ravaged by very high unemployment (more than 20 % of the population), growing poverty, hunger, homelessness, foreclosures and austerity. Unprecedented concentration of wealth is created at the expense of middle class and lower incomes. Moreover, the wealthy are closing the door behind them by making education unaffordable for Main Street.
Actually, the US government is soaking households by attacking Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid with draconian cuts, while eroding constitutional freedoms and waging imperial wars for global dominance.
The future
After a Bubble Maestro, the Fed is governed by a Printing Maestro, who doubled the US money base in 112 days.
This mind-boggling tactic could generate hyperinflation and dramatic interest rate rises, create asset bubbles and, ultimately, debase the dollar heavily.
Instead of economic competition, we could see currency wars all over the place.
What to do?
For Stephen Lendman, the Fed should be abolished or nationalized, giving the money creating power to Congress. A publicly-owned banking system should be created, while big private banks, which are `too big to fail', should be broken up. This is not a pipe dream, for such a system exists already in North Dakota.
Other draconian measures propagated by the author are a 50 % cut of the US defense budget, a Tobin-tax, affordable public education and generous Social Security with a guaranteed living wage. For him, these measures are a minimum in order to save the middle class, which is a buffer against tyranny. If not, the US could become a perfect new version of (the Fall of) the Roman Empire.
This harsh and uncompromising pamphlet is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
This book has demonstrably false allegations.
On page 14 of this book, it says: "Our founding fathers knew how the Bank of England had exploited America's economy under Britain's Currency Act, prohibiting the colonies from... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Eric Zuesse
3.0 out of 5 stars
This should be categorized as fiction
I began reading Stephen's book with a lot of enthusiasm to try to understand just how rotten to the core our country (the US) was. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Patrick L. Wells
4.0 out of 5 stars
IF YOU DON'T HAVE THIS BOOK
YOU ARE IN THE DARK IF YOU DON'T GET THIS BOOK .FOR THE COMMON PERSON WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND WHATS REALLY GOING ON NOW IN THIS WORLD.I FEEL YOU BETTER START PLANING NOW!! Read more
Published 18 months ago by SAMOTWO1-123
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