Other People's Money: And How the Bankers Use It
A must read for anyone who questions the necessity of our fractional reserve fiat monetary system. More relevant today than when written in 1914 for one simple reason...the Federal Reserve was only just beginning then, and the bankers' global fiat monetary system was not yet unleashed upon the world. Yet even with their somewhat limited powers, as compared to today, the bankers of that day still had an amazingly large and adverse impact on our free market economic system. Brandeis's analysis of the monopolistic money trust is incredible and deserves 5 stars all by itself. He was truly a brilliant man, and an incorruptible champion of the people. That being said, what held me back to 4 stars is the progressive big government solutions he championed.
The impact that this brilliant and incorruptible man had on the justification for big government as the check on the power of the money trust cannot be underestimated. Sadly, even though many see themselves capable of the greatness of a Brandeis, very few are. And greatness was what was needed to carry out the progressive big government solutions he championed. Given the current state of the bankers' monetary system, even after the mega-trillion dollar bailouts and "quantitative easing" funded by savers alive and savers not yet born, clearly what came after Brandeis was not greatness, but hubris --- and a highly compensated, morally bankrupt, deceptive, and corrupt hubris at that.
It's worth repeating that Brandeis's analysis, especially his analysis on wave after wave of purposeless business consolidation and the failures of banker management, was absolutely brilliant. Multiply what he wrote about the money trust and the monopolies they created back then by about a thousand, and you get a general idea of the trouble we face today in breaking the death grip the money trust and their political enablers have on our economic and political freedom.
