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appearance in NYC on 25 September could be the first public coming togather to peacefully bring down a government that no longer represents the goodness of America or the average American.)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 AheadThe 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
