Book Review – “The Scandal of Money – Why Wall Street Recovers but the Economy Never Does” by George Gilder
For more than forty years George Gilder has been one of America’s great original thinkers in the interplay of technology, economics and government policy. His new book, “The Scandal of Money” once again provides well needed insight into why the economy has underperformed in the post 2008 financial crisis era. As the title suggests, the book centers around money – where it comes from, who controls it, how it is parceled out, who benefits and who gets left holding the bag. The ‘scandal’ thesis is both radical and sobering – Washington and the Federal Reserve together have effectively created a fourth branch of government – money – and it is a closed loop. The Fed creates money for the government and the Fortune 500 corporations and nobody else gets it. The effect has been to nationalize Wall Street serving the purposes of those in political power.
Gilder has never been afraid of offending the paragons of political power preening from their once proud but now perilous perches. Here are some representative quotes:
From page 15, "the Fed ultimately imposed near zero interest rates, giving governments and their cronies free money, shrinking the horizons of future enterprise. This exercise of government power suppressed entrepreneurial knowledge. Corporate pension liabilities soared, and the yields of new savings cratered....
With no acknowledgment, the U.S. government had casually dispossessed the American middle class of its retirement assets and pushed millions of Americans into acute dependency on government programs such as Social Security disability, Medicaid, and Medicare. Government dependency negated the American Dream. Without dreams, the dollar perishes."
From page 31, "State control of money has become a force for government economic centralization, wreaking havoc on economies around the globe, whether capitalist or socialist. By controlling money supplies, central banks and their political sponsors determine who gets money and thus who commands political and economic power.... Reinforced with arachnoid webs of government regulation and control, these combinations of economic and political power are the primary cause of economic stagnation in the world."
“The Scandal of Money” provides critical insight into today’s economic malaise and also to the challenges the political parties are facing with disaffected voters.
Ashby Foote
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Top reviews from other countries
Thomas H. Burroughes
A strong read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2021
