G. Edward Griffin

The author is no doubt well-versed in Anglo-American banking history and I was hoping for a more fact-based delineation of how the Federal Reserve came to be. He seems to know all of the particulars extremely well, but he is insistent on painting those particulars in the hues of a Rothschild (read: Jewish) usurpation of English and American financial sovereignty. To the author, both the Rothschild line and most bankers associated with them (Morgan, Kuhn, Warburg) were secretly conspiring show more with American and English politicians to bring America and the west under their thumb and fleece the Treasury of its wealth. The author identifies the Council of Foreign Relations as one of the faces of this conspiracy and the initials CFR are sprinkled throughout this text as post-nominal slur to many of the players in this screed.

I can accept his premise that bankers have used debt, divorced from any precious metal backing, as a form of making currency out of nothing; that this might be problematic for a healthy economy is also something I could digest. But at some point in this book our author made the entire economic system out to be just a ruse to bring about globalization and subjugation to a secretive group of elite players. The global UN army was going to bring naive America to its knees and force socialism upon it. The author seems unsure if the guilty bankers are scurrilous capitalists out to make profit no matter what, or seedy socialists experimenting with interest rates and currency exchanges in order to bring about social change. When he decried climate change as a conspiracy designed to frighten us into docile acceptance of the loss of our sovereignty and also denied that slavery was a cause of the American Civil War, I knew I was in tinfoil fedora territory.

The author is clearly loaded with a plethora of theories about very many conspiracies and as a result his book is hard to take seriously. show less

GISBooks is right. You must read this book. It will open your eyes as to how money is made and controlled in the USA (and worldwide) by a tight cartel of banking families dedicated to their own greed and wealth, and which exist in cynical derogation of the needs of we members of the vulgar herd. We are just fools and peasants and tools. God help us. That crazy uncle of ours, Ron Paul, has it exactly right and that is why he is vilified and castigated by the bank owned media which either show more ignores him or libels him or debases him as an "unelectable" candidate. Wake up before it is too late - if it isn't already. Hurry and read this book. show less

This is the classic exposé of the Fed that has become one of the best-selling books in its category of all time. Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magician's secrets are unveiled. Here is a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, the pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money. A boring subject? Just wait. You'll be hooked in five minutes. It reads like a detective story - which it really is, but it's all true. This book show more is about the most blatant scam of history. It's all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Your world view will definitely change. Putting it quite simply, this may be the most important book on world affairs you will ever read. The 5th Edition includes a no-holds barred analysis of bank bailouts that are shown to be nothing less than legalized plunder of the people. Many other updates have been added, including a revision to the list of those who attended the historic meeting at Jekyll Island where the Federal Reserve was created. show less

The author starts off with an intriguing secret meeting of the most powerful men in the world and outlines their plan to control world markets, or at least the U.S. economy, but I found the historical events, in particular the elections of Lincoln and Jackson, to be even more interesting. Southern historians have for years tried to explain about the export/import situation with tariffs on trade with Europe as the true cause of the Civil War, but the subject appears to be either too difficult show more for most Americans to retain and understand, or just not popular.
Unfortunately the book falls short for me in later years when the author describes events in the 1980s (regulatory changes in banking). He dismisses the regulations as not only unnecessary, but harmful to the free market. As someone who was working in the financial markets at the time and writing papers on the subject, my view (and the vast majority of my colleagues in the trenches) was that certain major issues had to be addressed, even if it was in a way that was not completely satisfactory to all parties involved. This is called “compromise”, and indeed, many of the problems in the 1990s and early 2000s can be traced to the now-expiring regulation that addressed the greatest problems and abuses of the time with some stop-gap measures (for example, Glass-Steagall).
If a country has a problem with a high murder rate, you don't decriminalize it (take the law off the books) and hope that the situation sorts itself out eventually. You can call this “government interference” or “socialism”, but personally I think there are at least some standards that we can all agree upon as a nation, even if we can’t get agreement by 100% of individuals.
We have witnessed horrendous abuses of taxpayers in the last few years and I do concur with G. Edward Griffin’s assessment that the system will be unable to sustain itself at all for much longer without major change. What is in question is his solution to the tangle of problems in front of us.
We can debate whether or not to abolish the Fed, whether it has done more harm than good over the years, and what steps need to be taken to fix an obviously broken system. He dismisses those who call for congressional investigations and audits of the Federal Reserve as being not enough or worse, implies that they are insincere, and calls for outright abolishing the Fed (as if that had any snowball’s chance at all of being considered by other members of congress). I don’t believe that any attempt, no matter how small, to examine system-wide problems in a professional and critical way should be sneered at.
G. Edward Griffin claims that his proposed measures of abolishing our monetary system would be “bad but not that bad”. This depends entirely upon where you are at the moment. In other words, if you are already well-off, there is no cause for concern. What a relief!
He states that “new dollars would have more purchasing power than old” (trade in your old legal tender –i.e. money- for precious metal backed coins). Of course the wealthy would have many more of these “pennies”, while those who are running short of gold would just melt down their jewelry if they need more. I hate to bring this up, but haven’t a lot of people already done this in order to just get by?
He does not mention how many of these pennies it would take to purchase a vehicle to get to your job or to obtain housing, let alone the cup of coffee that would just cost “pennies”.
“The masses on welfare will not give up their checks and food stamps quietly” he says on p. 581. “Masses”? How many masses and which ones are we talking about? Social Security? That WOULD be a big savings if we didn’t have to pay any seniors or cover any of their healthcare. Say, haven’t they been paying into the system for years? Do they get a refund if they get no services? With interest?
On p.580, he states that banks would have to charge for all the “free” services and you simply could not expect to get your money whenever you want it if you want to earn interest on it.
I can see no reason to keep money in banks at all if this was the case, so we could just close them all and save a lot on salaries there.
He decries “political correctness’ which I guess is not being used here as a synonym for “human consideration and decency”. He does state on p. 581 that “Stock prices could tumble…some businesses may fold for lack of easy credit…may trigger panic…weak banks will be allowed to close…unemployment may worsen…”. He sees all this as minor fallout, whereas I see rising suicides, depression, crime rates and class warfare.
He advises us on p 583, to “get out of debt. A mortgage on one’s home is the logical exception.” I see no reason to except mortgages since this one area of our financial system has done more damage recently to the national and world economy than all of the other financial sectors combined, and within the last twenty years alone it has brought the world economic systems to near total failure. Let everyone just pay cash and then we can do without any of the annoying regulations or mortgage lenders. That would save a lot too, in lender’s salaries, appraisers, insurers, surveyors, title companies and home inspectors, not to mention closing attorneys. If we will go along with his plan, we would all soon realize, as many Americans have already in this country, that home ownership is just not possible any longer for the middle class in many locations, but without home ownership, there is less of an emotional as well as financial investment and commitment, and less interest or concern in improving education/schools or building a better community.

Whether or not you believe in conspiracy theories, anyone looking at their personal or collective finances knows that a whole lot of things are just not working at the moment. G. Edward Griffin has correctly identified many of the symptoms, but his proposal (a modest proposal to fix the US’ financial system?) advises that when his plan is underway (p 581) it “will be the moment of our greatest danger, the moment when the people could tire of their hard journey in the desert and lose interest in the promised land.” He advises that a corps of dedicated men and women (missionaries?) are needed to devote a major portion of their lives to this mission.
This book takes a hard look at some events in our nation's history and offers explanations that have not been offered in such a comprehensive way before. The fact that he can keep rewriting the same book (at least 31 printings over the last two decades) is of interest as well, for a variety of reasons. With tens of millions of Americans opting out of living on our native soil and choosing to live in countries with a more favorable financial and legal climate for them, and many more struggling to make ends meet at home, we can agree that something needs to be done. What we cannot agree upon, is when the collapse of the system is coming around the next time and what needs to be done to truly fix the system. show less