Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth – Page 15

I was given this book as a gift, along with Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies and to my great surprise, being an estranged moderate Reagan Republican, I found that I am much more of a Libertarian than I realized, and this author, although he causes me great discomfort in some areas (such as privatizing Social Security), he makes complete sense. I learn he has been voted one of the 50 most powerful people in DC by GQ (2007) and I believe it. Senator McCain has better listen this time around. I urge all who are enthused with Senator Obama to read Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate. Senator Obama is NOT transparent and I consider his top foreign policy advisors to be dangerous–Dr. Strangelove (Brzezinski) has one last war with Russia left in him, and seriiousl believes he can confront the Chinese in Africa–this is lunacy (search for my Memorandum online <Chinese Irregular Warfare oss.net>.

The book lacks an index. This is a HUGE MISTAKE on the part of the publisher because there are too many important ideas in this book. The publisher should create and post online an index to this book. The publisher can also be criticized for failing to provide Library of Congress cataloguing information. This is a REFERENCE work. The author should consider holding the publisher accountable for such fundamental incompetencies that detract from the book's lasting value.

The five core reforms that he builds up to are:

1) Portable pensions

2) Competitive health care

3) Educational choice including home schooling

4) Outsourcing of all government functions possible

5) Transparency (see not only Groundswell, but also Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations)

The author posits a stark choice between the Leave Us Alone movement, that appears to be growing daily (and included 27 secessionist movements that meet annually at a conference organized by Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale, and what he calls the Takings Group, the tax and spend elected officials both Republican and Democratic.

This is a serious reference work with an even mix of books, articles, and online citations.

There are some areas where the author could benefit from knowledge that is not yet mainstream–for example, we can blow away the Medicare unfunded obligations by negotiating prices that are 1% (ONE percent) of what we foolishly pay now, and as a recent PriceWaterHouseCooopers study documented so well, also eliminating the 50% of the medical professional that is waste, including (the author does address this–the tort lawyers like Senator John Edwards who make millions putting good doctors out of business so bad doctors can do more elective operations).

On balance–and this was my first exposure to this individual–I put the book down thinking to myself that this author deserves his reputation, and that he combines a very powerful intellect with an equally powerful moral force.

Other books I recommend:
The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Inspire and Define Our Nation
The Revolution: A Manifesto
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!
Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender
Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America
The Vermont Manifesto

2007/09/212009/10/17

Review: All the Money in the World–How the Forbes 400 Make–and Spend–Their Fortunes

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth

Well-Executed and Helpful in Multiple Ways

September 21, 2007

Peter W. Bernstein

I bouight this book partly on a whim and partly because a new non-profit a bunch of us have created, Earth Intelligence Network, is about to start fund-raising from the foundations. For the one page list of the top foundations and what they focus on, alone, I was fully satisfied.

However, and this was a very pleasant surprise, the book suggests that in the Forbes 400, average worth of those without a college degree is 5.96 billion, while those with a degree have a lesser averaage wealth of 3.14 billion. I have an extremely bright and talented who scorns most structured classes, and I am going to give him this book as a way of considering his options. I am certainly coming to believe that online education and “free universities” need to explode, and structured classroom learning reduced at the same time that all learning should become open books team learning, not competitive rote learning. This book actually reinforces that view.

The book opens by emphasizing that a great deal of the wealth today came about because of the equivalent of the Oklahoma land rush, the combination of President Reagan cutting taxes, the wireless “landgrab”, and smart people, generally already rich, borrowing money to buy under-valued assets (in contrast to the subprime mess we are in now).

The book examines factors in success, and after luck or intuition it lists drive, a willingness to take risks, self-confidence, and even obessive attention to detail. A lack of ethics and a willingness to commit crimes against stockholders, employees, and the government are featured in perhaps 10% of the Forbes 400 caught and convicted, and I would speculate another 30% in gray areas. The book cites one person's view that a major recession is coming, and the public's perception of the super-rich as having gotten there by greed and abuse, a factor to be reckoned with in the near future.

Part I focuses on individuals, and we learn that three families, Buffet, Gates, and Walton, hold 14.5% of the total wealth represented in the Forbes 400 list.

Part II focuses on specific economic sectors where fortunes have been made.

Part III was the most interesting part for me, it focuses on how the super-rich spend their money. Heir and trophy wives, how to stalk and marry a billionaire, yachts (over 200 feeet long, the top ones being over 400 feet), helicopters at eleven million, art, competing for the America's cup, a multi-year cost, all quite interesting.

Best of all is the chapter on Giving It Away, and the table on page 278, listing 36 top givers and their interests.

Bottom line: I do not consider this a voyeur type of book, but rather a book that is enjoyable to read on a Sunday morning, and one that could spark useful reflections in both adults, and seniors in high school, or those in college. I regard this as a very fine gift, and will be passing my copy on to my oldest son.

Ten other recommendations (other than my own books):
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders
State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future (State of the World)
Within Our Means
The Money Culture
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

2007/09/202009/10/17

Review: The Age of Turbulence–Adventures in a New World

4 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Economics

Evidence on Why Central Banks Need to Go Or Be Publicly Owned

September 20, 2007

Alan Greenspan

I have always admired the author, and until 9/11, bought into the myth that the Federal Reserve was a remarkable institution and an essential part of our stability. No longer.

This is a first-class book, a mandatory examination of the US and global financial systems from an insider's perspective, but it completely avoids the harsh reality: there is a global class war going on, the paradigms of secrecy and scarcity and war are killing us; there is plenty of money for all seven billion of us to be billionaires, but corruption and greed are concentrating wealth as never before.

I am especially distrubed by the author's own admission that he lobbied the White House for an attack on Iraq to “secure” the world's oil supplies. As a professional intelligence officer who agreed with General Tony Zinni on the idiocy of attacking Iraq, I am shaken. His expression of that opinion is akin to a brain surgeon trying to compose music. Our entire system failed because Dick Cheney is a nakedly amoral person, and all the other checks and balances failed to operate as designed by our founders.

With respect, and with sadness, I list a few contrarian books below. I have two explicit recommendations for the next President:

1) Eliminate all income taxes by taxing every Federal Reserve transaction 0.006 cents and use the wealth that makes available to provide free public education to the planet “one cell call at a time”

2) Support the creation of the EarthGame(TM) with embedded transparent budgets published in advance and voted on by all of the people all of the time. Congress is impeachable for its secret earmarks and its failure to stop the attack on Iraq (or the coming attack on Iran), and in my humble opinion, We the People are very close to a general strike. [Bush's appearance in NYC on 25 September could be the first public coming togather to peacefully bring down a government that no longer represents the goodness of America or the average American.)

For additional background see the Internet posting “A Fed Panic and a Massive Bailout of American Banks paid for by the entire world.” If you cannot find it, it is also in the Collective Intelligence portal page at my corporate website.

The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead The Economics of Information: Lying and Cheating in Markets and Organizations
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

Positive books that I cannot link to because of the ten book limit, but which another reviewer might wish to list as a collective endeavor for us all:
Getting a Grip: clarity, creativity and courage in a world gone mad
WIKINOMICS: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
A POWER governments cannot suppress
The TAO of Abundance
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity
Escape the Matrix
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World that Works for All
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future
Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

2007/06/272009/12/04

Review: The Secret Founding of America–The Real Story of Freemasons, Puritans, & the Battle for The New World

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth

1990's to Date Has Shed New Light on Everything

June 27, 2007

Nicholas Hagger

I have been reading since the 1960's, but it is only in the last ten years that I have seen a virtual nuclear explosion of discovery, dissemination, discussion, and deliberation over matters that in the past have been hushed up, censored, ignored, ridiculed, or crushed.

This is such a book. I list a few others that merit study below. America was, as the author puts forth, a virgin territory in which the Indians were genocided (both deliberately and accidentally, e.g. by infectuous diseases not yet known to them) so that a European war could play out between Catholics, Protestants, and secret societies, the Freemasons in the forefront.

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I do believe that when documentation reaches a critical mass, it is essential that we keep an open mind and “deal with it.”

EDIT Inspired by 1st Comment: Rule by Secrecy, which slipped my mind, ends by suggesting that aliens populated the earth and the secret societies evolved as their “straw bosses” when it was realized that the larger mass of now much more intelligent humans could not be “penned up” as slaves. This is certainly plausible, but my own interim explanation is that the secret societies, which evolved to challenge the authorities of both king and pope, may have seen it convenient to claim that they were the represenatives of a “higher order” such as the Illuminati appear to claim. Either way, the longer we continue to eat our own seed corn and kill our own children of the Earth, the less likely we are to defeat these secret societies and redistribute the wealth–there is PLENTY of money for peace and prosperity across the planet, it is simply too concentrated in greedy, corrupt, arrogant, and irresponsible hands.

There is no question in my own mind, as a reader of non-fiction reviewed here at Amazon (the last 1000 books, not the first 2000+), but that the US Government is not in charge of anything. We the People are not in charge of the US Government. I see a very clear connection between secret societies, select bankers, corrupt corporate chiefs all too eager to screw their stockholders and their employees and their customers, and a Congress and a White House that are nothing more than prostitutes.

This is an important book, because it begins to fill the gaps. The people have a digital memory now, and those that have abused power cloaked in secrecy, now need to help create infinite wealth–there is no need to confiscate ill-gotten gains as long as those who have the concentrated wealth now do not stand in the way of our creating “seven billion billionaires” (Medard Gabel's term).

Other references:
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Animal Farm (Signet Classics)
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country
The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve The Case Against the Fed
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

2007/02/182009/12/04

Review: Petrodollar Warfare–Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Country/Regional, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Iraq, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Survival & Sustainment

A summative work, focus on fall of dollar versus rise of euro,

February 18, 2007

William R. Clark

I was tempted to give this book only four stars, because as some reviewers suggest, it is mostly a summative work, drawing heavily on several books I have already reviewed, as well as a number of studies and article. In the end I decided to go with five stars because this is the only book I have found that really drew my attention to the turning point in US-Iraq relations: not Gulf I, but rather Iraq's declared intention to break the dollar monopoly and begin trading oil in Euros. Today of course we have Iran, Russia, and Venezuela trading in currencies other than the dollar.

First off, this is one of those rare books where in addition to carefully studying the table of contents, which is superbly devised, almost an executive summary on its own, you should also *first* read the End Notes and also the Afterword by LtCol Karen Kwiatkowski, now retired, who earned lasting recognition for resigning and challenging the lies coming out of the politically-appointed Pentagon officials.

Although this book is labeled by some (who would have us ignore it) as part of the “conspiracy” literature, I find myself reading more and more books in this vein, spanning 9-11, peak oil, corporate personality, and Wall Street-Washington corruption. I have to say, with all humility, if there is one privilege I would claim as the #1 Amazon reviewer of non-fiction, it is the privilege of stating clearly and on the record that this book, and other books in this vein, are NOT conspiracy literature, but rather the survivors, the vanguard that has avoided censorship. This book may not be perfect, it may overstate the case (personally I think Bush is as dim as Feith and did not understand the Euro issue while having a childish mind easily led by Dick Cheney), but it is part of an emerging literature that cannot be denied and must be given full attention.

The book highlights and reminds that we have lost the Republic to four interacting influences: concentrated wealth including perpeptual compounded wealth concealed in corporations improperly given personality rights; a completely corrupt Congress serving corporations rather than the public interest; the end of a free press with five media conglomerates happily practicing perception management on an ignorant and inattentive public; and a Federal Reserve that is not part of the government and not acting in the public interest, but instead creating credit out of thin air, and selling that to the government at a price that is both dear, and unconstitutional.

Having come late to much of this literature, the term “proto-fascism” was new to me, but it fits: Wall Street wealth, plus political corruption, plus a military too eager to follow orders without thinking. I remind all who care to understand a military perspective that General Smedley Butler's book, “War is a Racket,” recounts his disdain for being a an “enforcer” for corporations.

The author of this book on petrodollar warfare does an excellent job of recounting the history of the dollar, setting the stage for both the end of the gold standard under Nixon, and the manner in which petrodollars from the 1970's were recycled as loans to the Third World.

There are two really superb charts from other sources in this book, one on page 105 showing “The Lie Factory” led by Dick Cheney and Doug Feith; and another on page 112 showing the claims by Cheney and others about Iraq having Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), both before (of course they do) and after (none found).

Today an attack on Iran looms. I have done everything I could as an individual citizen, including a protest package to the Senate, press releases, a fax to the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and a posting at OSS.Net of Howard Bloom's memorandum on a potential nuclear ambush by Iran, and Webster Tarpley's powerpoint on the fragile ground supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad. I share his view that the Siege of Baghdad will make the Siege of Stalingrad look like mercy killings. Think Black Hawk Down times a million.

This is a very fine book. It took me a year to notice it, but I will be more attentive now. New Society Publishers is in my view a national treasure. I admire them and will look forward to reading and reviewing many more books that they publish for the right reasons: to inform citizens and improve society.

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